Francisco D’Souza has become Youngest Director of General Electric

                   Francisco D'Souza, who is the CEO at outsourcing company Cognizant Technology Solutions, has been appointed as independent director on the board of world famous General Electric. It’s quite a proud moment for him, as he eventually will become the youngest director in the board of General Electric, which is a 120 year old well-established and rock solid enterprise.

                      Francisco D'Souza is now 44 years old, and he is the son of a career diplomat. The other independent directors of the board of GE are Rochelle B Lazarus, Chairman Emeritus of Ogilvy & Mather and Alan Lafley, former CEO of Procter & Gamble.

                                                    There are already a few Indian origin executives, who are occupying the important board of director seats at various global corporations. Now Mr. D’Souza has joined that league of honor, by making the latest entry into the GE. It has to be mentioned here that Ratan Tata and Infosys' NR Narayana Murthy were already in the board of directors of global corporations like Fiat and HSBC respectively.

                                                    Another Indian origin executive Naina Lal Kidwai is serving as a director at Nestle. Mr. Som Mittal, who is the President of IT industry grouping Nasscom, quoted,

“It is a matter of pride for all of us and it is well-deserved. Frank has demonstrated great skills at Cognizant. I am sure he will add a lot of value to GE."

                                                    Francisco D’Souza, the Nairobi-born entrepreneur, co-founded New Jersey-based Cognizant in the year of 1994. He eventually became Chief Executive Officer of Cognizant in 2007. He has helped Cognizant a lot to become one of the fastest growing software firms across the world. Under him the total revenue of Cognizant increased from $2 billion in 2007 to $7.4 billion (Rs 40,000 crore) in 2012, which is quite a commendable achievement for sure. It overtook the other tech firm Wipro by sales two years ago, and it is closing in on Infosys, which is currently second-ranked software company.

                                                     As his father had a lucrative post, D’Souza had been able to study in places like Panama, Zaire, New Delhi, New York, Trinidad, Hong Kong, and Pittsburgh. He completed his bachelor's degree in business administration from the University of East Asia in Japan.  After that he had done a MBA from Carnegie-Mellon University in the US. From CMU, he was recruited as a management associate by Dun & Bradstreet. In the year of 1993, he was transferred to India as D&B had decided to set up an IT firm in India, which is later known as Cognizant Technology Solutions (CTS).

                                                    In the last few years Indian IT firms has been awarded some of the largest outsourcing contracts by the General Electric. However GE does not count Cognizant as one of its vendors. Mr. Phaneesh Murthy, who is the Chief Executive Officer of iGate, expressed his view on this by quoting,

"A great move. Roughly 55% of all capital invested by Fortune 500 companies is on technology, and GE has a large globalization agenda," 

                                                     It is easily understandable that Mr. D’Souza will be able to serve GE very well, and he eventually will lead it wisely.

                                                      Do you want to stay updated with all the Latest Indian Current Affairs updates? If yes then please take a second to subscribe to our RSS feed for free email updates. You can send your queries, suggestions to us by using this Contact Us Form.