Finding Opportunity in Uncertainty: How Ravi Kumar Is Transforming Cognizant for the AI Era

Newsweek

28-04-2025

Growing up in India as the eldest of three brothers, Ravi Kumar didn't start out looking like leadership material. "I didn't do well in school. I was at the bottom of my class," he admits. "Normally, when you're at the bottom, you're good at something like sports or art. I wasn't good at anything." He lived in the shadow of his younger siblings—both brilliant students who went on to become doctors. "I was the elder, and I was known as their brother," Kumar says, the irony evident in his voice. "It wasn't a great thing."
Yet, the academic underachiever would go on to produce a remarkable turnaround, excelling in chemical engineering at Shivaji University, a solid but decidedly not elite state school. "Once I tasted success, the aspirations to punch above my weight grew," Kumar says. He eventually landed a coveted position at India's prestigious Bhabha Atomic Research Center (BARC). There, working alongside graduates of elite institutions, Kumar discovered his potential. "I didn't go to an IIT [Indian Institute of Technology], but I felt like, 'Wait a minute, I'm able to compete with these guys,'" he says.
Not that everyone agreed at the time. In 1992, Kumar won an award for young scientists named after "the Indian Oppenheimer," Dr. Homi Bhabha. "When I told my dad, he couldn't believe it," Kumar recalls. "He almost innocuously said, 'Can I see the certificate?'"
Today, that once-struggling student turned nuclear scientist runs a $36 billion global technology company with nearly 350,000 employees. In his office high in a gleaming tower in Manhattan's Hudson Yards development, Kumar greets visitors with a high-wattage smile. Dressed in an impeccably tailored suit, he gestures toward large windows that frame a panoramic view out towards the Hudson River—and, as he points out with amusement, his own apartment in the next tower over.
Cognizant at the Crossroads
Kumar inherited a company at an inflection point. Founded in 1994 as an in-house technology unit of Dun & Bradstreet, Cognizant had grown into a powerhouse in IT services by providing skilled technical labor in India—today, more than two-thirds of Cognizant's employees are based in India—to Western companies looking to outsource their technology operations. But after years of stellar growth, the company had hit turbulence. In the months before Kumar's arrival, its stock had declined nearly 40 percent off its pandemic peak.
The challenges weren't unique to Cognizant. The rise of AI threatened to upend decades-old business models. The entire IT services industry faced an existential question: What happens to a business built on human outsourcing when machines start writing code?
Kumar's response was characteristically bold. Just months after joining Cognizant (which has led to ongoing litigation with Infosys over trade secrets and anti-competition allegations by both companies), he committed $1 billion to AI initiatives—a massive bet for a company still working through organizational challenges. "Cognizant had a lull for a couple of years," Kumar acknowledges. "It was hard for somebody to say, 'As I'm fixing the ship, I'm going to invest $1 billion into the future.'"
The Outsider's Path
What makes Kumar's rise to CEO remarkable is how dramatically it diverges from those of most Indian executives who lead large global companies. High-profile CEOs of Indian ancestry often follow one of a few well-worn paths: They are either American-born to immigrant parents, American-educated (usually the privilege of quite wealthy families in India), graduates of the hyper-competitive IITs which have acceptance rates that make the Ivy League look like community colleges, or they work their way up the corporate ladder at a large multinational company, usually moving to the United States as younger adults. Kumar did none of these things.
Instead, Kumar forged his own way through the less-traveled route of nuclear science at BARC, a pivotal institution in India's recent history and a symbol of its scientific self-reliance and national ambition.
Working in this environment provided Kumar with an analytical framework that would underpin his entire career. "Science was slow and methodical, giving you a framework to apply yourself," he explains. This scientific grounding would shape his approach to business problems throughout his career, but he also discovered something else about science: "The pace of science was slower than the pace of technology."
That insight led Kumar to make a pivotal decision to shift from science to business. "I felt like if I had to make an impact, I had to be in a high-velocity world. So, I switched to technology, a high-velocity world." This led him to pursue an MBA and eventually a 20-year stint at Indian IT giant Infosys, where he rose to become president before taking the top job at Cognizant in 2023.
"Each one of us discovers ourselves," Kumar reflects. "I discovered myself pretty late." His early frustrations stemmed from an intense drive for excellence that wasn't yet finding its outlet. After exploring various roles, Kumar recognized his true strength lay in organizational leadership, particularly in businesses centered on human capital.
Gut, Data, Gut
Kumar may have left the laboratory behind, but he never abandoned his scientific mindset. It deeply influences his approach to business decisions through a framework he calls "gut, data, gut."
