Technology: To cut costs and face reverses, Cognizant to fire 3,500 employees
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: American Information Technology major Cognizant, once a bellwether in the sector with revenues of nearly USD 20 billion in 2022, became the latest IT company to join the layoff bandwagon as it announced to fire some 3,500 employees and close or curtail office spaces to save cost.
The New Jersey-based headquartered company, originally founded in Chennai, India, in 1994, will also cut back on 11 million square feet of office space, its CEO, Ravi Kumar S. said on Thursday.
Despite being based in the US, Cognizant has a major chunk of its operations in India. It said its revenues will decline in 2023 and the company’s margins are amongst the lowest in the industry, at 14.6 percent.
The firm faces major competition from Accenture, Infosys, and TCS in India. It is unclear how many people in India will be impacted by the fresh decision, the reports said.
Ravi Kumar S, a former President of Infosys, assumed his new role as Cognizant’s CEO only on January 12, 2023, after his predecessor Brian Humphries’ services were “involuntarily terminated.”
“In preparing for 2023, however, the Board recognized the need for Cognizant to progress faster, increase its commercial momentum and accelerate revenue growth. We believed that doing so required a CEO transition,” Stephen J Rohleder, Chairman of the Cognizant Board, said in a statement recently.
About Cognizant’s workforce in India, Kumar said the South Asian nation will be the world’s technology talent hub for the next decade. Its population has a demographic profile and digital talent pool currently unmatched by any other country. “We will capitalize on India’s rich IT talent pool as we intensify efforts to recruit not only in the largest cities but also in midsize metropolitan areas. The Cognizant brand is well-known on India’s college campuses.”
However, Cognizant is not the only technology company to announce layoffs recently. Companies like Wipro, Amazon, Accenture, Infosys, IBM, Google, Meta, and Twitter had also announced layoffs in the last couple of months. It won’t be wrong to say that the tech sector is going through a rough time and with thousands of people looking out for jobs after getting fired, the job market is highly competitive.
