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