As India Inc. debates moonlighting issue, companies such as Infosys, Flipkart and Freshdesk may have had a different founding history than for moonlighting.
Harpreet Singh Saluja, President of Nascent Information Technology Employees Senate NITES, a organisation representing IT workers, says that several successful companies like Infosys, Flipkart, Freshdesk, and others were founded by their founders while they were moonlighting at their day jobs.
Saluja said that going back to history, moonlighting is not a new thing, according to Business Today s Executive Director Rahul Kanwal on India Today s Newstrack. Infosys founder Narayan Murthy was working with Patni Computer Systems when he founded Infosys. If you're going to go with startups, Flipkart was founded by Sachin and Binny Bansal while they were working for Amazon. Freshdesk, which got listed on Nasdaq last year, was found by Girish Mathrubootham while he was working for Zoho Corporation. Infosys and Freshdesk operate in similar domains when compared to the establishments in which their founders worked. Infosys and Patni Computer Systems are active in the IT sector while Freshdesk and Zoho build technology tools for businesses. Both Amazon and Flipkart started as online bookstores.
The company does not discourage employees from practicing moonlighting because of Infosys' origins. In an email sent out by the HR department recently, the tech giant stressed: Remember - NO TWO-TIMING - NO MOONLIGHTING. The employment contract of Infosys is laden with clauses that prevent IT workers from taking up secondary employment. The employment contract states: You agree not to undertake any employment, whether full-time or part-time, as a Director Partner Member Employee of any other organization entity engaged in any form of business activity without the consent of Infosys. The consent may be given subject to any terms and conditions that the Company may think fit and may be withdrawn at any time at the discretion of the Company. This is a mandatory condition of employment.
Even the former Infosys director TV Mohandas Pai believes that what an employee does in their free time should not concern the company. He told Business Today that he would look at it from a different perspective. Employment is a contract between an employer who pays me for a number of hours a day. I have to abide by their conditions, including client confidentiality, and I'm paid for that. I can't work for anybody else at the time. After that time, I can do what I want, and that is what I can do. The IT services giants contract prevents employees from working with direct competitors for 6 months after leaving the company.
I agree that if I leave my job with Infosys for a period of six months, I will not accept any offer of employment as a Named Competitor for any reason, and that my employment with the Named Competitor would result in me having to work with a customer who had worked with in the twelve 12 months prior to the termination of my employment with Infosys.
For the purposes of this Non-Compete Agreement, Named Competitor means the following entities and their wholly owned subsidiaries :