Ravi Kumar S. of Cognizant: The hungry CEO

Work—and sustaining it—is, not surprisingly, top priority for Ravi, 52, who became CEO of the Nasdaq-listed company in early 2023. Cognizant’s revenue slipped about 0.4% in 2023 to $19.35 billion but Ravi is by all accounts heading an upward trajectory for the company. Their third quarter results, reported on end October, showed revenue up by 3% year-on-year, to $5 billion. He said in a press release that in the third quarter, they had signed six deals with total contract value of more than $100 million each, bringing their year-to-date count to 19, which is more than they signed in the whole of 2023. In 2023, about 30% of Cognizant’s total contract value came from deals that were over $50 million, while the company also signed 17 deals that exceeded $100 million.

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The firm also announced multiple acquisitions since he took over: IoT software engineering services provider Mobica last March, ServiceNow consultancy Thirdera in December and Belcan LLC, a supplier of engineering research and development services, for $1.3 billion in August. The Teaneck, New Jersey-headquartered Cognizant last year announced an investment of $1 billion in generative AI over the next three years, a part of which was the launch of an Advanced Artificial Intelligence Lab in San Francisco earlier this year.

“The industry will change in the next few years due to advances in artificial intelligence," says Ravi. “We want to be ahead of the curve, take Cognizant back to the winner’s circle."

Ravi spent his early life on college campuses—his father was a professor in Berhampur, Odisha, teaching botany. Being a teacher’s son, he was expected to be in the top five percentile of the school, which his two younger brothers achieved. Ravi, though, “was almost at the bottom of the class, almost in every class", all the way to class XII.

“Normally, when you’re at the bottom of the class, you’re good at something else," he says, grinning. “But I was not good at anything, which bothered my father a lot. It came down to middle-class values and family expectations—if you are the son of a professor, you should do well in studies, and I faltered."

It was at an engineering college at Shivaji University in Kolhapur that, “for some vague reason", he started to find himself; small successes adding to his self-confidence and motivation. It was also catalysed by fear—of having to go back home with poor results to show. The inflection point in the newly graduated chemical engineer’s career was getting into the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in 1991 as a scientist, a position coveted by top graduates at the time. He spent three years there, working on reactors, getting a “phenomenal grounding" on how an approach to businesses can also be scientific. “When you have a scientific approach to things," he says, “you build a hypothesis, validate it, rethink the assumptions, validate it again, create a feedback loop and deliver to outcomes. So that whole grounding allowed me to do well in jobs actually."

But the pace of work in science wasn’t up to his expectations, and he did an MBA at the Xavier Institute of Management in Bhubaneswar, which led to a placement at consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. A series of short stints followed at a bunch of companies, as Ravi switched jobs continuously to find the right fit. That turned out to be Infosys, which he joined in 2002 and where he would spend the next two decades of his career.

“Infosys was the first company where I started to believe that I could fit into different roles while being on the same platform," says Ravi. He remembers one such learning clearly. When he was focused on his business role at Infosys’ Hyderabad campus, with a direct control over operations he was dealing with, a human resources head told him that working on a “sphere of influence" is harder and he should try it. Ravi was not running the campus at the time, but he got involved in the local operations of the company, dealing with the facilities, infrastructure, government and local issues. “There are 20,000-30,000 people on a campus, so it’s like a village. You deal with issues that are not related to your (part of) business. That gave me a new vector for my leadership—the art of persuasion, working with people who don’t work for you and getting the best out of them."

When Infosys was looking for somebody to run their insurance and healthcare business, an initially sceptical Ravi moved to New York in 2014—and never left the city. It was a sales job, which he didn’t believe was his strength, and his wife Amita had a boutique head-hunting job in India she didn’t want to leave. But they took the plunge and headed to the US.

Over the next nine years, he performed a variety of roles, being the senior-most executive of Infosys in the Americas, as a global head of delivery, part of BPO services, consulting and public services, helping elevate the brand to be more visible in the US. By the time Salil Parekh was given a second term as CEO of Infosys in May 2022, Ravi realised he could only go that far within the company.

“It wasn’t a difficult decision," he says, about moving to Cognizant.

When he joined Cognizant, celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, the firm was trailing significantly among competitors both in revenue margins and attrition of people. Several hirings followed Ravi’s, including at least 10 Infosys executives, which led to a conflict between competitors over poaching. Cognizant had to settle this year with Wipro, which filed a non-compete lawsuit when Jatin Dalal joined the former as chief financial officer while Infosys accused Cognizant of unethical poaching.

“We actually gave away a lot of our leadership to all our competitors," says Ravi, “and they took away happily at that time when the company wasn’t doing well. This is not about me poaching, this is about people voluntarily coming and wanting to be a part of this journey because they’re convinced about the next chapter of the company."

Since two-thirds of their roughly 340,100-strong workforce is in India, some of the corporate functions moved to India along with senior leadership. The company started to focus on tier-2 cities, like Bhubaneswar and Indore, in an effort to make India an innovation hub for the company.

“I’ll just give you some more stats to validate what I’m saying," Ravi adds, shifting a bit on the single-seater sofa. “In the last two-and-a-half years, we have promoted and progressed 35% of the Indian workforce. We have sent 3,000 people to different parts of the world to explore their career aspirations."

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Last year, he was reported to be the highest-paid Indian CEO of a technology company, a suggestion he dismisses based on how his compensation was misinterpreted. “I had to convince my family that I am not making this much money," he says, bursting into laughter. “My mother, who lives in India, wanted to know what I was doing with the money."

He is currently excited about Cognizant’s new partnership with Formula One team Aston Martin. “It is a fascinating sport because the driver is only one-third of the sport; one-third is technology and one-third is teamwork. We are working on the data that comes out of it and leveraging that to make the car more efficient."

He checks his watch and mentions another meeting that’s lined up next. His time is stretched at most times, though it helps that his office is “literally" next door to where he lives in Manhattan. The father of two young children, four-and-a-half and three-years old, also needs to give time to the many boards he sits on, including the International Tennis Hall of Fame, The New York Academy of Sciences and US Chamber of Commerce.

Does it ever get too much?

He grounds himself with a philosophy that includes staying “vulnerable, humble and hungry". The ability to be vulnerable helps you to be authentic, he says after a pause. “I am one of those people who will tell you and a thousand people in my company if I don’t know something. It allows you to ask stupid questions, to be curious, to punch above your weight. You should never forget where you came from. About 70-80% of who I am is the platform I work in. Staying hungry means I don’t feel like an accomplished CEO. I am a first-time CEO," he says.

“I want to leave a legacy. Even after I am gone, future CEOs should look at the work I have done and gain from that impact."

He smiles, before adding, “Vulnerable, humble and hungry. I don’t think I have said that ever before." 

Arun Janardhan is a Mumbai-based journalist who covers sports, business leaders and lifestyle. He posts @iArunJ.