News

Hyderabad, 24^th  September 2022: Mr. C V Subramanyam, Chairman & MD at Cigniti Technologies, received the award for ‘Outstanding Contributor to the Indo-US Corridor’ at the ‘18^th Indo-American Corporate Excellence Awards 2022’ held by the Indo-American Chamber of Commerce (IACC) on 23^rd September in Mumbai. The award was presented to Mr. C V Subramanyam by Mr. Suresh Kotak, Chairman, Kotak Commodities and Mr. Rahul Narwekar, Speaker of Maharashtra Legislative Assembly.

Cigniti is the world’s leading AI & IP-led Digital Assurance and Digital Engineering services company that helps Fortune 500 & Global 2000 companies accelerate their digital transformation journey. The IACC recognizes organizations and individuals that embody the promotion of Indo-US trade and have made outstanding contributions to boosting all spheres of the corporate ecosystem - business, industry, and the overall community between the two nations. In line with this, the award recognizes Mr. C V Subramanyam’s leadership and direction that helped Cigniti quickly grow to develop specialized high-tech capabilities and acquire firms in the US and India.

On receiving the award, Mr. C V Subramanyam said “I am honored to receive this award and grateful to the IACC for the recognition. This award is extremely special as Cigniti leapfrogs into the digital orbit and continuous its journey to accelerate the digital transformation of some of the leading and largest companies in the USA. This award further inspires the collective endeavor to realize our vision of ‘Together, we build a better future through technology-led transformation’. The U.S. is the front runner in digital adoption, and we strive to better Indo-U.S. relations through technology-driven trade in the corridor. 80% of Cigniti’s 4100+ workforce contribute towards the work we do in the Indo-US corridor.”

Dallas, TX, 8^th September 2022: Cigniti Technologies, the world’s leading AI and IP-led Digital Assurance and Digital Engineering services company has further strengthened its partnership with a leading American retailer by ensuring superior digital experience to their customers and by accelerating their digital ambitions. The Fortune 500 American retailer and Cigniti recently celebrated their 1st anniversary of the partnership, and they see tremendous scope for growth via digitalization that will assure the retailer’s business outcomes at an accelerated pace.

The American retailer is an established sporting goods recreation retailer in the U.S. with nearly close to 260+ stores across states and a portfolio of 25+ private label brands. It possesses deep consumer connections and growing mobile, omnichannel, and digital capabilities. The company offers a broad assortment of sports and camping equipment, footwear, apparel, and more through its retail and e-commerce platform. The client was looking to accelerate its Digital Transformation initiatives with mobile channel activation, achieve seamless business continuity, elevate its Digital Test CoE, enhance DevOps to integrated DevSecOps, fully automate Data Engineering (Test Data Management) and environment provisioning (Test Environment Management), and set up a real-time dashboard, Verita (Cigniti’s proprietary tool), across small cross-functional teams.

Nalgonda, 2^nd September 2022:  Cigniti Technologies, the world’s leading AI and IP-led Digital Assurance and Digital Engineering services company, launched a NICU/SNCU facility at the Mother and Child Health Center, Nalgonda district, Hyderabad today. The facility was launched as part of the company’s CSR efforts undertaken in the field of "Health" to create a long-term impact by equipping government hospitals with better health infrastructure. The facility was inaugurated by Mr. C V Subramanyam, Chairman and Managing Director at Cigniti Technologies, along with Mr. Sairam Vedam, CMO at Cigniti Technologies, Ms. Urmila Markili, Senior Vice President at Cigniti Technologies and Mr. Midhun Pingili, Senior Director Marketing at Cigniti Technologies. Mr. Kancharla Bhupal Reddy, MLA, Nalgonda, Govt. of Telangana and Mr. Mayur Patnala, Founder and CEO, Nirmaan Organization, graced the occasion at the hospital.

Cigniti joined hands with Nirmaan Organization to address the acute shortage of NICU/SNCU beds and donated medical equipment like Radiant Warmers, Phototherapy machines, Pulse oximeters, Syringe and Infusion pumps, Multipara monitors, HFNC machines, and air conditioners for the ward, which are essential to serve critically ill or premature newborn infants who are at the age of less than 28 days. The supported facility serves a population of 14 lakh people in the district headquarters and rural villages surrounding the district. With this upgrade, the facility would be able to serve about 1,000 infants per year.

