Growth is back in IT industry, says Cognizant vice chairman

Company confident of 2013 guidance

Nasdaq-listed IT services company Cognizant on Thursday said that growth is back in the sector, and deriving confidence from the same the company expects it would meet its annual revenue guidance for the full year.

“For the first two quarters of the year, things appeared to have turned around for the industry. We are of course doing well ... in fact we are doing better than what we had expected in the beginning of the year,” Lakshmi Narayanan, vice chairman of Cognizant said on the sidelines of Infocom 2013.

“So we do believe that growth is back and remaining confident for the rest of the year,” he added.

In the quarter ended September 30, 2013, Cognizant reported 21.9% growth in its revenues at $2.31 billion on year-on-year basis, ahead of its guidance of $2.25 billion. Backed by the strong performance, the company had also raised its annual revenue forecast to at least $8.84 billion, a growth of 20.3% over the previous year as compared to 19% it had projected in the previous quarter.

Industry body Nasscom has projected a growth of 12-14% for FY14.

Narayanan also said that the company would look to step of hiring in the US. “Hiring plans are on track as we continue to hire. We are also stepping up hiring in the US,” he added.

Like most of its Indian peers, Cognizant uses India extensively for offshore delivery. The company employs over 166,400 globally of which around 75% are based out of its delivery centres spread across 10 locations in India.