ET Now: Cognizant’s Group Chief Executive for Technology and Operations Talks About Cognizant’s Growth Drivers

“We beat the guidance we had given earlier for Q1. We are very pleased with the overall results and the way our Q1 performance turned out. This is our first quarter of $2 billion revenue,” says R. Chandrasekaran. “The growth has been broad based across geographies, service lines and business segments, particularly, banking, retail and manufacturing that grew exceptionally well.”

He adds, “As we look to the rest of the year, budgets have been frozen as expected and we do expect discretionary spending to start from Q2 onwards. That’s the reason we’ve given good guidance of 5.4 percent for Q2 and have also reaffirmed our guidance of at least 17 percent for the full year. We’re happy with the investments we’ve made in our own capabilities.

Cognizant sees demand coming from two different mandates, says Chandrasekaran. “One is to help our customers run their businesses better. This is the application outsourcing business, where we look for more and more cost take-out, reduce the total cost of IT ownership, and help them be a lot more agile in terms of servicing their customers. The second is to help them transform their businesses leveraging technology. Customers are trying out newer business models and newer technologies. These help them competitively differentiate themselves in the marketplace,” he says.