UK: Akshata Murty, the Indian spouse of Britain’s prospective Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, daughter of a billionaire father, is incredibly wealthy, a fortune that is stirring up debate while regular people struggle with a cost-of-living problem.
N.R. Narayana Murthy, 76, co-founded IT behemoth Infosys in 1981 is Sunak’s father-in-law. The outsourcing giant, now estimated to be worth $75 billion, was a major factor in India’s development as the “back office of the world.”
The Infosys CEO’s life was changed in 1974 when he was imprisoned for four nights in communist Eastern Europe. He was one of only two non-Americans included in Fortune magazine’s ranking of the “12 greatest entrepreneurs of our time” that year.
Narayana later remarked, “That healed me from being a confused socialist to a resolute caring capitalist.”
Mother-in-law Sunak After notably objecting via a postcard to the chairman about the company’s requirement that “woman candidates need not apply,” Sudha became Tata Motors’ first female engineer.
She is known as “India’s favourite grandma,” is a prolific writer, a major force in social work, and has built 16,000 toilets and 60,000 libraries. Despite her enormous riches, she is said to be modest.
Son of a doctor
Akshata and Rohan received an austere upbringing from Sudha, who forbade them from watching television at home and insisted they ride an auto-rickshaw to school with their peers.
The pair were content with Murty’s rather modest choice of spouse, a doctor’s son from Southampton named Rishi Sunak, which was unusual for class-conscious India, where arranged marriages are still frequent.
Sunak was “everything that you had described him to be — bright, gorgeous, and, most importantly, honest,” according to Murty’s father, who spells his last name differently from his daughter.
When Murty was getting her MBA at Stanford University in the US, the pair became friends there. The future prime minister was an Oxford first-class graduate and a Fulbright scholar.
Even though their 2009 wedding was modest by the standards of well-to-do India, nearly 1,000 guests—including politicians, businessmen, and cricket players—came to the reception.
Non-dom
Murty is richer than the late Queen Elizabeth II, whose personal wealth was estimated by the 2021 Sunday Times Rich List to be around $460 million, thanks to her ownership in Infosys, which is worth over $700 million.
The 42-year-old has also received tens of millions in dividends in recent years, but some of her money was exempt from British taxes due to her “non-domicile” status in the UK.
Murty announced in April that she would pay UK tax on all of her worldwide income in an effort to quell some of the ensuing public outrage that damaged her husband’s political standing.
She wrote, “I do this because I want to, not because the rules say I have to. “India will continue to be the country of my birth, citizenship, parent’s residence, and place of residence, regardless of my choice. But I also adore the UK.”
The couple, who have two daughters and a cute puppy, are nevertheless immensely wealthy, and the British media has taken note of their opulent lifestyle at a time when the average person is struggling.
Reports stated that they were spending £400,000 on a pool for their country home in August. In July, Sunak visited a construction site that was littered with debris while wearing Prada loafers.
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Non-materialistic
At least four properties are owned by Murty and Sunak, one of which is a five-bedroom mansion in Kensington, London, valued at £7 million. Additionally, they have a condo in Santa Monica, California.
Before founding her own design line, Akshata Designs, in 2010, she dabbled with marketing and banking.
Murty collaborates with artists in far-flung communities to produce clothing that is a “vehicle to discovering Indian culture,” according to a 2011 Vogue article.
She told the magazine, “I think we live in a materialistic world. “People are becoming more aware of the environment in which they live. Good deeds are in vogue.”
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