"We are passionately focusing on making healthcare accessible and available for all. A lack of infrastructure in rural and remote areas is a major contributor to a high rural infant mortality rate. By equipping the facility with life-critical medical equipment, we’re trying to offer our contribution in improving care quality available to the residents of Nalgonda”, stated C.V. Subramanyam, Chairman and Managing Director of Cigniti Technologies, on the occasion.

Post Covid-19, the ward will be useful in treating infants who require specialized care and highly valued medicines that are very expensive in private set-ups," (Quote from Hospital management)

Hyderabad, India, 9th August 2022 – Cigniti Technologies, the world’s leading AI and IP-led Digital Assurance and Digital Engineering services company, has unveiled a new brand identity reflecting its renewed vision to help its clients in accelerating their digital transformation journeys and achieve market leadership.

In addition to conveying the futuristic vision, the new logo aspires to uphold a contemporary attitude, produce a powerful visual depiction of a shift toward digitalization, and at the same time imbibe the company's software quality-first mindset. Additionally, it aims to exemplify the intense commitment and forward-thinking transformation that the business is embracing through innovation, automation, and artificial intelligence.

The company’s digital thinking and digital avatar are a reflection of its ability to engineer, assure, and technologically transform and accelerate outcomes for global companies, helping them achieve market leadership in their chosen lines of business.

Hyderabad/Mumbai, July 29, 2022: Cigniti Technologies Limited, world’s leading AI & IP-led Digital Assurance and Engineering services company, announced the consolidated financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 2022.

The company’s reported Net Profit for Q1FY23 stood at Rs 31.00 crore as against Net Profit of Rs 22.60 crore in Q4FY22, increased by 37%.

The Company’s Consolidated Revenue from operations for the quarter under consideration increased by 10% to Rs 377.97 crore as against Rs 344.08 crore in Q4FY22.

EBIDTA reported for the quarter ended June 30, 2022, stood at Rs. 44.55 crore for the quarter and year ended June 30, 2022, respectively.

Smallcap IT company Cigniti Technologies, which has a market capitalization of around Rs 1,100 crore, has laid out a roadmap to become a $500-million (Rs 3,800-crore) company by 2026. Srikanth Chakkilam, CEO & Non- Executive Director, Cigniti Technologies, says the plan includes growing both organically and inorganically. “Considering the blueprint and current scenario, though we do not give guidance, we are confident of growing organically at high teens," he says in an interview with ETMarkets.com. Edited excerpts:

Cigniti mainly drives revenue from 7-8 sectors. Which segment is working the best for you?
While Cigniti is sector agnostic, 75% of our revenues come from five key sectors – BFSI (19.6%), Travel, Transport, Hospitality Entertainment (16.2%), Retail and Ecommerce (14.9%), HCLS (13.4%), and ISV (11.5%). These industries are supporting Cigniti's revenue growth and will continue to do so in the coming years, as seen by the demonstrable expansion of digital transformation in the market landscape in these sectors.

What was your attrition rate during the last 12 months? What is the revenue per employee?
Attrition percentage at the close of FY22 was at 30.31%. The revenue per employee in US dollar terms is $45,378.

The IT industry is seeing high attrition. Should one look at it positively that there is no dearth of jobs in the industry (which is a sign of growth) or negatively that companies have been unable to retain their talent?
Yes, attrition is at an all-time high in the IT industry. Organisations throughout the world have been experimenting to close the gap, which has resulted in a lot more overhead across work levels and a lack of ability to genuinely interact with their environment. Interpreting attrition in recent times is slightly more complicated than usual. The current job market has become highly volatile and costing businesses yet is lucrative for the candidates.

While employee turnover is an expected phenomenon in any organization, today we are battling how to manage prospective candidates to honor the offer and stay warm until their onboarding. The high attrition has not only increased the cost of hiring and training new employees, but has also led to incurring direct and indirect costs that include the costs of advertising available positions, performing background checks, paying out referral bonuses etc. Internal costs include management's time spent reviewing resumes, making calls and conducting interviews, as well as the time spent by dedicated recruiting staff and the HR department.

In order to smooth out these challenges, companies are attempting a multifaceted approach that includes increasing fresh hiring to increase the supply pool, accelerating re-skilling programmes through online learning, deploying adjacent-talent skills for on-the-job learning, and providing employees with a holistic experience, among other things.

