Cognizant says it is firing 3,500 employees and closing some offices to save cost

By Divyanshi SharmaTech company Cognizant will soon be giving the pink slip to 3,500 employees, a Moneycontrol report says. CEO Ravi Kumar S unveiled the IT major’s plans to let go of thousands of employees in order to reduce costs. Not only this, the company will also be giving up 11 million sq feet in office space to bring the cost down further. The Moneycontrol report also says that Cognizant has said that its revenues will see a decline in 2023. The report also adds that the company’s margins are amongst the lowest in the industry at 14.6 percent.

CEO Ravi Kumar S reveals Cognizant’s plans to lay off employees

The Moneycontrol report states that the laying off of 3,500 employees and cutting down on office spaces are amongst the measures unveiled by CEO Ravi Kumar S as he seeks to revive the company that faces major competition from Accenture, Infosys, and TCS. As of now, it is unclear how many people in India will be impacted by the decision.

Ravi Kumar S, who previously worked as the president of Infosys, assumed his role as Cognizant’s CEO on January 12 this year. The company’s former CEO, Brian Humphries, was “involuntarily terminated” and the news came as a surprise to all.

Meanwhile, Cognizant had recently announced that it had terminated its former CEO ‘without any specific reason’. The announcement was made as part of the IT company’s 2023 proxy statement.

“In preparing for 2023, however, the Board recognised the need for Cognizant to progress faster, increase its commercial momentum and accelerate revenue growth. We believed that doing so required a CEO transition,” Stephen J Rohleder, the Chairman of the Cognizant board had said in a statement, as reported by Moneycontrol.

Cognizant is based in the US but has a major chunk of its operations in India.

In a message to shareholders, Kumar talked about the company’s Indian workforce and said,“I believe India will be the world’s technology talent hub for the next decade. Its population has a demographic profile and digital talent pool currently unmatched by any other country. We plan to continue capitalising on India’s rich IT talent pool as we intensify efforts to recruit not only in the largest cities but also in midsize metropolitan areas. The Cognizant brand is well-known on India’s college campuses.”

Layoffs in tech industry

Cognizant is not the only tech company that has announced layoffs recently. Companies like Wipro, Amazon, Accenture, Infosys, IBM, Google, Meta and Twitter had also announced layoffs in the last couple of months. It won’t be wrong to say that the tech sector is going through a rough time and with thousands of people looking out for jobs after getting fired, the job market is highly competitive.

Popular job-search platform LinkedIn is full of stories of people who are looking out for new roles after their previous roles were affected by the mass layoffs happening in the tech sector.