Former Cognizant CEO D’Souza setting up $1bn PE fund
Former Cognizant CEO Francisco D’Souza has started a new innings. Together with others, D’Souza is setting up a $1 billion US-based private equity fund called Recognize. He is said to have already raised a couple of hundred million dollars. The rest of the fund-raising is underway.
Sources told TOI that D’Souza’s team has big names from the US private equity and tech spaces. Recognize will invest in niche tech assets and has technologists with deep domain expertise both in services and software. It is looking at M&As as part of its investment playbook, sources said. When TOI contacted D’Souza, he said he had no comments to offer.
D’Souza was enormously successful as CEO of Cognizant, growing the company tenfold from $1.4 billion in 2006, just before he took over, to $16 billion in 2018, when he stepped down. The company was the toast of Wall Street for its scorching growth rates. And it grew so fast that its revenues crossed those of Infosys and Wipro, both of which were much bigger than Cognizant early last decade. Under D’Souza, Cognizant’s headcount grew from 39,000 to 2.8 lakh.
Former CEOs are often roped in to manage funds or join as venture partners. Former Wipro CEO TK Kurien leads Premji Invest, which manages over $2 billion of Azim Premji’s personal wealth.
Peeyush Dalmia, partner in McKinsey & Company, said CEOs more than anyone else are able to form a better judgment about the team they are investing behind. “In most situations, that is the biggest difference between a good and bad investment,” he said.
Uber’s Travis Kalanick has an investment fund called 10100, pronounced ten-one-hundred. Former VeriFone Systems CEO Douglas Bergeron partnered with private equity firm GTCR for a $500 million fund. Former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo and former Twitter COO Adam Bain have an investment firm called 01 Advisors. But D’Souza’s fund size dwarfs those of the others.
D’Souza will also be an investor in the fund. US compensation research firm Equilar estimates that D’Souza realised $191.4 million in total compensation during his tenure as CEO from 2007, a majority of that in the form of stocks and options.
In July, Spanish financial services major Santander appointed D’Souza to be a lead strategic advisor. He also serves on the boards of GE and MongoDB. He’s on the Board of Trustees of Carnegie Mellon University and is co-chairman of the Board of Trustees of the New York Hall of Science. D’Souza is an investor in Ultranauts, an engineering startup employing talent on the autism spectrum.
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.
End Note-This story has not been edited by SightsIn Plus, published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Source-Times of India
