Davos 2024: When we have gaps, we'll look outside, Cognizant CEO Ravi Kumar says on poaching from peers

Kumar said Cognizant wants to be the employer of choice and magnet for good talent, irrespective of the level

Cognizant will look outside whenever it has gaps to fill internally, its Chief Executive Officer Ravi Kumar S said when asked about the IT services company poaching from its rivals for leadership roles.

“My first option for any leadership role in the company, is to look within, and we'd always have gaps,” Kumar said while speaking to Moneycontrol at the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 18.

“We want to be an employer of choice, we want to be a magnet, for good talent, irrespective of the level,” said Kumar. He further said the company wants to look outside to build the “leadership team of the future”.

Watch the full interview here.

The comments assume significance at a time when Wipro has filed lawsuits against its former chief financial officer Jatin Dalal, accusing him of violating the non-compete clause in his employment contract by joining rival Cognizant within 12 months from his last date of work.

In September, Cognizant announced the appointment of Dalal as Cognizant's CFO.

Speaking about generative artificial intelligence (AI), Kumar said the technology "is underhyped and not overhyped. Earlier, most disruptions have benefited the more productive such as the internet, he said. But AI is one of the few disruptions which has and will benefit the less productive.

He said hallucinations are no longer a bug but a feature. He said it can predict what has not happened before and that's why it is needed, provided that it is accurate.

In a large language model, AI hallucination are when it creates outputs that are inaccurate and false.

He said skilling and suboptimal cost of energy are some of the other bottlenecks for AI. Kumar said inaccurate models are a reason why prototypes have not translated into big production and at scale.

The veteran business leader said that Cognizant wants to take work to where people are, rather than bringing people to where work is. “Our hybrid work thesis is flexibility is not at odds with productivity,” he said.

He said the company is very excited about penetrating the smaller cities in India. He said the company gets exceptionally good talent there.

He also said everybody is navigating a phase of uncertainty and change at the same time. “In the last 40-50 years, only very few times, people have navigated periods of change and uncertainty together,” he said.

He said clients are looking to take the cost out and underwrite the savings for changes such as embracing AI into enterprise landscapes.