Cognizant to hire 25,000 people in 2011

Nasdaq-listed information technology (IT) company Cognizant Technology Solutions (CTS) plans to recruit another 25,000 people in 2011.

CTS, which follows the calendar year as the accounting period, recruited 25,000 people in 2010 too, as it expanded its verticals and focused on new geographies.

“While it is tough to make exact estimates at present, we are looking at recruiting numbers comparable to, if not more than last year’s,” said R Chandrasekaran, president and managing director of CTS.

He was speaking to reporters after inaugurating the company’s second campus in Kolkata. After completion, the facility will be able to house 16,000 IT professionals. At present, CTS has 8,000 employees in Kolkata. The new campus is one of the company’s two major campuses. The other one is in Chennai and it can house 15,000 people. CTS has about 100,000 employees across the country.

The Chennai-headquartered company, which spent $180 million on infrastructure development, both in terms of campus development and leasing space for footprint expansion, is also looking at new regions to expand its reach. It also wants to reduce reliance on the North American market, due to growing protectionism and increasing levels of saturation.

“Keeping the focus on the expansion of current competencies such as hospitality, banking financial services and insurance, along with hospitality, the idea will remain to globalise the business further,” he said .

“From 90 per cent earlier, revenues from the North American market have declined to 77 per cent over the past two years. New areas of focus include emerging markets such as Japan, Australia, the Middle-East and the Asean countries.”

India and Europe, which account for 3.4 and 19 per cent, respectively, of the company’s revenues, are the other areas to focus, according to him.