Cognizant is an American multinational information technology services and consulting company. It is headquartered in Teaneck, New Jersey, United States. Cognizant is part of the NASDAQ-100 and trades under CTSH. It was founded as an in-house technology unit of Dun & Bradstreet in 1994, and started serving external clients in 1996. After a series of corporate re-organizations there was an initial public offering in 1998. Cognizant had a period of fast growth during the 2000s and became a Fortune 500 company in 2011; as of 2021, it is ranked 185. History Cognizant was established in 1994 in Chennai, India, as Dun & Bradstreet Satyam Software (DBSS), a 76:24 joint venture between Dun & Bradstreet and Satyam Computer Services, with Srini Raju as the founding CEO and MD. It began with 50 employees in Chennai as Dun & Bradstreet's in-house technology unit focused on implementing large-scale IT projects for Dun & Bradstreet businesses. In 1996, the company started pursuing customers beyond Dun & Bradstreet. In 1996, Dun & Bradstreet spun off several of its subsidiaries including Erisco, IMS International, Nielsen Media Research, Pilot Software, Strategic Technologies and DBSS, to form a new company called Cognizant Corporation, headquartered in Chennai, India. Three months later, in 1997, DBSS renamed itself to Cognizant Technology Solutions. In July 1997, Dun & Bradstreet bought Satyam's 24% stake in DBSS for $3.4 million. Headquarters were moved to the United States, and in March 1998, Kumar Mahadeva was named CEO. Operating as a division of the Cognizant Corporation, the company focused on Y2K-related projects and web development. In 1998, the parent company, Cognizant Corporation, split into two companies: IMS Health and Nielsen Media Research. After this restructuring, Cognizant Technology Solutions became a public subsidiary of IMS Health. In June 1998, IMS Health partially spun off the company, conducting an initial public offering of the Cognizant stock. The company raised $34 million, less than what the IMS Health underwriters had hoped. They earmarked the money for debt payments and upgrading company offices. Kumar Mahadeva decided to reduce the company's dependence on Y2K projects: by Q1 1999, 26% of company's revenues came from Y2K projects, compared with 49% in early 1998. Believing that the $16.6 billion enterprise resource planning software market was saturated, Kumar Mahadeva decided to refrain from large-scale ERP implementation projects. Instead, he focused on applications management, which accounted for 37% of Cognizant's revenue in Q1 1999. Cognizant's