The Hindu Business Line : Proudly Indian

The Cognizant CEO finds comparatively less corruption in the IT sector. "We've never had to meet the current or the ex-chief minister; everything is open, transparent. In this State, nobody interferes; they facilitate."

He is proud that the IT sector where he works has managed to change the way the world looks at India and Indians. "Ten years ago, in the west we'd cringe to go into a restaurant filled with foreigners. We would go to the farthest table not to be noticed; but today I'd walk in and take the table right in the centre of the room. That is the confidence I have. As an Indian, you're respected today in the western world, China and the Asia-Pacific region; you're respected for being a very intelligent, knowledgeable and value-based person," says Lakshmi Narayanan, President and CEO of Cognizant Technology Solutions (CTS), which is set to become a $1-billion company by the end of 2006. He sees a challenge from China but not in the next three to five years "mainly because of our English language capability and 20-odd years of experience in this field which gives us a head start."

His confidence is that of a man who started with Cognizant in 1994 when it began as an IT department of Dun & Bradstreet (D&B), with just 70 employees. Today CTS, which became an independent company in 1996, employs 23,000 people, is growing at 50 per cent every year and adds annually 7,000-8,000 new employees.

Born in Pudukkottai in Tamil Nadu, where his grandfather was an advocate and political activist, he later moved to Bangalore where his father worked as a design engineer in Hindustan Aeronautics. After a B.Sc. Honours in Physics from St Joseph's College in 1972, he got his Masters in Electronics from the Bangalore University and joined the Indian Institute of Science in the department of industrial management; "there were no IIMs then apart from Ahmedabad and Calcutta".

In 1975 he graduated and was selected as a management trainee by TCS at its first ever campus interview at a salary of Rs 950, "a princely sum in those days." But more than the salary the youngster was excited at the prospect of working out of Mumbai. But his parents were anxious at "Mumbai's reputation and all relatives and friends were told to take care of me!" Almost half his salary went towards the PG accommodation he had with a Parsi family in Pedder Road but "I learnt both discipline and punctuality from them."

In the beginning...

He recalls how TCS' real foray into IT began in mid-1976 with a new computer on which they were trained. "We started writing programs; there were no terminals and we wrote in coding sheets which went to a different place, got punched on cards and came back. Just to write a program those days would take a week, which present-day kids accomplish in a matter of two hours."

Narayanan got the opportunity to go to the US in mid-1977, and he was sent to a General Motors spark plug division. As more projects came his way, he made enough impact for the CEO of a Tata facility in New York to praise him over the phone to his boss as "a bright youngster who seems to have all the gods in his name!"

In an era when most people opted to stay back, he chose to return to Mumbai after 18 months and continued with TCS in various capacities. He recalls an incident when TCS was given the responsibility of computerising and printing one lakh dividend warrants for UTI's US 64. "At first, we botched it up and there was major chaos. One of the women MPs, a Rajalakshmi, was described as the wife of Mr Ahmed and she raised the issue in Parliament and F.C. Kohli (then TCS chief) got a call and had to explain!"

Over the years, his career progressed and he executed many challenging projects including a four-year stint in Switzerland where he set up TCS' Europe operations. In 1994, when he was running the Delhi operations "the head hunting started!" A former Tata Finance director, who had left the group "courted me for six months. I said I was perfectly happy, but finally gave in and said `Okay'; they asked me to pick a location and I chose Chennai." One of his reasons... the beach which he adores.

There was no looking back; in mid-1996, "as we watched companies like TCS, Infosys, Wipro, HCL, DSQ and Pentafour — the last two were high fliers those days — we thought we should grow too and just working for D&B was not enough."

Thus began the real story of Cognizant; "the initial challenge was to make the rest of the field believe that this company is for real and will take care of the interest of customers other than D&B." He started recruiting salespeople in the US and recalls the aggressive American salesman who during the Y2K hype, "would terrorise people saying if you don't do this, your systems will collapse and you're finished. And we said this is not the way to do it... and started getting people who could make a more subtle sales pitch!"

Small centres shine

On the deteriorating quality of software programmers at the entry level, Narayanan says, "We were different in that we never hired people for their technical skills. We said we'll teach the skills in programming but we'll hire people for their good communication and soft skills, a service-oriented attitude and ability to work in a team. People who can subordinate their egos are important in a service industry and it takes just six months to train them."

Also, he adds, CTS hires people from smaller cities like Coimbatore, "who have studied in local colleges and are reluctant to come even to a big city like Chennai in search of a job. So we said we'll go to them. We look at their attitude and say even the language skills are not very important; we can teach you that. We've taken about 250 such people, trained them and found them to be very hardworking and quick learners. They have the passion for work and want to make a difference." In one year, CTS has lost only two of the 250, a remarkable feat in an attrition-afflicted industry.

