Ravi Kumar S. THE HUNGRY CEO

The CEO of Cognizant talks about his early failures, a scientific approach, how AI will transform technology, and being vulnerable

- Arun Janardhan

Ravi Kumar S. does not believe in work-life balance but in "intertwining the two." The chief executive officer of Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp., one of the world's major IT services companies, arrived in Mumbai the previous day from New York, where he lives. When we meet, he is set to travel to Thane that afternoon, then to Hyderabad for a town hall, and onward to Bengaluru before heading back to the US.

"Work is another part of my life. It's not like I am working so hard that I have little time to have fun with. I mix it well so it sustains for a while," says the 52-year-old, who shows few signs of fatigue despite a cross-Atlantic journey the day before, but admits to some jetlag. Dressed in a dark striped jacket, Ravi is seated on a single sofa with the window to his left at a conference room of the St. Regis hotel in Mumbai, so he can occasionally look into the city's skyline. He places both his cell phones on the table, and only once looks at it—to check the time and ignore a phone call. The only other time he picks it up is to show me one of his favorite apps, Perplexity, an AI-powered search engine.

Work—and sustaining it—is, not surprisingly, top priority for Ravi, 52, who became CEO of the Nasdaq-listed company in early 2023. Cognizant's revenue slipped about 0.4% in 2023 to $19.35 billion but Ravi is by all accounts heading an upward trajectory for the company. Their third-quarter results, reported on end October, showed revenue up by 3% year-on-year, to $5 billion. He said in a press release that in the third quarter, they had signed six deals with total contract value of more than $100 million each, bringing their year-to-date count to 19, which is more than they signed in the whole of 2023. In 2023, about 30% of Cognizant's total contract value came from deals that were over $50 million, while the company also signed 17 deals that exceeded $100 million.