Cognizant is an American multinational information technology services and consulting company. It is headquartered in Teaneck, New Jersey, United States. It was founded as an in-house technology unit of Dun & Bradstreet in 1994, and started serving external clients in 1996. Cognizant had a period of fast growth during the 2000s and became a Fortune 500 company in 2011; as of 2021, it is ranked as 185. Brian Humphries is the CEO of Cognizant. On 1 April 2019, Francisco D'Souza was replaced by Brian Humphries as the CEO. In 1996, Dun & Bradstreet spun off several of its subsidiaries including Erisco, IMS International, Nielsen Media Research, Pilot Software, Strategic Technologies and DBSS, to form a new company called Cognizant Corporation, headquartered in Chennai, India. Three months later, in 1997, DBSS renamed itself to Cognizant Technology Solutions. In July 1997, Dun & Bradstreet bought Satyam's 24% stake in DBSS for $3.4 million. Headquarters were moved to the United States, and in March 1998, Kumar Mahadeva was named CEO. In 1998, the parent company, Cognizant Corporation, split into two companies: IMS Health and Nielsen Media Research. After this restructuring, Cognizant Technology Solutions became a public subsidiary of IMS Health. In June 1998, IMS Health partially spun off the company, conducting an initial public offering of the Cognizant stock. The company raised $34 million, less than what the IMS Health underwriters had hoped. They earmarked the money for debt payments and upgrading company offices. The company has 318,400 employees globally, of which over 150,000 are in India across 10 locations with a plurality in Chennai. On 20 Jan, 1994 Cognizant registered its branch in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India with the legal name Cognizant Technology Solutions India Private Limited. Cognizant strategic partners are AWS, Adobe, Cisco, Google Cloud ,Hitachi. Cognizant has won an AI Breakthrough Award in 2021. Cognizant's philanthropic and corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives are conducted through the Cognizant employees for the financial and administrative support of the Cognizant Foundation. Registered in March 2005 as a "Charitable Company" under the Indian Companies Act, the Cognizant Foundation aims to help "unprivileged members of society gain access to quality education and healthcare by providing financial and technical support; designing and implementing educational and healthcare improvement programs; and partnering with Non-Government Organizations (NGOs), educational institutions, healthcare institutions, government agencies and corporations".
References
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognizant