Infosys's co-founder Narayana Murthy's wife Sudha Murthy on Thursday sold 20 lakh company shares owned by her for over Rs 430 crore in the open market.
The money raised would go into the corpus of Catamaran, a venture capital fund founded by her husband.
According to a regulatory disclosure by Infosys to the stock exchanges, Sudha has sold 20 lakh shares owned by her for an aggregate value of Rs 430.37 crore through open market sale today on the Bombay Stock Exchange.
"N R Narayana Murthy has informed the company that the proceeds of the sale will be used as a corpus for the Venture Capital Fund that is being set up in India by him to assist young entrepreneurs in their business, primarily in India," the disclosure said.
Post sell-off, Sudha's holding will be reduced to 73.14 lakh shares, representing 1.27 per cent stake in the company.
Last month, Murthy had also sold 0.13 per cent stake to raise Rs 174 crore to invest in the venture capital fund. According to the September quarter shareholding data availbale with stock exchanges, Sudha held 1.62 per cent in Infosys, while Murthy held 0.55 per cent stake before selling.
The disclosure further added that "they do not have plans for raising further capital for the fund at present".
The couple's daughter Akshata and son Rohan holds 1.41 per cent and 1.39 per cent stake respectively in Infosys.Shares of Infosys closed at Rs 2223.10, down 0.74 per cent on the BSE.
Meanwhile, in a separate transaction, Infosys Chief Executive and Managing Director S Gopalakrishnan, who held 1.09 per cent stake till September 30, has purchased a further four lakh shares of the company worth over Rs 86.60 crore on Thursday.
Reportedly, Murthy's VC fund would be called "Catamaran" and he is in the process of hiring a team of top talent, who would manage the fund, which would be operational in the next few months.
With this VC fund Narayana Murthy joins the rank of Wipro Chairman Azim Premji, who already runs a private equity fund, PremjiInvest.