Business Line: Vice-Chairman, Cognizant, and Executive Vice-Chairman, Cognizant India, Talk About Cognizant’s Evolution, Culture and Growth Since its Inception 20 Years Ago

“In 1994, when it started out, Cognizant was just a captive technology arm of Dun and Bradstreet Corporation (D&B), a corporate and financial information research firm. At the end of the first year, it had around 200 people and its revenue was less than $2 million,” writes Business Line on the eve of Cognizant completing 20 years of operations. “By 1996, the company was adding third-party clients. Two years later, business from external customers accounted for about a third of Cognizant’s revenues. Today, the firm employs 166,000 people globally. And it hopes to clock $8.8 billion in revenue for 2013.”

“In the 1990s,” the paper adds, “after Cognizant decided to service third-party clients, one of its first clients was a resource planning and supply-chain management company. Cognizant won the deal after the company carried out due diligence of multiple vendors.” Lakshmi Narayanan, Vice-Chairman, recalls, “We were thrilled and celebrated that win, thinking that we had cracked the code on selling to clients.” A few weeks later, Narayanan met a top executive of the company and asked him what had impressed him about Cognizant. “The thinking behind the question was that Cognizant could institutionalize the process and win more clients,” says Narayanan. “I was in for a surprise. He told me: ‘We selected you because you did not know how to sell. We do not like being sold to. You said you would work with us to address our business problem. You never positioned yourselves as a know-all. That’s why we selected you.’ The learning from that first win is what Cognizant practices even today: work side by side with clients, invest in attracting and retaining the best people, and pursue consultative selling.”

The paper points out that more than 90 per cent of Cognizant’s revenue is generated by customers who have been with it for at least a year. “Our goal is simple: We want to be the No.1 business partner in the minds of our clients and the No.1 employer in the minds of our employees,” says R. Chandrasekaran, Executive Vice-Chairman, Cognizant India. “If we can win the hearts and minds of our clients and employees, we believe we can continue to post industry-leading revenue growth,” he says.

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