Businessperson of the Year

Rank
16
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Francisco D’Souza

Cognizant Technology Solutions just acquired TriZetto for $2.7 billion in cash.
ENGLEWOOD, CO. SEPTEMBER 15: Cognizant Technology Solutions just acquired the Englewood, CO based health care information technology company TriZetto on Monday, September 15, 2014 for $2.7 billion in cash. Francisco D'Souza, left, CEO of Cognizant gathered for a photo with TriZetto president and COO Jude Dieterman, right, at TriZetto headquarters in Englewood. (Denver Post Photo by Cyrus McCrimmon)Photograph by Cyrus McCrimmon — The Denver Post/Getty Images
  • Title
    CEO
  • Company
    Cognizant

No other company has appeared more times on Fortune’s list of Fastest-Growing Companies than Cognizant. Revenue exploded by a factor of 20 and profits by a factor of 15 over the past decade at this infotech outsourcer and consultancy. D’Souza is the company’s youthful (47) and dynamic chief. The son of an Indian diplomat, he taught himself programming in high school, joined Cognizant in 1994, and has been CEO since 2007. Financial services is the company’s stalwart sector, but D’Souza has kept Cognizant on the cutting edge not only with digital services, analytics, and cloud services but also by expanding its health care segment with organic revenue growth (16% last year) and its biggest acquisition to date (a health care IT-services provider called TriZetto). The ascent isn’t over either: The company says it’s on track for sales growth of 20.1% in 2015.