Non-linear growth: The road ahead for Indian IT outsourcing companies: The Cognizant experience: In conversation with R. Chandrasekaran, President and MD, global delivery, Cognizant

India-centric IT services companies (major among them being the SWITCH companies -- Satyam, Wipro, Infosys, TCS, Cognizant and HCL) grew rapidly for more than a decade by providing low cost, high quality business process and IT outsourcing services. With the bigger companies already crossing the 100,000-employee mark, they are now turning their attention to non-linear revenue (i.e. revenue less dependent on the number of employees or greater revenue earned per employee). For this, they need to pursue ‘disruptive’ strategies which are distinctly different from the ‘incremental’ initiatives they adopted in the past to maintain linear revenue. This paper first outlines the disruptive and the incremental initiatives of the SWITCH companies and the road ahead for them. This is followed by an interview with R Chandrasekaran, President and MD, Global Delivery, Cognizant, who discusses Cognizant’s key operating principles – which include customer-centricity, their unique Two-in-a-Box operating model and their emphasis on working together with clients to make their businesses stronger – and how they have contributed to the company’s spectacular growth story.