Our highest priority in the last year has been to retain top talent and incubate them through robust internal training and certification programmes, creating internal cross-functional opportunities and ensuring frequent communication and engagement initiatives to augment the stickiness and belongingness to the organisation. Our vision to diversify our services into adjacencies is a high priority task that will open more opportunities to attract new talent and invite fresh ideas and perspectives to enter the mix.

Being optimistic and finding new opportunities amidst the most difficult times is a lesson learnt during the pandemic. Putting this into practice, we have embraced the ongoing attrition rampage as a challenge and are continuing to explore ways to deal with it in the most positive way creating a better culture for the in-house talent and opening up opportunities to the new talent that is looking forward to coming onboard.

Your revenue saw a significant jump in Q4 YoY, but that was not reflected in the bottom-line. What were the reasons?
It is a universal phenomenon that aggressive growth derails profitability to a marginal extent.

In our case, we have been growing over 2017-20 at an average of about 8%, and stabilizing EBITDA at 15%. However, the pandemic gave us an opportunity to rethink and rebalance our portfolio to make it more balanced and de-risked. Coupled with this, we also commenced our journey of becoming a $500 million company by 2026 effective 2021. This necessitated investment in both building capabilities and sales and marketing infrastructure. Coupled with this, the labor market has been volatile, which needed investment on a continuous basis for retention and rehiring.

All these factors added up for reduction in margin which we expect to neutralize to a greater extent in the coming year.

What are the biggest challenges for the industry and for you in the short to mid-term? Is inflation and the rising dollar likely to hit your business?

The entire software industry is going through a talent crunch and Cigniti is not an exception. We have mitigated these risks through several strategic interventions such as focusing on boarding more freshers from colleges and training them. We are also investing on upskilling our talent pool through a well-defined L&D roadmap.

Cigniti’s 85% of revenues come from North America and the dollar variation is not a concern as we have a natural hedge by way of expenditure being spent at onsite. Inflation is a nominal worry and constant in any business and we shall deal with this appropriately.

What is the outlook for next one year? What kind of revenue growth are you expecting going ahead?

Cigniti is the world's leading digital assurance and quality engineering services company. The digital assurance market in particular (as per various sources) is witnessing an explosive growth rate. And there is an increased demand from global companies for a specialist in digital assurance solutions.

The board recently approved the acquisition of Aparaa Digital (RoundSqr) a specialist in AI/ML, data and blockchain engineering services. This acquisition would strengthen Cigniti’s digital ambitions and help offer digital engineering services to its clients. We have a journey to be $500-million company by 2026 and this involves both organic and inorganic growth. Considering the blueprint and current scenario, though we do not give guidance, we are confident of growing organically at high teens.

Acquisition strengthens Cigniti’s digital ambitions and helps offer digital engineering services to its customers across the globe

4^th May, Hyderabad, India: Cigniti Technologies, world’s leading digital assurance and quality engineering services company, is set to acquire Aparaa Digital, a leading AI/ML, Data engineering, Analytics, and Blockchain services company that operates under the brand name RoundSqr. This is a firm step towards bolstering Cigniti’s strategic pursuit of becoming a specialized digital engineering and assurance services provider.

Founded by a group of industry leaders with extensive experience in managing medium to large digital transformation projects, Aparaa Digital (RoundSqr) is headquartered out of Hyderabad, India. Aparaa brings integrated enterprise digital transformation and consulting-driven expertise covering a gamut of AI and ML, data engineering, and Blockchain capabilities. RoundSqr’s Zastra, (an active learning-AI based data annotation and MLOps platform), helps solve critical model validation challenges as ML models get to production in enterprises. This helps move past the last mile AI operational challenges with MLOps.

One of the largest deals Cigniti has won, which has a high potential to grow in the coming years.

Hyderabad, India: Cigniti Technologies has signed a $ 10Mn+ worth ACV deal with one of the largest and oldest Financial Services and Investment firm in the USA to assure and accelerate its digital transformation journey. The deal has potential to immensely grow in the coming years. Cigniti Technologies, a global leader in providing AI-driven, IP-led, strategic digital assurance, software quality engineering, automation, testing, and consulting services, helps global companies to go Digital-First.

