Cognizant CEO Ravi Kumar says firm back in top four IT services firms

Ravi Kumar said Cognizant has rejoined the top four IT services firms globally ahead of his 2027 target, supported by steady growth, large deals, and margin expansion

Cognizant Chief Executive Officer Ravi Kumar has said the company has broken into the winners’ circle, or among the top four information-technology (IT) services companies globally earlier than 2027, the target to do so.

 

Steady revenue growth, higher earnings per share (EPS), and margin expansion have helped in this.

 

“We are in the winners’ circle now. Just looking at relative growth, I have the humility to say that I have to do this for multiple quarters. We are right on top of the pack. Our EPS growth this year is projected at 7-10 per cent and we are back to EPS growth being higher than revenue growth. We are back to relative growth,” he said at a Goldman Sachs technology conference on Wednesday.

 

Kumar, an Infosys veteran who joined Cognizant in 2023, had earlier said the company was positioned 10th in 2022 with revenue growth trailing peers by an average of 8 per cent. That, he said, narrowed to 3 per cent during his first year and was on a par with that of the industry in 2024.

 

Starting 2025, the momentum has gathered pace, which, he said, had propelled the company once again into the top-tier club.

 

The Nasdaq-listed company is pivoting on three moves to gain its mojo back: Skilling employees, scaling up innovation by focusing on platform-led growth in the era of artificial intelligence (AI), and gaining a lead over competitors in generative AI. Within AI, the company is banking on higher productivity as more codes are written by machines, industrialising AI and banking on AI agents to improve efficiencies of its clients. 

 

Kumar added in the vendor-consolidation area, which involves traditional cost and efficiency deals, Cognizant was sharing productivity gains with clients and also retaining some of those benefits.

 

Winning large deals, which in this uncertain macroeconomic environment are mostly cost-optimisation ones, is one of the key priorities of Kumar. Such large deals, which all IT companies are chasing, will help Cognizant push up revenue, gain market share, and aim at a gradual margin expansion.

 

“That is why I have had an expansion of margin as growth has come back. And we want to keep that expansive margin profile for the next couple of years.”

 

He, however, said the agentic AI story was yet to comprehensively take off.

 

“If that happens, we have to start to think about not just relative growth but breakaway growth. If we keep investing in our agentic story and unlock the new labour pools, we are poised for breakaway growth.”