From Our Correspondent
Visakhapatnam: In a speech that blended personal nostalgia with corporate ambition, Cognizant Global CEO Ravi Kumar Sangisetty on Friday announced a major scaling-up of the company’s plans for Visakhapatnam—crediting the Andhra Pradesh government’s “bold vision and relentless execution” for accelerating the project far beyond its original scope.
Sangisetty, who hails from the Visakha region, spoke emotionally about returning to the geography where he grew up. Calling the occasion “momentous”, he described the launch as a homecoming, noting that his mother, grandmother, brother and extended family all live in the region.
A Giant Anchors Itself in Vizag
Cognizant, a $21-billion global technology company with 350,000 employees, is India’s second-largest IT services employer with 2.5 lakh staff—many of them in Hyderabad. When Sangisetty took over in 2023, he pushed a strategy of expanding into emerging cities, arguing that companies must “take work to where people are.”
After entering Bhubaneswar, Indore and GIFT City, Cognizant set its sights on Visakhapatnam following a meeting with Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu and Minister Nara Lokesh at Davos in January 2025.
What was initially planned as a two-year rollout was first trimmed to one year. Now, in a sign of the administration’s pace, the company is executing the project before the next Davos gathering.
Campus Scaled Up from 10,000 to 25,000 Jobs
Demand from employees has already exceeded expectations. Of the 500 employees who have transferred to Vizag, an internal survey generated 4,500 requests for relocation. Cognizant inaugurated a temporary 1,000-seater facility at Mahati Tech Park on Friday morning to accommodate the surge.
The original plan for a 10,000-employee campus was upgraded to 20,000, and then to 25,000, after discussions with state leaders.
The upcoming campus:
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spans 22 acres,
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will be developed in three phases, and
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represents a ₹1,600-crore investment by the company.
Sangisetty said the economic multiplier is enormous: with each direct job creating four to five downstream jobs, the project is expected to generate one lakh additional jobs for Andhra Pradesh.
‘No State Matches AP’s Vision and Execution’
In a rare tribute from a global industry leader, Sangisetty praised the Andhra Pradesh administration for its operational intensity.
He said Minister Lokesh and IT secretary Katamaneni Bhaskar worked past 1:00 a.m. to fast-track approvals, calling the state’s blend of speed and vision “unparalleled in India.”
He credited Naidu as the architect of Hyderabad’s tech boom 30 years ago and said Andhra Pradesh is now showing the same ambition with Visakhapatnam.
Vizag as India’s Future GCC Capital
Inspired by the state’s push, Cognizant now wants to help Visakhapatnam become the Global Capability Center (GCC) capital of India.
The company will partner with the government to attract GCCs to the city, leveraging its expertise in building such centers for global clients. Sangisetty said he hopes to bring the first pilot set of GCCs to Vizag soon.
‘Raise the Bar’ — The Mission for Vizag Teams
Sangisetty ended with a message to the first batch of 500 employees in Vizag: execute flawlessly, bring clients to the city, and showcase their success so that thousands more employees across the company aspire to relocate.
“People from across India should one day aspire to come to Visakhapatnam,” he said, underscoring the company’s belief that Vizag is poised to become a national hub for technology and global services.
Cognizant’s expansion is both a personal homecoming for its CEO and a strategic endorsement of the current administration’s drive to reposition Visakhapatnam on the global tech map.
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