Archive for April, 2009

Today we had CEO of Cognizant Technology Solutions (my current employer) visit us in company campus. The 6k+ employees were all bubbled up to see the one of the youngest CEOs of a company of this scale. Having heard about him from management, followed his internal blog, I was not having much of an image about this guy. Most of the business dailies of today were shouting about Cognizant being a contender for Satyam Computer Services Ltd, especially with Wilbur Ross making statement about a joint bid with Cognizant for Satyam. With only three bidders left in fray (L&T Infotech and Tech Mahindra being other two), the campus is surely abuzz around the coffee machines. And not to forget that Satyam was the one which mentored Cognizant, a joint venture between Dun & Bradstreet (76%) and Satyam (24%), when it was formed. That surely had put more focus on the man with the red button – Francisco D’Souza.

Francisco D'Souza

Now what would be the image of a CEO we would have? A wise old man, silver or white hair elegantly showing the years of experience and an air of formal composure which stamps the authority. Francisco was totally different. Still looking like a homely man in mid thirties as in this picture on right (his actual age is 40), he brought that shine in the eyes of all his associates (and am not dramatizing!). Damn it man! Such a young CEO? I mean we have such CEOs for self styled start ups, but a global giant of almost 3billion USD… this young!

As he answered few questions about his own personal life, the image of a high handed CEO came crashing down. He was such a plain person with simple straight answers, even his accent wasn’t ‘phorein‘ (slang for foreign – as in western). A son of an Indian Foreign Services (IFS) employee, he got a great global exposure as his father kept shifting as per his job cycles. He talked about how when his family moved to Hong Kong, he could find only one English medium university and that too taught only night classes, so he started working in mornings. That is when he taught himself programming to make some money on the side as a contract coder, something which was going to change his life forever. And he says that life’s best moments came to him by chance.

That was teens. At 24, he was already a part of Cognizant Technology Solutions, an American it services company that was created to leverage the India advantage. At 33 he got elected as Chief Operating Officer of the same company and four years later, he was promoted as CEO of it. What stuck me was that he said that when CEO position was offered to him he first thought of his family. He understood what would it mean to take up the CEO role, and for him the family came first (he has a boy and a girl). Only after he was convinced he could juggle both, did he say yes to then CEO – Lakshmi Narayanan. And he lives by that even today, saying , “Children do not need too much time from you, just quality time.”  And he makes sure he spends quality time with them before they go to bed, when he is at home.

What hit me and most of us the most was that when asked what would you advise to your associates, his reply was prompt and precise – “Take risks”. The questioner had to wait for few seconds and ask back, “That is all?”. “Yes!”, Francisco replied with an assurance and smile, the whole auditorium was filled with sounds of claps.

Addendum
This is my third employer, first and only one post MBA and I already have seen three acquisition headlines about my employer! When I was at Adobe Systems, ‘we’ took over Macromedia. Being an ardent user of products of both , I was just gaping at the headliner. Coming to Cognizant in July 2007, it announced the acquisition of Market Rx, a pharma analytics firm, some time later. There was some more acquisition I guess by Cognizant between that and now. And now Cognizant is already in news as one of the three bidders for Satyam Computer Services!

I sure am a good catalyst for inorganic growth!!