Cognizant on Wednesday launched a 600-workforce techfin centre in Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT City) which will serve as a strategic hub for delivering advanced technology solutions for company’s global clients in the Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance (BFSI) sector.
In order to populate this centre at GIFT City, the company will allow the movement of employees from other centres and will also engage in off-campus and on-campus drives with educational institutions in Gujarat.
“We are starting our GIFT City operations today. We are starting with 600 employees and in the next three years we plan to increase the workforce to 2,000. We will essentially serve our global BFSI customers out of the centre,” Jatin Dalal, Chief Financial Officer of Cognizant, said during his visit to GIFT City, Wednesday.
Initially we are starting with services like digital engineering, cyber security, data analytics. Over a period of time, we will add to service offerings. Some of the services that can come in future are enterprise application support for SAP. Oracle and similar platforms. We can also do engineering work for our manufacturing customers,” he said. The facility was inaugurated at a formal event by Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel at Gandhinagar.
Cognizant has leased out 60,000 square feet in one of the multi-storied towers in GIFT SEZ where similar techfin centres promised by Wipro and Infosys are also expected to come up. “Globally 30 per cent of the company’s revenues comes from the BFSI sector,” Dalal said, adding that the centre in GIFT city was part of the larger strategy of the company to expand into smaller cities like Bhubaneswar and Indore.
The company also pointed out that the attrition levels are much lower in cities like Ahmedabad, Indore, Coimbatore or Kochi when compared to “established hubs” like Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad. “When the attrition levels are high, the stability is something that you have to be constantly looking out for. What we like about the new expansion is the lower attrition that the centres have,” Dalal added.
Asked if the company faced any issues in talent acquisition for their centre at GIFT City, the company official said, “I am not worried. We have enough people who will get transferred from other parts of the country from Cognizant and come here (in GIFT City). For instance, our head of HR (Human Resource) is moving from Kolkata to Ahmedabad. We will have enough people who come here and then we will build it up by hiring people in this ecosystem.”
To support the centre’s growth, Cognizant has also initiated a recruitment strategy that includes on-campus and off-campus drives, walk-in events, and fresher hiring through strategic partnerships with educational institutions in Gujarat.
Championing employee well-being, the centre features a comprehensive suite of amenities, including wellness zones, a fully equipped gym, a yoga space, and a medical centre the company stated in an official release. Special attention has been given to supporting nursing women, with dedicated mother’s rooms and gender-separated accommodations that reflect Cognizant’s commitment to inclusivity and care, the release added.
With over 70 per cent of Cognizant’s 336,300 global associates based in India, the country remains central to the company’s delivery strategy. The GIFT City centre builds on Cognizant’s presence across Bengaluru, Bhubaneswar, Chennai, Coimbatore, Delhi-NCR, Hyderabad, Indore, Kochi, Kolkata, Mangaluru, Mumbai, and Pune.