"I'm a believer that decision-making is about blending intuition, experience, and data. There is a formula in my head that I've applied to decision-making: You don't make a decision with less than 40 percent of the information needed. You make the decision when you have at most 70 percent of the information," Kumar explains. "Don't wait for a decision to be made beyond 70 percent of the data, because if you make that decision after 70 percent, you're already late. Intuition helps you ask the right questions, and data helps you validate it."
Srinivas Kamadi, who worked with Kumar at Infosys and now runs his own AI firm, AidenAI, has witnessed this decision-making framework firsthand. "He's always validating his hypothesis," Kamadi notes, describing how Kumar rigorously applies data to test his ideas. Rather than seeking consensus or popularity, "he goes about his job in a very clinical way," filtering through options methodically.
Kumar's $1 billion AI investment at Cognizant stands as perhaps the boldest application of this framework of combining scientific rigor with an intuitive leap—a high-stakes decision made when the company was still struggling to regain its footing and, coming before the ChatGPT-fueled AI boom had fully kicked in, when committing such resources to an emerging technology seemed risky to many observers. His conviction came partly from early signs that AI would transform software development—Cognizant's core business. "Some of the early experiments we did, including with Microsoft, [Amazon Web Services], and Google, gave me this feeling that this is going to come and conquer software development cycles and write code," he says.
The bet appears to be paying off. On a recent Cognizant earnings call, Kumar boasted that 20 percent of its code had been generated by AI.
The Networked CEO
"I spent my first 40 years of my life in India and the next 10 in the US," he says. This later-career transition provided a unique perspective on both business environments. "In those 40 years, I dealt with the world in India, which is a very chaotic country. It's a growing economy but very chaotic." A daily life of "navigating that heterogeneity, complexity, uncomfortable zones and ambiguity," he explains, built strengths that prepared him for leadership challenges.
Kumar points to a simple example: Indian roads. "If you drive a car in India, you can drive in any part of the world," he laughs. With more than 172,000 road fatalities in 2023 alone—approximately one death every three minutes—India's roads are a place where life-or-death decisions happen constantly. "Thriving in ambiguity, as I call it," Kumar says.
The easy part of being a visionary leader, Ravi Kumar says, is having a vision of what's to come. The harder part is "to make everybody believe something is coming that they don't see."
The easy part of being a visionary leader, Ravi Kumar says, is having a vision of what's to come. The harder part is "to make everybody believe something is coming that they don't see."
Marleen Moise
Kumar's leadership philosophy reflects another significant shift: from command-and-control to network-based organizational structures. "As organizations evolved in the digital age—I call it the golden age of technology—organizations went from hierarchical structures to network structures," he explains.
In this networked world, Kumar believes the art of persuasion is more important than one's position on an org chart. Rather than imposing directives from above, he emphasizes building support through influence and communication. "As a CEO, I've always said it's easy to see what is coming," he explains, because people are constantly bringing you information, "so you can see what's coming." The hard part of being a visionary leader is not coming up with a vision but rather figuring out how to inspire others to follow it. "The bigger virtue is to make everybody believe something is coming that they don't see," he explains.
Shrinivas Udatha, who worked with Kumar at Infosys for over 20 years, witnessed this persuasive leadership when Kumar spearheaded Infosys's U.S. expansion around 2018. "He can connect dots," Udatha observes, explaining how Kumar tailored his messaging to different stakeholders—highlighting long-term financial benefits when speaking with the CFO while emphasizing strategic client proximity when addressing the CEO.
At Cognizant, Kumar describes his role as balancing the needs of key constituencies: employees, clients, and investors. Rather than considering these groups in isolation or prioritizing them sequentially, he emphasizes a holistic approach. "Every decision has to be integrated across these three stakeholders," he says.
Kumar strives to create what he calls a "big small company" at Cognizant—an organization with enterprise-scale capabilities that maintains startup-like agility and entrepreneurial spirit. "For the fact that we have 350,000 employees, I'm amazed that everybody seems to know everybody," he says. "It's a very closely knit company."
This networked approach has also influenced Kumar's approach to innovation. Shortly after taking the helm at Cognizant, he launched an initiative called Bluebolt to drive grassroots innovation across the company. "Everybody believes innovation is done in a department," Kumar says, rejecting the conventional siloed approach of "innovation labs" and "chief innovation officers." "I mean, you are insulting innovation by saying it has to be in a department."
Instead, the Bluebolt program encourages all 350,000 Cognizant employees to think entrepreneurially about their work. So far, the initiative has generated over 300,000 ideas. "We have a central team which looks at these ideas, and we fund them with expertise, financial capital infrastructure so that we can prototype them and take it to clients," Kumar explains. "And in the process, you find the big idea as you keep looking for the small idea."
