Rajesh Nambiar loses 'executive' role at Cognizant, to remain India head

Rajesh Nambiar shall remain Cognizant CMD and executive Vice-President of India

Rajesh Nambiar, executive vice-president and president, digital business and technology at Cognizant has ceased to serve in the position, the Nasdaq-listed IT services firm stated in a recent filing.

Following the move, effective July 6, 2022, Nambiar is no longer an executive officer of the company, according to the filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). He would continue to serve as executive vice-president, chairman and managing director of Cognizant India.

His compensation in such a role will be commensurate with compensation within the organisation for officers who are not executive officers.

The company also stated that this move is part of its efforts to simplify its internal operating structure around practice areas and delivery operations. This change is part of the company’s ongoing strategy to shift towards delivering client business outcomes aligned by industry.

Cognizant is merging its digital business & technology (DB&T) and digital business operations (DBO) practice areas with the respective delivery organizations to create four new integrated practices: Software & platform engineering, core technologies & insights, enterprise platform services, and intuitive operations & automation. “This change will not impact the company’s reportable business segments. With these changes, the company expects to serve clients better, enabling the best in class offerings and capabilities, and creating even more opportunity for associates with exposure to additional career growth,” it said.

Though Nambiar continues to head Cognizant's India unit, which is the largest in terms of headcount, the changes will shrink his portfolio. Company officials, however, claimed with these changes, he now reports directly to the CEO, Brian Humphries.

“With DB&T integrated into our service lines, Rajesh Nambiar will return full time to the role we hired him for: EVP, chairman and managing director of Cognizant India, leading our more than 240,000 India associates, which is especially important as we transition to our hybrid work future," said  Humphries in a statement.

He further said: "Rajesh will continue to report directly to me as a member of our executive committee and focus on enhancing Cognizant’s relationships with the government and key policy-making bodies. I appreciate his oversight of DB&T over the past year as we made preparations for our new structure.”

Cognizant has been in the news recently as the company asked senior executives to leave based on performance. Recently, it announced that it had removed Gregory Hyttenrauch, executive V-P and president, Americas. Hyttenrauch was terminated because of behaviour inconsistent with company policy, according to an SEC filing.