Jatin Dalal is expected to take over as the CFO at Cognizant

 

 

According to an executive, Jatin Dalal, who left his position as chief financial officer (CFO) of Wipro on September 21st, is anticipated to become the CFO of Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. The executive wished to remain unnamed.

Dalal, 48, is a long-time employee of Wipro. He started working for the business in 2002, and in 2015, he became the CFO. His departure date is November 30 , following which Aparna Iyer was chosen by Wipro to assume his position.

If Dalal does, in fact, join Cognizant, it would mark S Ravi Kumar’s first significant hire from a domestic technology services company.

Kumar was hired from the competitor firm Infosys Ltd in January of this year to steady the ship after Cognizant failed to stay up with rivals over the previous few years. The announcement that Jan Siegmund, Cognizant’s current head of finance, would depart at the beginning of the following year was made on August 2.

“We do not comment on rumour or speculation in the market,” said a spokesperson for Cognizant when Mint sought a clarification on the hire. Calls and text messages to Dalal went unanswered”.

The cause of Dalal’s departure has not been disclosed by Wipro. CEO Delaporte, however, claimed to Mint that the former CFO wanted to “progress” and “do something different” (see interview). Nevertheless, Mint discovered that Dalal’s resignation had been anticipated for at least eight months since he had grown dissatisfied with the CEO’s management style.

As he will be moving to a bigger company, Dalal would move forward if he joined Cognizant. By the end of 2022–2023, Wipro had $11.16 billion in revenue, with a market value of $26 billion as of 22 September. With a market value of $35.2 billion on the same day, Cognizant reported $19.4 billion in revenue for the year 2022. On profitability, Wipro does better. Cognizant has an 11.8% operating margin, compared to Wipro’s 16%.

Since their influence extends beyond simply managing spreadsheets to include managing operations and interacting with investors and analysts, CFOs play a significant role in determining the scope and direction of megadeals or contracts worth more than $1 billion.