TEANECK, N.J. and MUMBAI, India, Feb. 13, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Cognizant (NASDAQ: CTSH), a leading provider of information technology, consulting, and business process outsourcing services, today announced that it has entered into a five-year, multimillion dollar engagement with Future Group, India's largest multi-format retail group, to provide end-to-end IT infrastructure services for all Future Group companies.

Under the managed services agreement, Cognizant will support more than 1,000 Future Group stores—including marquee names such as Pantaloons, Big Bazaar, Food Bazaar, Central, Home Town, and eZone—across 85 towns and cities in India, and the new stores the Company opens in the future. Besides providing service desk support, data center management, and network services support, Cognizant will also deliver the mission-critical, last-mile IT infrastructure services support to Future Group's ever growing network of stores, warehouses, offices, and data centers.

To help Future Group proactively monitor, manage, and report business service performance, Cognizant will implement an Enterprise Management Platform to improve operational agility and drive business transformation. Along with Future Group, Cognizant will set up a Point-of-Sale lab to develop and deploy next-generation IT solutions to provide best-in-class consumer experience in stores, and also to co-innovate around the future of the store, leveraging mobile and kiosk technologies.

"We chose Cognizant as our strategic partner after a comprehensive selection process," said Rakesh Biyani, Chief Executive Officer of Retail Business and an Executive Board Member at Future Group. "We were impressed with Cognizant's strong consulting-led approach, process and technology maturity, innovation focus, and most importantly, a sound understanding of our business vision. Our relationship with Cognizant will allow Future Group to harness Cognizant's broad range of business transformation capabilities in our mission to become a premier catalyst in India's consumption-led growth story."

"Future Group has strongly aligned its business and technology practices to build a scalable architecture to support our high-velocity consumption business, and drive a unique consumer experience across a country as diverse as India," said Parakh Dave, Chief Information and Technology Officer at Future Group. "Cognizant's deep understanding of the retail business processes, and experience of working with the world's leading retailers will help Future Group establish best-in-class service delivery processes, institutionalize industry-standard best practices, standardize operating environments and processes, improve operational agility, and drive business transformation."

"We are delighted at the opportunity to enable Future Group to meet the everyday needs of over 220 million customers in India more effectively, and drive innovation and thought leadership in the Indian retail industry," said R. Chandrasekaran, Group Chief Executive for Technology and Operations at Cognizant. "We are committed to helping Future Group unlock operational agility and scalability by aligning technology investments with business priorities, realize a strong process-driven delivery organization, and drive growth, profitability, and scalability. This engagement is a testament to the success of the investments we are making in the India market to help build stronger customer businesses."

About Future Group

Future Group is among India's leading business houses with multiple businesses spanning across the consumption space. The group operates some of India's leading retail chains like Pantaloons, Big Bazaar, Food Bazaar, Central, Home Town, and eZone, and also has allied businesses in consumer finance, life and non-life insurance, logistics infrastructure and supply chain, and brand and IPR development. The group operates around 16 million square feet of retail space in 85 cities and towns across India. The group's retail formats connect over 220 million customers to over 30,000 small, medium, and large enterprises that supply products and services to its retail chains. Future Group believes in developing strong insights on Indian consumers and building businesses based on Indian ideas, as espoused in the group's core value of 'Indianness.' The group's corporate credo is, 'Rewrite rules, Retain values.' For more, please visit: http://www.futuregroup.in.

About Cognizant's Retail Practice

Cognizant's Retail practice, which works with 12 of the top 30 global retailers, leverages its deep domain, consulting, and enterprise architecture expertise to deliver competitive advantage to supermarkets, department stores, specialty premium retailers, and large mass-merchandise discounters across the grocery, general merchandise, apparel, home and office, and consumer electronics segments. The practice provides comprehensive business solutions in the areas of supply chain, merchandising, stores, e-commerce, and retail analytics to enable retailers to transform their businesses, drive innovation, and cater to the rapidly changing shopping needs, preferences, and methods of retail customers. The practice is enabling retailers to embrace the future of shopping with innovative platforms such as IntelliPeak™, which helps manage peak/holiday season sales, and IntelliStore(SM), which leverages technologies around mobility, cloud, social media, and analytics to deliver a superior in-store customer experience.

About Cognizant's IT Infrastructure Services Practice

Cognizant's IT Infrastructure Services (IT IS) practice offers a comprehensive portfolio of managed services and consulting offerings that span enterprise computing, end-user computing, infrastructure security, network and convergence services, mobility, and application performance management. With extensive industry domain expertise in transformative Remote Infrastructure Management, which include Cognizant's industry-leading OnTarget™ ITIL-based platform and unique Operations Maturity Model, Cognizant's IT IS practice helps clients reduce infrastructure management costs, mitigate risk, and improve business performance.

About Cognizant

Cognizant (NASDAQ: CTSH) is a leading provider of information technology, consulting, and business process outsourcing services, dedicated to helping the world's leading companies build stronger businesses. Headquartered in Teaneck, New Jersey (U.S.), Cognizant combines a passion for client satisfaction, technology innovation, deep industry and business process expertise, and a global, collaborative workforce that embodies the future of work. With over 50 delivery centers worldwide and approximately 137,700 employees as of December 31, 2011, Cognizant is a member of the NASDAQ-100, the S&P 500, the Forbes Global 2000, and the Fortune 500 and is ranked among the top performing and fastest growing companies in the world. Visit us online at www.cognizant.com or follow us on Twitter: Cognizant.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release includes statements which may constitute forward-looking statements made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, the accuracy of which are necessarily subject to risks, uncertainties, and assumptions as to future events that may not prove to be accurate. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied include general economic conditions and the factors discussed in our most recent Form 10-K and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Cognizant undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise.

SOURCE Cognizant