{"id":8188,"date":"2026-08-12T10:30:26","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T05:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sketharaman.com\/blog\/?p=8188"},"modified":"2026-08-13T21:40:50","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T16:10:50","slug":"cognizant-is-not-an-indian-company-and-why-that-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sketharaman.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/12\/cognizant-is-not-an-indian-company-and-why-that-matters\/","title":{"rendered":"Cognizant Is Not An Indian Company – And Why That Matters"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vivek Ramaswamy<\/a>, the Republican candidate for Governor of Ohio, posted a tweet<\/strong> <\/a>on 26 December 2024 in which he blasted the American jock culture for creating a shortage of geek talent and blamed muddled American cultural priorities for creating the need to import STEM \/ engineering talent from India, and other countries, into USA.<\/p>\n

All hell broke loose. Although Rammy’s tweet made no mention of H-1B, MAGA dunderheads likely displaced by Indians working in USA on this category of work visa went on a rampage, and posted highly inflammatory tweets accusing Indian IT companies of H-1B fraud, citing lawsuits against Cognizant Technology Solutions<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

I pushed back that Cognizant was an American company, citing content in its website, declarations in its regulatory filings, and reporting by MSM publications like FORTUNE<\/em> magazine (see footnote 1<\/em>).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I doubt if I changed too many minds but, like all outrages on socials, this too fizzled out after a few months.<\/p>\n

\n

It’s one thing when a horde of racist and xenophobic randos on X fka Twitter makes false accusations against the Indian IT industry but another when the world’s second largest MSM business daily (see footnote 2<\/em>) jumps on that bandwagon.<\/p>\n

That’s what happened in a recent Economic Times<\/em> article. Entitled US Cranks Up The Heat On Indian IT As Whistleblowers Trigger H-1B Audit<\/strong><\/a>, this article implied that Cognizant was an Indian company (see footnote 3<\/em>).<\/p>\n

I wrote to the editor of Economic Times<\/em> rebutting the false claim made by the article.
\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n

Dear Editor:<\/p>\n

This has reference to the article entitled US Cranks Up The Heat On Indian IT As Whistleblowers Trigger H-1B Audit<\/a> by your bureau in today’s\u00a0Economic Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Cognizant is headquartered in Teaneck, New Jersey, USA. It is listed in NASDAQ, an American<\/em> stock exchange. The company is featured at 216th rank in FORTUNE 500<\/strong><\/a>, the list of 500 largest American<\/em> corporations. It’s also ranked as the 109th most innovative company in USA<\/em>.<\/p>\n

All of these facts make it abundantly clear that Cognizant is an American company.<\/p>\n

I strongly condemn the article’s suggestion that it’s an Indian company.<\/p>\n

I won’t accept the popular narrative that the bulk of Cognizant’s employees are based in India because, by that logic, Accenture, IBM and many other American companies would also count as Indian, which is clearly not the case.<\/p>\n

Indian IT is going through challenging times due to the onslaught from AI. The last thing we need at this vulnerable moment is for the industry to be insinuated of wrongdoing on the basis of some probe launched by some American government agency on some American company for H-1B visa fraud.<\/p>\n

Thanks and Regards.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

KETHARAMAN SWAMINATHAN
\n10 July 2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

Economic Times<\/em> has never published any of my previous letters that challenged its reporting headon. But it made an exception in this case and printed my letter in its edition dated 13 July 2026.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In case the article<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0referenced above is paywalled, see following exhibit.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

\n

FOOTNOTES:<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. While Cognizant was founded as a subsidiary of American company Dun & Bradstreet in Chennai in 1994, the firm shifted its headquarters to USA four years later when it went public and listed on NASDAQ ($CTSH) way back in 1998.<\/li>\n
  2. During the late 1980s through to late 2000s, Economic Times<\/em> used to claim that it was the \u201cworld\u2019s second largest business daily\u201d (after Wall Street Journal<\/em>). Given print media\u2019s steady rise in India and fall in USA since then, I won\u2019t be surprised if ET has overtaken WSJ by now. But, since I haven\u2019t heard ET make the claim that it’s the largest business daily in the world, I\u2019ll continue to rank it at #2.<\/li>\n
  3. Woz a time when the mainstream media in India would include Cognizant in the list of Top 5 Indian IT services companies. But that stopped a few years ago, apparently at the behest of Cognizant, which did not want its American company positioning to be diluted by being placed along with TCS, Infosys, et al. For a while now, the list of Top 5 Indian IT companies according to the Indian business media has comprised TCS, Infosys, HCL, Wipro, Tech Mahindra \u2013 no more Cognizant.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican candidate for Governor of Ohio, posted a tweet on 26 December 2024 in which he blasted the American jock culture for creating a shortage of geek…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8188,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-b1-integrated-marketing","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sketharaman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sketharaman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sketharaman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sketharaman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sketharaman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8188"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sketharaman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8194,"href":"https:\/\/sketharaman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8188\/revisions\/8194"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sketharaman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sketharaman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sketharaman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sketharaman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}