Mumbai, Dec. 8: Some of the founders of Infosys sold shares worth $1.1 billion in India's second-largest IT services exporter on Monday, cashing in on a more than 20 per cent gain in the stock since the company picked its first outsider as chief executive.

The shares were sold by N.R. Narayana Murthy, Nandan Nilekani, S.D. Shibulal and K. Dinesh, members of a group of seven engineers who founded Infosys in 1981 by pooling together $250.

Infosys shares have so far risen 23 per cent since the company in June named Vishal Sikka, a former executive at global software firm SAP, as its CEO in a bid to revive growth. That is more than double the gain in the benchmark index for Indian stocks during the same period.

The four founders and members of their families sold 32.6 million shares in the company at a fixed price of Rs 1,988.87 each, a 4 percent discount to Friday's close, said Deutsche Bank, the sole book runner of the sale.

The four were all company executives who left before Sikka took office. The sale reduces the combined stake of all the founders and their families to 5.1 per cent from nearly 8 per cent.

Murthy, the last Infosys chairman who was also a founder, and Nilekani said they had sold their stakes for personal reasons.

'Our family has sold a minor part of its stake to continue various activities including our efforts to encourage entrepreneurship and our personal philanthropic efforts.

'These are activities that I expect to be busy with during the next phase of my life. Even after this sale our family continues to be the largest shareholder among retail shareholders. Our family has tremendous confidence in the future of Infosys and its leaders,' Murthy said in a statement after the sale.

Murthy and family sold 1.2 crore shares for Rs 2,386.55 crore and still is left with 2.34 crore shares.

Of this, Narayana Murthy sold 4 lakh shares, wife Sudha Murty sold 56 lakh shares and daughter Akshata Murty 60 lakh shares.

Nilekani and his wife Rohini sold 1.2 crore shares for Rs 2,386.23 crore and are left with 1.96 crore shares. Each sold 60 lakh shares.

K. Dinesh and family sold 62 lakh shares for Rs 1,233.65 crore and still retains 2.25 crore shares. Of this Dinesh sold 7 lakh shares, daughters Deeksha and Divya each sold 7.5 lakh shares, while his wife Asha sold 40 lakh shares.

Shibulal's wife Kumari sold 24 lakh shares for Rs 477.38 crore.

Thus a total of 3.26 crore shares, accounting for over 5.5 per cent stake in the company, were sold through multiple deals. The shares were sold to both domestic and foreign institutional investors.

The shares have been sold at a time the company has gone through a major governance and management restructuring.

The last of the Infosys founders stepped down from the board in October this year. The founders had recently sought that they should not be known as promoters.

While these four co-founders have monetised only part of their holdings - for entrepreneurship and philanthropic activities - their action led to a sharp plunge of about 5 per cent in the IT heavyweight's share price, eroding almost $2 billion from the company's market capitalisation.

Infosys currently commands a market value of about Rs 2.25 lakh crore.

The company's scrip plunged 4.88 per cent to end the day at Rs 1,968.60 on the BSE.

During the day, it lost 5.37 per cent to Rs 1,958.50.

On the NSE, shares of Infosys slipped 4.75 per cent to settle at Rs 1,972.

Led by the decline in the stock, the company's market value dipped Rs 11,611.06 crore to Rs 2,26,088.26 crore.

The stock was the biggest loser among the blue-chips on both the Sensex and Nifty.

However, market experts feel that the fall was more of a knee-jerk reaction and since the long-term prospects for the company were positive, investors should not be worried.

Since his taking over as the managing director & CEO, Sikka has charted a new course for the infotech services company with areas such as automation, digital, artificial intelligence emerging as the new focus areas apart from its other lines of businesses.

At an analyst meet recently, Sikka divulged the transformation path which he said consisted of renewing the core business and entering into new segments.