The AI Revolution
Cognizant was born during a period of global business expansion that was creating new technological needs. "As enterprises went global, they used technology to scale efficiently," Kumar explains. What that means, he says, is that instead of companies building their own "technology plumbing," as he calls it, "You wanted to focus on your own core and outsource the non-core." That outsourcing model formed the foundation of Cognizant's business for decades, but Kumar sees AI demanding a fundamentally different approach.
Now, with AI, Kumar sees an even more profound change: "The future of technology is every industry is going to be a tech industry. Software is the alchemy for every business." He describes AI's impact working along three vectors. The first is embracing AI's ability to write code to speed up an organization's technology development cycle. "The second vector is to enable AI and agentification in an enterprise. You integrate it with the workflows in a company." The third vector, which he considers the most fascinating, is using AI to "unlock new service pools. These are new business opportunities."
As an example, Kumar cites a recent client visit with a medical device company. The CIO described how they sell compact home medical equipment, including dialysis machines previously available only in clinical settings. The primary users are typically seniors aged 65 and older who, despite having these devices at home, often struggle to operate them independently. Instead of enjoying the convenience of home care, "they buy these compact devices, and then go to a clinic and they get a nurse to help them."
Kumar recognized an opportunity: "I said, we can build a digital nurse for you as a service around the device. People can use the digital nurse to self-serve themselves."
The transformation Kumar envisions goes beyond simply expanding Cognizant's service offerings—it's about redrawing the boundaries between what companies consider core functions and what they're willing to entrust to partners. Insurance underwriting exemplifies this shift. Surya Gummadi, Cognizant's president of Americas, explains: "Underwriting is considered core for the insurance industry. Historically, they have kept underwriting within their wheelhouse." But AI is fundamentally altering this calculus by disaggregating the process into components where intelligent agents can handle specific functions.
The Human Element
The power of vulnerability, Ravi Kumar believes, is that "If you create a psychological safety net, [people] will punch above their weight."
The power of vulnerability, Ravi Kumar believes, is that "If you create a psychological safety net, [people] will punch above their weight."
Marleen Moise
Despite his focus on technology, Kumar places remarkable emphasis on the human aspects of leadership—particularly vulnerability and psychological safety. "I'm one of those people who will not only be vulnerable but make everybody around me comfortable to be vulnerable," he says.
His passion for Formula 1 is evident throughout his office space, where racing memorabilia dominates the décor—paintings of F1 cars adorn the walls. In the reception area, visitors can try their hand at a full-size simulator of the Aston Martin car his company sponsors.
During a recent gathering with CEOs at a Formula 1 race in Las Vegas, Kumar found himself rethinking conventional wisdom about vulnerability. "When I'm the CEO and say I don't know AI, people won't judge me because I'm in a position of strength," he reflects. The challenge is different for those with less power or status. "If a school graduate tells me they don't know how to put on a tie or write something," he says, "they are putting their jobs at stake." And there lies the value of making employees feel safe: "If you create a psychological safety net, they will punch above their weight," he says, becoming "your force multiplier because people are learning boldly without hesitation."
This human-centered approach to leadership reveals a profound understanding of what will distinguish human contribution in the age of intelligent machines. As AI takes over more routine cognitive tasks, the premium on uniquely human capabilities—creativity, empathy, collaboration, ethical judgment—will only increase.
In Newsweek's AI Impact interview series with leading thinkers in the field, the importance of keeping humans in the loop with new AI tools has been a recurring theme. As Meta's chief AI scientist Yann LeCun told Newsweek, "AI will have a similar transformative effect on society as the printing press had in the 15th century." But crucially, the impact will be through "amplifying human intelligence, not replacing it."
Staying Hungry
For all his success, Kumar maintains the hunger that drove him to overcome his early academic struggles. This sometimes leads him to actively seek out uncomfortable situations, such as when he was invited to speak at a school in India while running a 25,000-person operation. When he got home, his wife, Amita, asked how it went. "Look, I didn't do well. I didn't feel like I hit it out of the park," Kumar recalls telling her. His wife's response: "So be it. Nobody's appraising you there. Why the hell are you worried? Move on." But Kumar couldn't let it go. "The next day, I went to my office. I kept calling schools," he says, inquiring whether they needed a guest speaker. He was determined to master this new challenge. "I wanted to do it again. I mean, I just wanted to beat it."
"I'm very hungry for learning," Kumar says simply. "Who cares whether I did well in school?" This willingness to acknowledge shortcomings while relentlessly working to overcome them forms the cornerstone of Kumar's approach to both personal growth and corporate leadership.
Leading a global technology giant into an uncertain future, Kumar—the once overlooked elder brother turned nuclear scientist turned global CEO—approaches the AI era with the quiet confidence of someone who has made a career of turning uncertainty into opportunity. The unconventional path that once made him an outsider may be precisely what equips him to lead in this new technological era.
With reporting by Katherine Fung, Lauren Giella and Oliver Staley