The ex CEO of Cognizant, Francisco D’Souza along with others is planning to come up with a $1 billion US-based private equity fund called Recognize. He has already raised a couple of hundred million dollars. The rest of the fund raising is still going on.
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As per news source, he has big names from the US private equity and technology spaces in his teams. The fund -Â Recognize will invest in niche technology assets and has technologists with deep domain expertise both in services and software. The news source also revealed that it is looking at M&As as part of its investment strategy.
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As CEO of Cognizant, Francisco D’Souza was a successful leader and helped the company to grow manifolds. He took the revenue of the company from $1.4 billion in 2006 (just before he took over) to $16 billion in 2018, when he stepped down. During his tenure, Cognizant’s headcount grew from 39,000 to 2.8 lakh.
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D’Souza’s fund raise comes at a time when private equity dealmaking has slowed down on account of the Covid-19 pandemic. In the first half of 2020, the PE deal value in the US totalled $326.7 billion, 20% lower than in the same period of last year, according to PE research firm Pitchbook.
