revenues in 2002 were $229 million, and the company had zero debt with $100 million in the bank. During the dotcom bust, the company grew by taking on the maintenance projects that larger IT services companies did not want. In 2003, IMS Health sold its entire 56% stake in Cognizant, which instituted a poison pill provision to prevent hostile takeover attempts. Kumar Mahadeva resigned as the CEO in 2003, and was replaced by Lakshmi Narayanan. Gradually, the company's services portfolio expanded across the IT services landscape and into business process outsourcing (BPO) and business consulting. Lakshmi Narayanan was succeeded by Francisco D'Souza in 2006. Cognizant experienced a period of fast growth during the 2000s, as reflected by its appearance in Fortune magazine's "100 Fastest-Growing Companies" list for ten consecutive years from 2003 to 2012. In September 2014, Cognizant struck its biggest deal, acquiring healthcare IT services provider TriZetto Corp for $2.7 billion. Cognizant Shares, rose nearly 3 percent in pre-market trading. On 24 June 2015, the company signed a multimillion-dollar agreement with Escorts Group in India to help Escorts' businesses in digital transformation and modernizing its operations across all business segments. On 30 June 2015, it partnered with Singapore-based supermarket retailer NTUC FairPrice to perform digital transformation in NTUC's business to improve personalized and consistent customer service across multiple channels. In January 2022, Cognizant sold its acquisition Oy Samlink to Kyndryl and Mustache to DJE Holdings. Acquisitions Business model Like many other IT services firms, Cognizant follows a global delivery model based on offshore software R&D and offshore outsourcing. The company has a number of offshore development centers outside the United States and near-shore centers in the U.S., Europe and South America. In its early years, Cognizant gained business from a number of American and European companies with the help of the Dun & Bradstreet brand. The company's senior executives envisaged the firm as a provider of high-end customer services on-par with the six contemporary major system integrators (Accenture, BearingPoint, Capgemini, Ernst & Young, Deloitte and IBM), but at lower prices. Operations Regions The company has 318,400 employees globally, of which over 200,000 are in India across 10 locations with a plurality in Chennai. On 20 Jan, 1994 Cognizant registered its branch in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India with the legal name Cognizant Technology Solutions India Private Limited. The other centers of the company are in Bangalore, Chennai, Coimbatore, Gurgaon, Noida,