Cognizant's $300mn India capex on track

CHENNAI: IT services major Cognizant is not re-drawing its $300 million investment and hiring plans in India.

R Chandrasekharan, president and managing director, Cognizant, said large BFSI clients have remained unscathed by the global financial turmoil, and was confident of meeting the annual guidance.

Chandrasekaran said: "We are making a lot of investments. In hindsight, I can confidently say that even in the current slow growth cycle, as an organisation, we are not slowing down on investments. We continue to make investments to grow our investments, deepen our client engagements."

With 46% exposure to banking and financial services, Cognizant surprised many by growing at 8% in the segment in the last quarter - higher than the overall average growth of the sector.

Cognizant has forecast a growth of 32% this financial year, which ends in December 2008. This would be the highest growth recorded among leading IT firms like Infosys, TCS and Wipro.

As of last quarter, Cognizant had a global headcount of about 59,500 employees of which 45,000 professionals are in India.

The $300 million India investment will be used to develop techno-complexes across five cities with a capacity for 45,000 professionals.

The only point of immediate concern is the sharp fall of European currencies, which has impacted Cognizant's revenue from Europe.

At a time when almost every IT company is cutting down campus placements, Cognizant says it will honor all the campus offers it made last year and is not cutting down on head count growth.

Chandrasekaran said: "We continue to hire people for our business needs. We have made a number of campus offers last year. We are in the process of inducting them. So, that will take care of demand till next year. We are committed to honoring all the offers we have made in the campuses. We are on track in terms of our head count plans to manage growth."

Cognizant is expected to get the real sense of the impact of the slowdown during its customer conference in February next year but growth and investments are on track....