Hyderabad: Foundation stone for Cognizant’s new campus to be laid today

Cognizant, currently the second-largest IT employer in Telangana, will lay the foundation stone for its new 10 lakh square feet campus on Wednesday, August 14.

The new campus, which is expected to create 15,000 jobs, will focus on advanced technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), digital engineering, and cloud solutions.

The company’s decision to begin work on expanding its footprint in Hyderabad comes less than 10 days after an agreement was signed with the State government following a meeting between Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy and IT and Industries Minister Sridhar Babu with Cognizant CEO S. Ravikumar in New Jersey, U.S.

According to a report by The Hindu, Reddy, who is scheduled to return to Hyderabad on Wednesday morning after visits to the U.S. and South Korea, will participate in the foundation stone-laying ceremony, in which Ravikumar will also be present, the CMO said.

Cognizant was established in Chennai in 1994, and since then, the firm has grown globally. It began operations in Hyderabad in 2002 and now has five campuses in the IT corridor. In the past two years, the company has provided jobs to 7,500 people from 34 different educational institutions in the State. IT exports by the company from the State in the last financial year totaled Rs 7,725 crore.

Following the August 5 meeting in which the expansion was announced, the Chief Minister, in a post on X (formerly Twitter), said, “My team and I had a super successful meeting with the Cognizant team, in which the global IT major selected Hyderabad as the site for expansion and building the largest capacity center outside the U.S. in Telangana. The new facility will create over 15,000 jobs.”

The firm has also agreed to consider his suggestion to explore other tier-2 cities in Telangana for additional capacity ramp-up. The foundation for the agreement was laid by him, Sridhar Babu, and officials in Davos, Switzerland, earlier this year, he said.