Business Case Studies, Executive Interviews, Lakshmi Narayanan on Indian IT Industry

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Executive Interviews: Interview with Lakshmi Narayanan on Indian IT Industry
March 2006 - By Dr. Nagendra V Chowdary


Lakshmi Narayanan
President and CEO Cognizant Technology Solutions


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  • Cognizant has recently been in news frequently. Forbes ranked it Top Technology Company in "Best Small Companies List" and was selected as the "Best US Company in India" by the Indo-American Chamber of Commerce. What according to you are the reasons for this success?
    Cognizant's rapid growth and success can be attributed to our passion for building stronger businesses. Customers, research analysts and financial analysts clearly see Cognizant through our unrelenting focus on customer satisfaction and results, domain-intensive execution excellence and high quality of professionals.

    Our business model-with strong sales, marketing and customer relationship front-end in North America and Europe, and a robust execution back-end in India and China – helps us ensure high responsiveness to customers and pro-actively provide solutions to business problems, leveraging technology.

    Our success is also largely because of our "discipline and focus". We are focused primarily on enterprise customers, providing business applications and adjacent services. We are not into too many things like products, embedded systems and engineering services (CAD/CAM and VLSI design variety), R&D outsourcing, data center management, system software (writing software for hardware), etc. But what we specialize in, we do a truly good job of it and have clear market leadership.

    This is also reflected in our revenue numbers. Cognizant is focused on a chosen set of industry verticals such as financial services (including banking, insurance and capital markets), healthcare and life sciences, and manufacturing and retail. These three industry clusters contribute to approximately 88% of Cognizant's revenues.We are also largely focused on the North American and European markets, which jointly contribute 99% of our revenues, with under 1% coming from the Asia-Pacific region.

  • Could you tell us about your management style?
    I believe in empowering people and see this as a way to encourage responsibility, commitment and excellence. A firm believer in an open, non-hierarchical structure, I give my teams a free hand and encourage sharing across all layers of the organization. I believe in openness and transparency among internal and external stakeholders, including our customers. That reflects in the confidence and integrity that we enjoy as a company in the minds of our customers.

    I am always amazed by the potential of the humanmind and I believe that if and when motivated and challenged, people know no limits. I constantly challenge myself and my teams to go beyond all set boundaries.

  • Who are the business leaders you admire the most?
    I admire leaders in the Tata group, and more specifically, Ratan Tata. Creating and managing a diverse group of Tea to Technology companies with a global presence requires very different leadership skills. Add to that, the group and the leader has been unwavering on its core values that are worth emulating. To top it up is their sense of social responsibility; they consider society as the primary stakeholder which is worth worshipping.

  • Which is the latest book you have read? What has been your learning from it and would you like to share any thing interesting from the book?
    The Speigel Special on "The New World" is the one I have just read and is very interesting. In a series of articles, it examines the impact of globalization on Europe. And only a body of facts and analysis contained in Spiegel will help the Europeans come out of 35-hour work week, six week vacation time, and fifteen national holidays.

1. Indian Industry Case Study
2. ICMR Case Collection
3. Case Study Volumes


The Interview was conducted by Dr. Nagendra V Chowdary, Consulting Editor, Global CEO and Dean, IBSCDC, Hyderabad.

This Interview was originally published in Global CEO, IUP, March 2006.

Copyright © March 2006, IBSCDC No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced or distributed, stored in a retrieval system, used in a spreadsheet, or transmitted in any form or medium electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the permission of IBSCDC.

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