In an exclusive interview to ET, his first since assuming charge in December 2023, he said the company’s last quarter performance, when it closed five large deals greater than $100 million each, indicates that there is larger business, especially high-value contracts, to be won.

“We are able to gain share in the market and in customer accounts that we are playing in, it’s too early probably to call it tide turning because the (US economic) data set is mixed, but overall, if you see performance, the numbers are certainly coming better. This was the second quarter in a row that we beat the upper end of our guidance,” Dalal said.

He joined Cognizant from Wipro, where he served for 21 years.

Speaking about the recent controversy on low salary at the entry levels, Dalal said that it was a “misunderstanding” and that the company pays engineers salaries in the range of “Rs 4 lakh going up to Rs 12 lakh” for different types of work and colleges. “This Rs 2.5 lakh salary, I want to put it on record, is not reflective of an engineer’s salary. That is for a three-year undergraduate course at an entry level…. So, these are two very different parallel streams of hiring” he said.

He said the job posting was not factually corroborated as quickly as it should have been. “And I think that’s a challenge of social media,” he said.

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On recent salary hikes, Dalal said, “Cognizant is awarding pay hikes to 290,000 associates globally. To date, Cognizant is one of the few IT services companies in India that has delivered pay hikes to employees in 2024. Earlier this year, Cognizant paid bonuses in March on time. Cognizant has promoted over 125,000 associates from 2022 to 2024 July-end, which equates to 40% of the Indian workforce in this time frame.”Refuting claims about stagnant freshers’ salary for more than a decade, he said, “I think factually we can corroborate that the fresher salaries have gone up over the years, but, in some form, they’ve gone up at a slower pace.”

Dalal said one should look at the breadth of opportunities along with growth the IT industry gives to youngsters. “You could be in five years in London, and another five years you could be in Seattle or Australia or wherever of your choice,” he said. “If you see, top leaders in this industry started as engineers, and I can give you multiple names in our company who started as engineers, who have become very big leaders in the company. So, that’s the overall package.”

Cognizant Technology Services, which is bigger than Infosys in terms of annual revenue, hit a rough patch a few years ago under its former CEO Brian Humphries. It hired Ravi Kumar S from Infosys as its CEO in 2023 to turn around the company. Dalal is one of the most high-profile leaders to join Kumar’s top leadership team at Cognizant.

Talking about the progress of the ongoing turnaround at the company, Dalal said that from a sequential growth perspective, Cognizant moved from a negative growth two quarters ago to flattish growth in the first quarter of this fiscal and then seeing a strong positive sequential growth of 2.1% in the June quarter.

Cognizant follows a January-December financial calendar. The US-based IT firm had given an adjusted operating margin guidance of 15.3-15.5% for 2024, representing year-on-year expansion of 20-40 basis points.

A basis point is a hundredth of a percentage point.

Elaborating on margins, Dalal said, “We have given guidance for this year, which says we are going to be 20 to 40 basis points better than last year. So, we are already on an improvement trajectory.”

Speaking about Cognizant’s aspiration to become the largest employer in some of the tier-2 cities in India, Dalal said the company’s incremental growth is coming from tier-2 cities. “So, we would look at a different footprint five years from now than what it would be from, you know, metros, and it doesn’t mean metros will reduce. I think metros will remain where it is (an important source of talent), overall talent stream, and as I always say, one stream cannot make a river, so you need multiple streams to make a river,” he said.

The company recently announced new facilities in Bhubaneswar, Indore and Hyderabad.

In an exclusive interview to ET, his first since assuming charge in December 2023, he said the company’s last quarter performance, when it closed five large deals greater than $100 million each, indicates that there is larger business, especially high-value contracts, to be won.

“We are able to gain share in the market and in customer accounts that we are playing in, it’s too early probably to call it tide turning because the (US economic) data set is mixed, but overall, if you see performance, the numbers are certainly coming better. This was the second quarter in a row that we beat the upper end of our guidance,” Dalal said.

He joined Cognizant from Wipro, where he served for 21 years.

Speaking about the recent controversy on low salary at the entry levels, Dalal said that it was a “misunderstanding” and that the company pays engineers salaries in the range of “Rs 4 lakh going up to Rs 12 lakh” for different types of work and colleges. “This Rs 2.5 lakh salary, I want to put it on record, is not reflective of an engineer’s salary. That is for a three-year undergraduate course at an entry level…. So, these are two very different parallel streams of hiring” he said.

He said the job posting was not factually corroborated as quickly as it should have been. “And I think that’s a challenge of social media,” he said.

Discover the stories of your interest

On recent salary hikes, Dalal said, “Cognizant is awarding pay hikes to 290,000 associates globally. To date, Cognizant is one of the few IT services companies in India that has delivered pay hikes to employees in 2024. Earlier this year, Cognizant paid bonuses in March on time. Cognizant has promoted over 125,000 associates from 2022 to 2024 July-end, which equates to 40% of the Indian workforce in this time frame.”Refuting claims about stagnant freshers’ salary for more than a decade, he said, “I think factually we can corroborate that the fresher salaries have gone up over the years, but, in some form, they’ve gone up at a slower pace.”

Dalal said one should look at the breadth of opportunities along with growth the IT industry gives to youngsters. “You could be in five years in London, and another five years you could be in Seattle or Australia or wherever of your choice,” he said. “If you see, top leaders in this industry started as engineers, and I can give you multiple names in our company who started as engineers, who have become very big leaders in the company. So, that’s the overall package.”

Cognizant Technology Services, which is bigger than Infosys in terms of annual revenue, hit a rough patch a few years ago under its former CEO Brian Humphries. It hired Ravi Kumar S from Infosys as its CEO in 2023 to turn around the company. Dalal is one of the most high-profile leaders to join Kumar’s top leadership team at Cognizant.

Talking about the progress of the ongoing turnaround at the company, Dalal said that from a sequential growth perspective, Cognizant moved from a negative growth two quarters ago to flattish growth in the first quarter of this fiscal and then seeing a strong positive sequential growth of 2.1% in the June quarter.

Cognizant follows a January-December financial calendar. The US-based IT firm had given an adjusted operating margin guidance of 15.3-15.5% for 2024, representing year-on-year expansion of 20-40 basis points.

A basis point is a hundredth of a percentage point.

Elaborating on margins, Dalal said, “We have given guidance for this year, which says we are going to be 20 to 40 basis points better than last year. So, we are already on an improvement trajectory.”

Speaking about Cognizant’s aspiration to become the largest employer in some of the tier-2 cities in India, Dalal said the company’s incremental growth is coming from tier-2 cities. “So, we would look at a different footprint five years from now than what it would be from, you know, metros, and it doesn’t mean metros will reduce. I think metros will remain where it is (an important source of talent), overall talent stream, and as I always say, one stream cannot make a river, so you need multiple streams to make a river,” he said.

The company recently announced new facilities in Bhubaneswar, Indore and Hyderabad.