From Bengaluru’s first family to UK’s first lady: The hidden Murty

Akshata Murty, the first lady of the United Kingdom, is ‘namma hudugi’ (our girl) from Bengaluru. Born in her mother Sudha Murthy’s hometown of Hubballi in northern Karnataka, few would have foreseen that 42 years later, this Indian citizen’s home would be No 10 Downing Street.

After doing her schooling in Bengaluru, she moved to Claremont McKenna College in California where she graduated with a dual major in economics and French and later did a fashion designing diploma from Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in Los Angeles. She had short work stints at Deloitte and Unilever before she went on to pursue her MBA at Stanford where she met Rishi Sunak.


Of the two Murthy children, Akshata has inherited the entrepreneurial genes of her famous family. “I come from a family of entrepreneurs—my mother on the social side through the foundation world and my father onthe corporate side. I was raised with a view that entrepreneurship can change people's lives,” Akshata was quoted in an article on the Stanford Graduate School of Business website.



She was raised in a middleclass home in Jayanagar, a suburb of Bengaluru, with nobirthday parties or much pocket money. “She is a simple, family girl. Her middle-class upbringing has kept her family’s value system intact,” said asource close to the family.



Akshata is fiercely private and has tried to maintain the lowest profile possible. But her fashion choices and penchantfor expensive clothes have been fodder for the paparazzi in the UK. Her recent attempt to woo the press by offering waiting reporters outside her London house hot cups of tea created a stir for the £38 mugs used.



Her incredible wealth ($600 million), from her 1% stake in Infosys, almost derailed her husband’s prime ministerial ambitions in the last round. As an Indian citizen, Akshata had opted for non-domiciled status which ensured she did not have to pay UK taxes on her non-UK income. While perfectly legal, it created a storm with Akshata later agreeing to give up her non-dom status and henceforth pay UK taxes on all her income.

The couple has two children, Krishna and Anoushka,and are frequent visitors to Bengaluru. They were last publicly seen in the city for their uncle Rohan Murty’s wedding to Aparna Krishnan in November 2019. Sudha Murthy, a prolific writer, has dedicated her recent books to her two grand-daughters.

Akshata’s love for fashion from her younger days caught her engineer parents by surprise. That perhaps stirred her entrepreneurial ambitions and prompted her to work with local artisans in India and she eventually launched Akshata Designs, a fashion label that preserved Indian tradition and craftsmanship in 2009. It wound up in 2013.



In 2013, Murthy’s family office Catamaran Ventures was incorporated in the UK. Catamaran manages over $1 billion across asset classes. As a director of Catamaran Ventures UK along with Sunak (who later resigned from the directorship), she took on a different mantle as an investor spotting New Age winners. Some investments include investing in a UK firm linked to Jamie Oliver’s Pizzeria and New & Lingwood, dubbed the quintessential English gentleman’s outfitter. Murty came under intense scrutiny after the gym chain Digme Fitness she part-owned claimed taxpayers’ money during the pandemic to pay for her staff under the chancellor’s job retention scheme.

The couple has a huge real estate portfolio. They live in a £7 million townhouse in Kensington. They also own a flat in Kensington and a mansion in Rishi's Yorkshire constituency and a penthouse in California.