New Jersey-headquartered Cognizant Technology Solutions is confident of meeting its growth target of 20% this year despite macroeconomic concerns. R Chandrasekaran, group chief executive (technology and operations), Cognizant, tells FE?s Debojyoti Ghosh that the company is not in race with any one, but is definitely aiming the top slot in customer mind share. Edited excerpts:

Cognizant is aiming at an annual revenue of $7.34 billion, up 20% year-on-year. What is fuelling the growth, given the current environment?

There are several factors. The macroeconomic situation continues to be weak, but at the same time it creates opportunity if you have the right mix of offerings. It is not just about saving cost, companies are at innovation and business transformation, in the current environment. There are a lot of structural, technological and demographic changes happening across industries. We have invested a lot on transformational services and managing large-scale programme.

Our acquisition of PIPC Group, a London-based management consulting firm, few years ago has helped in upgrading our programme management capability. All our investments has been very timely. Transformation services involves integrating various offerings like IT and BPO. Our recently-announced, $330-million relationship expansion with ING US is a large transformational deal and a truly industry-aligned opportunity. Even our recent Philips deal is about IT delivering business outcome. So, even in a difficult scenario you can grow the business if you have the right model, people and services.

With a slowdown in the discretionary spending, how is Cognizant banking on the consulting space, one of its strength areas?

Consulting is very important for us. The space continues to grow well. Our strong business performance and pipeline in this area is an indication of the growing demand for consulting work related to clients? dual mandates of cost and innovation. Today, customers are looking for transformation. We see good broad-based opportunity in the current market. Currently, we have 3,000 people in the consulting business, which is growing rapidly. The business operates across 10 verticals, including financial services, consumer goods and healthcare, and cross-industry capabilities such as analytics, programme management and customer solutions.

Traditionally Cognizant has maintained lower margins in the 19-20% range. So far, how it has paid off?

It is the master stroke in our strategy. A clear differentiator for us. When we made the company public in 1998, we took a decision to keep our margins lower but stable, and take those dollars and reinvest them for long-term growth. Despite the market condition, we stay invested in the business. We have always maintained 19-20% operating margins, anything above that we will invest in the business. Most of the other players have margins of over 25%.

The reinvestment strategy has worked consistently and delivered results. Throughout one of the most difficult phases in the history of global economy, we have grown substantially faster than competition. Our reinvestment approach affords us the ability to invest in superior client facing teams, deeper industry expertise, and, importantly, the right portfolio of services to meet clients? rapidly evolving needs.

In June quarter revenues you have edged past Infosys. What’s next?

This is not something that we chase internally. We are not concerned about the pecking order. We want to be number one in the minds of our customers. Our ambition is to be the number one choice with customers among the tier-I pack. We are more concerned about our growth ahead of the industry. Creating new capabilities, offerings and gaining market share is our major focus.

Cognizant had a net addition of 4,700 people during the quarter. What’s your headcount plan in the US?

For the US, we have a strong hiring plan. We continue to expand our US college recruitment. This year, we visited 17 campuses and added close to 200 students. We continue to hire where we can find people locally. The challenge is it?s still very difficult to find US IT workers. As part of the staff transfer with the recently announced ING US deal, we hired over 1,000 employees from ING’s US operation. We are starting two centres in the US, and a centre of excellence to provide similar services to other Cognizant financial services clients.

sThis will be an important component of Cognizant?s onshore delivery backbone, which already includes delivery centres in Arizona, Florida, New Jersey and Arkansas. We ended the quarter with over 1,45,000 employees globally.