A millionaire at 35

ICE PEOPLE

Francisco D'Souza

At 35, he's a millionaire many times over. He's also the chief operating officer of a $ 3 billion market capitalisation Nasdaq-listed company.

And when he was 24, he co-founded a company that Forbes magazine once described as one of the hottest and fastest growing companies in the US.

Meet Francisco D'Souza, COO of Cognizant Technologies, once featured by Time magazine among its "People to Watch in International Business: World Beaters."

After acquiring a bachelor's degree in business administration from the University of East Asia and an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University, this Indian diplomat's son was recruited by Dun & Bradstreet, and was part of the D&B team based in India that founded Cognizant in 1994 (D&B floated the company as a joint venture with Satyam, then bought Satyam's stake. It now has no stake in the company).

When in 1994, The Dun & Bradstreet Corporation told D'Souza and the rest of the Cognizant founders, "Go to India and start an IT department," he had little experience of start-ups. His understanding of IT came from teaching himself programming as a teenager so he could earn extra money in college as a contract programmer.

This would not be the first time he helped start a business. During his career with Cognizant, D'Souza has been responsible for setting up the North American and European operations, including the client services organisation, and regional sales and delivery teams.

In addition, D'Souza has played a key role in shaping Cognizant's human resource functions. "What makes Cognizant what it is," he says, "is the culture of hiring absolutely the best people and not compromising on the quality of their talent or skills."

Born in Nairobi, Kenya, his father was in the Indian Foreign Service. D'Souza grew up, he says, in a very nationalist, fiercely Indian milieu.

"My parents took a couple of decisions in their life. One was to take their children (my three sisters and me) wherever they travelled and not to leave us in a boarding school in India. The second was to put us in local schools and not in international schools that diplomats normally prefer. It was imperative for us to pick up the local culture and language there," he points out.

All this, he says, helped directly in ensuring that Cognizant is still highly successful as a multi-cultural organisation. "If there is one thing in my personal life that has made a decisive impact on business in Cognizant it's the multi-cultural experience that I have gained and cherished," he notes.

He says he had to change schools every three years and that in a sense it was chaotic. "But in hindsight, it is what I believe has been my biggest strength""to work across cultures, across countries seamlessly. Having got that experience at a relatively young age I am able to appreciate it better."

What does he list as his biggest professional achievement? In 1997-98, he was just about 28 and bagged the first major non-D&B customer, First Data Corporation.

He was personally involved in that deal from scratch to finish, Cognizant was then a $25 million company, and the size of the deal was very significant relative to the size of Cognizant then. It proved to have been a turning point in Cognizant's history.

And what does he do with all the money he has? "I do not splurge," he replies.

"But the one thing I spend on is travel. I enjoy travelling and continue the tradition I started with my parents. Most of my vacations are spent travelling when I have the energy to do it. Last year I went to Equador. It's an amazing and fascinating place.

Before that I went to Italy. I went to Italy for the first time on work and then in 2001 and 2002 went back as it was such a wonderful place. I was there last year attending a wedding," he says.

His passion for travel has helped in another sense "" he is engaged to a girl from Brazil whom he met during one of his trips there.