Mint: Cognizant’s Chief Executive Officer of IT Services Looks Back at His Personal and Professional Growth

“One of the key faces in [Francisco] D’Souza’s ace team is the quiet, unassuming Rajeev Mehta who has over the years overseen relationships with some of the company’s largest clients,” writes Mint. Excerpts from the profile:

“The 48-year-old Mehta, who is now based in Dallas in Texas, US, joined Cognizant when the company had just got the green light to go after external clients outside of Dun & Bradstreet and was trying to score big-ticket Fortune 500 clients.

Mehta is now trying to develop new-age, cool technology services for his big-spending clients.

“We’re starting to work with clients, especially in the area of the Internet of Things, where they can tell you what’s going to break down before it actually breaks down,” says Mehta.

For a man who spent his high school years working graveyard shifts at a local retailer after his father was taken ill, Mehta has come a long way.

Chandigarh-born Mehta, who moved to the US when he was 5 and was inspired to pursue a career in the world of information technology after watching his older brothers pursue areas like computer science and satellite systems design, started his professional life while he was completing undergraduate studies at the University of Maryland.

At Maryland University, Mehta programmed applications for administrative functions and pocketed a handsome internship fee. He then proceeded to finish his undergraduate studies six months ahead of the rest of the class and landed a job at Andersen Consulting in Washington, DC, where he honed his skills in software development.

After graduating from Carnegie Mellon, Mehta began working at Deloitte. [Subsequently], he landed a job in one of the world’s largest conglomerates, General Electric (GE) Co., having caught their eye when he was selling software services to the company.

It was the mid-1990s, and D’Souza convinced Mehta to speak to Cognizant’s then CEO.

Over the last 17 years, he has risen to become one of the top three executives in the company. In many quarters, Mehta is also seen as one of the future leaders who will drive Cognizant forward in its next phase of growth.

For now, Mehta’s sole aim is to continue Cognizant’s stellar run over the past five years, during which it has disrupted the pecking order among software services firms.”

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