Patni Computer Systems employed 18,000 people around the world and was listed on the Bombay and New York Stock Exchanges.
[6] He then received a fellowship from the Grass Foundation [6] to study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA, arriving in the US in 1964—the year before the Immigration and Naturalisation Act of 1965 started Indian emigration to the US in earnest.
At MIT Patni met Jay W. Forrester, inventor of magnetic core memory, who became his lifelong mentor.
It was at this time that Patni and his wife Poonam began to conceptualise and test the idea of "offshoring" technology services.
The site of their initial tests, Patni's residence at 10 St Paul Street, Cambridge, "could qualify as a historic landmark"[8] as this is where Narendra and Poonam experimented with converting data from paper documents to computer databases without relying on any oral communications.
[9] In 1999, Patni Computer Systems was restructured as a "pure software operation" It became a "separate entity from PCS Industries Limited".
[11] General Atlantic Partners, a leading global private equity company, invested $100 million in Patni Computer Systems in 2002.
[8] He served on the Board of Trustees and was a significant benefactor for Siddhachalam, a major Jain ashram complex and pilgrimage point in New Jersey.
In 2016, the Patni Family Foundation was a significant funder of the SRCC Children's hospital in Mumbai, India—the largest such facility in Asia.
In 2008, the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee honoured Narendra Kumar Patni with the Distinguished Alumni Award for Corporate Development, Administration and Entrepreneurship.