Bloomberg UTV: Cognizant’s Group Chief Executive for Technology and Operations Talks About Cognizant’s Growth Strategy

“We are quite happy with our industry-leading performance,” says R. Chandrasekaran. “Even for the rest of the year, our guidance is far above that of competition or what Nasscom has projected as industry growth estimate. Overall, we are pleased with the growth outlook for the company. All the industry segments are growing very well for us. Even the troubled banking and financial services segment has grown very well in Q1 and we expect its growth to continue, although slightly lower than the company average. We see a very healthy pick up in all service lines.”

He adds, “Volume growth has been healthy and we expect pricing to be healthy. Of course, there has to be pricing discipline in the marketplace. That is very important; or else we will all be racing down to the bottom.”

Commenting on Cognizant’s growth drivers, he says, “We have fantastic customer relationships and continue to partner with them to drive business efficiency and effectiveness. Consulting, IT infrastructure services, and business process outsourcing, where we have made investments all these years, are generating great demand.”

Explaining Cognizant’s operational philosophy, Chandrasekaran says, “We have always focused on gaining market share, reinvesting into the business, and creating new capabilities. At Cognizant, we believe in higher growth and lower margins and reinvesting anything in excess of 19-20 per cent back into the business to provide a wider variety of services to our customers, strengthen client relationships, and beef up our consulting capabilities and domain expertise. That has helped us maintain industry-leading growth.”

According to Chandrasekaran, Cognizant focuses on taking care of customers and employees. “If we do these two things correctly,” he says, “that, along with our reinvestment strategy, will help us continue to gain market share and that’s our goal. We feel very optimistic.”