Girish Karnad didn’t want the shares. Nandan Nilekani wouldn’t stop asking. “This Nandan is irritating me,” Karnad told his wife, as recounted in I Am on the Hit List: Murder and Myth-making in South India, journalist Rollo Romig’s vivid exploration of Bangalore’s transformation. 

Her gentle nudge—“He has such nice parents… why don’t you buy a few?”—sealed the deal. Karnad bought a small slice of Infosys, not out of foresight, but out of family loyalty.

Karnad, one of India’s most revered playwrights, wasn’t drawn to the markets. “I wasn’t interested in investment,” he told Romig. But that modest decision in the early 1990s, made just to end a cousin’s persistence, ended up financing his house. 

“It pulled me up from being a lower-middle-class family man to a comfortable economic frame,” he reflected. “I wish I’d invested more.”

Infosys, co-founded by Nilekani, listed in 1993 at ₹95 a share. It quickly became one of India’s most remarkable engines of wealth. 

For those who held on, the returns were staggering. Thanks to nine bonus issues and a stock split, 100 shares purchased at IPO would have turned into 102,400 by 2025. At the current price of ₹1,580, that investment would now be worth ₹16.18 crore—excluding dividends.

Karnad didn’t hit that jackpot, but his story captures something more resonant: the improbable and uneven nature of India’s tech boom. Romig uses the anecdote to expose deeper economic rifts in Bangalore.

“A large section of the local population feels completely lost,” Karnad said. “In the good old days, there was employment for local people… They could see where the money came from.” The IT wave, by contrast, was “a layer of money which is totally incomprehensible.”