Sudha Murthy: Tata Motors’ journey of first female engineer and writer

New Delhi. Today is the birthday of Infosys founder Narayan Murthy’s wife and famous writer Sudha Murthy. Sudha Murthy has the distinction of being the first female engineer of Tata Motors. She was a girl to study engineering alone in her college. Girls and women were not given an engineer job in Tata Motors, earlier called Telco. Seeing this in a recruitment advertisement, he wrote a letter to JRD Tata in anger. This letter changed the company’s policy and the doors were opened for women. The net worth of Sudha Murthy’s husband Narayan Murthy is ₹ 37,410 crore. Sudha holds 0.93 per cent stake of Infosys, priced at Rs 4970.1 crore by the end of June 2025.

Sudha Murthy attributes her success to her father. His father RH Kulkarni was a surgeon. Sudha Murthy said that her father taught him engineering at a time when engineering was considered only the field of boys. He earned an electrical engineering degree in 1972 from BVB College of Engineering and Technology (now KLE Technological University).

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Women toilet was not in college

In a podcast with Mantra and Cult founder Mukesh Bansal, Murthy said that everyone was surprised when he applied for engineering at the age of 17. This was because at that time engineering was considered as the area of boys. There was no toilet for women in their college, because they never thought that a woman would study engineering. Sudha said, “I was the only girl in my class in my college. She did not build toilets. I said, I said, I will not drink water from 7 am to 12 noon. Then I will return home, go to the toilet, eat lunch and then stay in the lab from 2 pm to 5 pm.

Sudha Murthy says that many people including her grandmother feared that they would not get a good husband after studying engineering. However, his father stood staring with him. He did not take any leave in four years of getting an engineering degree. He did this so that he did not have to ask for notes from anyone.

A letter written to JRD Tata in anger

When Sudha was studying in college, she saw the commercials installed by Tata Motors on the campus. The company was looking for engineers. However, one thing was knocked at Sudha Murthy in this ad. It was written in it that this vacancy is only for men. Since, at that time engineering was considered as the profession of men, so the company used to work under ‘No Women Policy’. Sudha idol did not work.

In anger, he wrote a letter to JRD Tata. In the letter, he wrote, “Sir JRD Tata, when the country was not independent, your country started chemicals, locomotives, iron and steel industry. Will never move forward, this is a mistake of your company. ”

Tata Motors’ policy changed

As a result of her letter, the Tata Group ended the No Women’s Policy and Sudha Murthy became the first female engineer to be appointed in Tata Engineering and Locomotive Company (Telco) in Pune. Sudha Murthy told the Kapil Sharma Show that she went to the Tata Motors Pune factory in April 2023 after nearly 50 years, and she saw that 300 girls were working there. He said, “I became emotional after seeing this. All this was possible because of my father. He fought the world and helped me to fulfill engineering studies. This honor, fame and award, all this is his gift.”