The Financial Express: Executive Vice Chairman of Cognizant India Says the Company is Well-Placed to Capitalize on Emerging Opportunities in the Marketplace

“It was a solid quarter,” says R. Chandrasekaran, referring to Cognizant’s Q1-2014 performance. “This quarter was different as we saw discretionary spending coming our way significantly…and this is a good sign.” Excerpts from the interview:

“We have always maintained that Europe is a long-term bet and it is paying rich dividends. We feel good about the portfolio of our businesses.

We see a healthy demand as customers will be driven by a dual mandate. On the one hand, they would need to be more efficient in bringing down the cost of IT operations, and on the other hand, they would face secular challenges to meet transformational changes. We are addressing this dual mandate. For example, in the financial services segment, there is a lot of regulatory compliance they need to adopt, and this is opening up a lot of demand for us. Most customers are looking at digital transformation, which is newer ways of doing business, and this is opening up demand. There are new opportunities.

We had a net headcount addition of 7,200 in the first quarter, which is the highest in the last two-and-a-half years. This is a reflection of a strong demand we see for our business. Given the current momentum, we will continue to hire for rest of the year.

As we complete 20 years of our existence, we have started a lot of employee engagement programs. We have beefed up our talent management in terms of training and leadership development initiatives. Our employees are quite upbeat.”

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