Cognizant To Hire 7,700 In India
posted in Outsourcing News and Top Outsourcing deals, Outsourcing to India, Nearshore Outsourcing |Source: www.business-standard.com
The $1.4-billion IT service major, Cognizant Technology Solutions has major plans for beefing up its presence in Kolkata, as in India. In the next 18-months, Cognizant will be investing $46-million (Rs. 188-crore) on building its new 5-lakh sq. ft. facility at its proposed campus in Kolkata’s Bantala SEZ, on the eastern fringes of the city.
To be developed in phases, the 20-acre Bantala campus according to R. Chandrasekaran, President & Managing Director - Cognizant will seat 12,000-people.
As well, Cognizant plans to raise its sub-continental headcount and its forth-coming recruitment plan includes the hiring of 7,700-people, 65% of who will be fresh graduates, and a 1,000 of its planned increase in staff will be for its new Kolkata facility. Short-term wise, the American firm’s national headcount will increase from 34,000 to 43,000 people by December 2007.
As well, the IT major plans to spend $200-million by 2008-end on a phased building new fully-owned techno-complexes across Chennai, Coimbatore, Hyderabad and Kolkata, of which Kolkata’s $46-million (Rs. 188-crore) techno-complex for accommodating 4,000-employees is the first.
A low-cost software development service provider, Cognizant faces increasing competition from bigger firms like International Business Machines Corp. (IBM), Electronic Data Systems (EDS) and Accenture, all busy expanding their presence in India. As well, it also faces competition from Indian IT majors, such as, Infosys Technologies, Wipro and Tata Consultancy Services.
This has compelled Nasdaq-listed IT major Cognizant Technology Solutions to scout for acquisitions, in order to expand into new geographies or new technology platforms, especially in Europe, where it hopes to build domain expertise and expand its customer base in the region. Ideally, Cognizant is targeting a firm comprising of 80 - 100-people and whose total valuation is not more than $35 – 40-milion.
“We are looking at acquiring companies, especially in Europe in the range of $50-100-million. While, we are strong in the financial services and healthcare segments, we need to build our retail and manufacturing businesses. So, the acquisition could be to scale our expertise in one of these areas,” says Lakshmi Narayanan, Vice-Chairman, Cognizant Technology Solutions.
However, declining to give any names or a timeline for an acquisition, the first quarter of FY-2007 revealed 14% of Cognizant’s total revenue of $460.3-million came from Europe.
Head-quartered in the USA, with a majority of its employees based in India, Cognizant has been successful in making quite a few acquisitions in the past. It’s largest so far, Chicago-based Fathom Solutions bought for $35-million in 2005. Other acquisitions include Massachusetts-based AimNet Solutions, a managed infrastructure and professional services firm in 2006 and Ygyan Consulting, a Pune-based SAP services provider in 2004. The $50-100 million range indicates Cognizant is looking for potentially bigger acquisitions, as is Wipro, its Indian peer.
Looking to build on its service lines introduced in the last two years, Narayanan confirms: “The new service lines like remote infrastructure management, testing services, transformation through SOA, data warehousing, business intelligence etc have seen good growth. We are now looking to scale them up.”
