Infosys was founded on July 2, 1981 in Pune by N R Narayana Murthy and seven others: Nandan Nilekani, N. S. Raghavan, Kris Gopalakrishnan, S. D. Shibulal, K. Dinesh and Ashok Arora, with N. S. Raghavan officially being the first employee of the company. Murthy started the company by borrowing INR 10,000 from his wife Sudha Murthy. The company was incorporated as "Infosys Consultants Pvt Ltd.", with Raghavan's house in Model Colony, north-central Pune as the registered office.

In 1982, Infosys opened an office in Bangalore which soon became its headquarters.Infosys headquarters in Bangalore, IndiaInfosys went public in 1993. Interestingly, Infosys IPO was undersubscribed but it was "bailed out" by US investment banker Morgan Stanley which picked up 13% of equity at the offer price of Rs. 95 per share. The share price surged to Rs. 8,100 by 1999 making it the costliest share on the market at the time.

According to Forbes magazine, since listing on the Bombay Stock Exchange till the year 2000, Infosys' sales and earnings compounded at more than 70% a year.[7] In the year 2000, President of the United States Bill Clinton complimented India on its achievements in high technology areas citing the example of Infosys.

In 2001, it was rated Best Employer in India by Business Today. Infosys won the Global MAKE (Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises) award, for the years 2003, 2004 and 2005, being the only Indian company to win this award and is inducted into the Global Hall of Fame for the same.

Infosys was rated best employer to work for in 2000, 2001, and 2002 by Hewitt Associates. In 2007, Infosys received over 1.3 million applications and hired fewer than 3% of applicants.

BusinessWeek reported that Infosys, along with Wipro and Tata accounted for nearly 80% of the [H-1B] visa petitions approved in 2007 for the top 10 participants in the program.

In April 2009, Forbes rated Infosys among the 5 best performing companies in the software and services sector in the world.

In 2009, Infosys was considered one of the BusinessWeek's 50 Most Innovative Companies.

From December 2008 till April 2009, Infosys fired over 2500 employees for poor performance. The company has been hit hard by lower income from a crisis hit European and North American market. On April 15, 2009 Infosys reported its first ever sequential fall in its revenue in a decade during the March 2009 quarter.