Cognizant rejigs senior management

IT services major Cognizant has rejigged its top management with the appointment of Rajeev Mehta as CEO (IT services) and R Chandrasekaran as executive vice chairman of Cognizant India.

While Mr Mehta earlier served as the firm's Group chief executive (industries and markets), Mr Chandrasekaran was the company's group chief executive (technology and operations).

On December 4, 2013, Cognizant Technology Solutions Corporation effected certain organisational changes, the company said in a filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) yesterday.

"Effective December 4, 2013, Rajeev Mehta has been appointed chief executive officer, IT Services and will no longer serve as the company's group chief executive - Industries and Markets.

"Ramakrishnan Chandrasekaran has been appointed executive vice chairman, Cognizant India and will no longer serve as the company's group chief executive - technology and operations," Cognizant said in the filing.

Meanwhile, Cognizant in a statement said: "To fill the very large shoes of Chandra in the delivery organisation, Sumithra Gomatam, Debashis Chatterjee, and Allen Shaheen will assume new responsibilities reporting to Rajeev Mehta."

Sumithra Gomatam will be executive vice president (EVP) and will take the newly created role of president, industry solutions. Delivery teams in products & resources, insurance, information media & entertainment and communications & technology will report to him, the US-based firm added.

Debashis Chatterjee has also been promoted to EVP and will take the newly created role of President, Technology Solutions with responsibility for horizontal practices within IT Services.

Allen Shaheen has been promoted to EVP and will continue to be responsible for Cognizant's horizontal practices in Europe and for oversight of the integration of six companies of the C1 Group. In addition, Mr Allen will assume leadership of our EAS and QE&A teams outside of India, it added.

Cognizant also appointed Kris Venkat as president (healthcare & life sciences), Prasad Chintamaneni as president (banking and financial services) and D K Sinha, who has been promoted to EVP, as president (client services).

The firm also promoted Mahesh Venkateswaran, Kalyan Mohan, Srinivasan Veeraraghavachary, Santosh Thomas, Mark Livingston, Gajen Kandiah and Steven Schwartz as EVP.

On the organisational changes and promotions, Cognizant said: "As we look to 2014 and beyond, our goal is to of be 'Tier One Period', globally. In order to achieve that goal, we announced a series of organisational changes and associated promotions."

These changes and promotions are intended to sharpen the company's focus on achieving its objectives across five key areas of the ToP program -- mindshare, market share, delivery excellence, business performance management and organization and people, it added.