Rajesh Nambiar Named President of Digital Business & Technology at Cognizant
- The former chairman and managing director of the IT major’s India unit will continue his role of chairman.
Cognizant has named Rajesh Nambiar president of Digital Business & Technology (DB&T), effective June 4. Last November, he was appointed chairman and managing director of the IT major’s India unit. Nambiar replaces digital business & technology president Malcolm Frank, who is retiring from the company in September. He will continue as chairman of the India operations, the company said in a regulatory filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
As per a company press release, in his new role, Nambiar enhances relationships with government agencies, chambers of commerce, universities, the media and key policy-making bodies.
“I am thrilled and humbled to assume the leadership of Digital Business & Technology (DB&T). I am passionate about innovation and the power of advanced technologies to help clients reimagine their processes, build more compelling experiences, and stay relevant to the people they serve,” Nambiar said in a company’s internal note, as reported by the Indian media. ”Living and working in India, which I will continue to do, has helped me deeply understand our company’s strong operating model and how we deliver value to clients.”
Cognizant CEO Brian Humphries said in an internal note that the Indian-based Nambiar “will bring the added benefit of driving better DB&T alignment with delivery.” He said Nambiar “brings a deep knowledge of applications, data, AI, analytics, infrastructure, cloud, and consulting to his new role.”
Prior to joining Cognizant in November 2020, Nambiar served as chairman and president of Ciena India, a leading network solutions partner. He joined Ciena from IBM, where he led an $8 billion Application Services practice. He also served as IBM Global Delivery Leader and led a team of 90,000 through the company’s next generation of globally integrated delivery capability. Before IBM, he spent over 18 years at Tata Consultancy Services as a Regional Head in the East Coast.
Nambiar serves on the Executive Council of NASSCOM, the premier trade association of Indian IT and BPO companies. He chairs the Cognizant Foundations in the U.S. and India. He is a member of the global board of U.S.-India Business Council (USIBC).
He holds a master’s degree in Statistics from the Indian Statistical Institute in Kolkata and is a graduate of Harvard Business School’s Advanced Management Program.
Nambiar is the latest to join the elite CEO club along with long serving executives who are heading global technology companies, like Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Google CEO Sundar Pichar and Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen, as well as newly appointed company heads like Arvind Krishna, CEO of IBM and Rangarajan (Raghu) Raghuram of cloud computing and virtualization technology company VMware.
Raghuram’s appointment was announced last month. He previously serves as executive vice president and COO, Products and Cloud Services. The company also named Sumit Dhawan as president, leading all go-to-market functions including worldwide sales, worldwide partner and commercial organization, Customer Experience and Success (CXS), marketing, and communications.