On women not making to the top layers of the IT industry, Narayanan says, "This profession requires a lot of mobility and the ability to travel back and forth; most women are not able to travel that much or relocate to work on a project abroad because they have family responsibilities." But, he adds that CTS as an IT major has the maximum number of women heading departments and about 30 per cent of its workforce is female. "And we are probably the only Board (of an IT major) with a woman director."

On trained women leaving after marriage or while starting a family, he says, "This used to happen five years ago and worried us but not today. Today women are far more career-minded and willing to take up challenges." He gives the example of a woman from an orthodox family in Chennai who had to work in a plant processing huge quantities of meat. "She said this is part of my profession and I'll do it. Women today are able to display this kind of maturity."

Corruption: IT's different

Narayanan says it's possible to do business in India without compromising on one's ethics vis-à-vis corruption. "Corruption may exist in some pockets, but in the IT sector, it is comparatively less. And for leading companies like us, none at all."

He adds that he's never had to make compromises. "We've been in Chennai over long years and none of us has had to meet either the current or the ex-chief minister or any other ministers for anything. Everything is open, transparent. In this State, nobody interferes; they facilitate. If they get to know we're in any difficulty, either due to excessive rains, or anything else, they try their utmost to help, which is something that can't be said of other industries. This is so because this industry has been open and straight right from the beginning, and those manning it have come from the middle class."

Admittedly IT had put India on the global map; but could it change the face of India, particularly poverty and deprivation that afflicts millions of Indians?

His response is candid. "No, this industry cannot change the overall texture or fabric of the country. Though 50 per cent of our GDP is service oriented, less than 20 per cent of our workforce is in the service industry, and in the IT industry the proportion is even lower. So the impact we are able to make is very little. But manufacturing can generate a greater deal of employment, it has begun to do well and that is very important." He quotes from a McKenzie report on India that talks about the mine and mineral wealth of Orissa, Uttaranchal and Chattisgarh. "Even if we export 80 per cent of that, the remaining 20 per cent will be sufficient for India for the next several decades, even if our consumption doubles every year. Yet the cost of sending it out is prohibitive."

After IT, the automobile, telecom and electronic sectors are bound to boom, he says. With manufacturing creating more employment, the next area that deserves attention is agri-business, he says.

A "reasonably religious" person, Narayanan is vegetarian at home, but turns non-vegetarian when he travels, more for convenience. Earlier he used to listen to a lot of Carnatic music, but more recently, "along with my two daughters, I've become fond of filmi songs... Apdi podu (a recent Tamil hit)... those kind of songs!"

He likes watching movies too, but rarely in a theatre. "I can't take too much of emotional movies; I went with my family to Black and ended up crying. I didn't like that; as it is there is enough pain and sorrow in real life so why should one have to relate to the pain and suffering of the characters on the screen? So I like comedies."

Interestingly, he loves toy cars, particularly remote control cars. "I enjoy giving them to kids, and playing with them myself." When it comes to the bigger cars, he prefers German cars. At present he drives the Opel Vectra "which is a good German engineered car." But he hasn't gone in for a BMW yet; "let them start manufacturing here and we'll see," says the man who loves to get behind the wheel and head for his farmhouse on the seashore.

A challenge and a dream

Even though his company has a "focused business model and a good reputation, the biggest challenge is to build a scale," and imbibe the Cognizant culture in 8,000-odd people he recruits every year. "Most customers say we work with you because we like your team and culture, you're very result oriented, easy to do business with, very professional. To maintain this tempo as we grow into a $1-billion company is the challenge," says CTS chief Lakshmi Narayanan.

Spelling out his dream for Cognizant, he says, "Every day when I come into work, I see so many bright young people in the office, who are so energetic and passionate. The average age of our employees is around 25 years and I see many employees who are capable of running a company as large or even larger than Cognizant. Research shows that young people like challenges and some of us are seen as slow and not risk-taking... my dream really is to open up and create growth opportunities for them so that they can multiply, make it a larger corporation and realise their aspirations.

A simple, result-oriented person who believes that "whatever you do, you should attempt to make a difference", he points out that India's biggest advantage is that 20 per cent of the world's population under 25 years lives in India, "providing us a huge market opportunity."

He says young Indians do have the ability to change the country, "but they also want to experience the best of worldly goods and services that are available." This can happen only if we open up much faster. "We opened up in the past and never regretted, so why are we hesitating now? That's the frustrating part. I know there are political compulsions but I also know there are hundreds of global companies that will say: `Hey I'll come to Chennai and fix up your infrastructure in the next 12 to 18 months'. And there will be people willing to pay for that. But we're not able to take such decisions and that is frustrating."

He is often quizzed on the rising wages in the IT sector and whether this would come in the way of the industry remaining competitive. "I say it will... even if wages go up by 15 per cent every year, because at present, there is so much inefficiency, productivity can only go up." But better infrastructure and facilities are required. "If I have good roads, my commute time will reduce and I'll be more productive. Or, if we invest in bandwidth, more people can contribute from home and will not have to commute to office."

Response may be sent to rasheeda@thehindu.co.in

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