• This Strategic Partnership will support Legacy Transformation using Cigniti’s Advisory & Transformation Services (ATS) and achieve committed ROI and quicker time-to-market.
• The engagement entrusted by the financial services major covers a gamut of services to be provided spanning Infrastructure Automation, Chaos Engineering, Security, and Performance assurance services leveraging Cigniti’s Digital Assurance and IP led Quality Engineering services with massive automation capabilities.

The client is a Fortune 500 company with operations in 20+ U.S. states as well as offices in three continents.

Speaking on the occasion, Srikanth Chakkilam, CEO, Cigniti Technologies, said “We are excited to be a strategic digital transformation assurance partner with this leading financial services firm. The deal is an outcome of deep-rooted expertise of a domain-led, automation-led, and solution-led approach, encompassing functional, process, business, and digital assurance services for large enterprise customers. This is also a testament of our ability to win large deals. It further improves our BFSI revenues which are already contributing 19.23% of total revenues.”

“Our continuous investments into our domain centers of excellence, particularly with the 300+ experts in the Financial services COE, and in our IP, BlueSwan™ to enhance its capabilities, to create new IP-based solutions, such as AI-led test data management, no-code & low-code automation, test environment management, and security engineering, are increasingly becoming a strong differentiator for winning large-sized deals with companies across the globe,” Srikanth added.

“We promise frictionless end user experiences with our Digital-Assurance services stack. We enable our customers to tread confidently on their digital transformation journeys, help them re-imagine their businesses, achieve market leadership, and win the digital landscape”, he added.

Can you share your insights on how 5G technology will be essential in the post-pandemic world?
As software continues to be the critical component of every business, connectivity to the digital superhighway is imminent. 5G technology makes this possible. It has the potential that we have already experienced that can significantly re-shape human life, not just business. AI-led robotic surgeries which are video streamed, annotated and guided are today possible with 5G enabled ecosystems. There cannot be a better use case than the above to signify how 5G is impacting the human generation in this pandemic period and beyond. The pandemic has reshaped our daily lives, as well as the way business activities, are being conducted.

For example, pandemic restrictions forced many factories and industrial plants to close, disrupting production lines and supply chains. Covid-19 accelerated the demand for connectivity with consumers and professionals today are relying on high-quality and high-speed internet performance more than ever. 5G-enabled industries have the potential to help drive sustainable economic growth and define the next decade of innovation. Remote-controlled machines that communicate over 5G have suddenly became vital – they allowed human operators to steer drones, cranes and other industrial equipment with greater precision, speed and efficiency without having to be on site.

NelsonHall positions Cigniti as a Leader in AI & Cognitive Testing, Quality Engineering, Continuous Testing and Application Security Testing in NEAT 2022

High Achiever in Cloud Migration Testing and Major Player in UX testing.

Dallas, TX, 9^th March, 2022 – Cigniti Technologies, a global leader in providing AI-driven, IP-led, digital assurance, software quality engineering, testing and consulting services, today announced that NelsonHall has recognized Cigniti as a market leader in AI & Cognitive, Application Security Testing, Continuous Testing & overall Quality Engineering, as a High Achiever in Cloud Migration, and as a Major Player in UX testing in the Quality Engineering NEAT charts.

Speaking on the occasion, Srikanth Chakkilam, CEO – Cigniti Technologies, said, “This recognition reaffirms Cigniti’s stated goal of helping global companies become digital-first. Businesses are significantly increasing their spends towards Digital reimagination and Platformization journeys, investing in AI & Analytics, Hyper Automation, DevOps, Cloud migration, Customer experience, IOT and Quality Engineering. Digital Assurance, Business Assurance, Process Assurance and Functional Assurance are critical. They ensure that modern, secure, robust, reliable, scalable, and intuitive software becomes a strategic business enabler for digital transformation programs to be successful.”

Mumbai, January 28, 2022: Cigniti Technologies Limited, a global leader in independent quality engineering and software testing services, announced the consolidated financial results for the quarter ended December 31, 2021.

The company’s reported Net Profit for Q3FY22 stood at Rs 26.55 crore as against Net Profit of Rs 22.17 crore in Q2FY22.

The Company’s Consolidated Revenue from operations for the quarter under consideration stood at Rs 325.46 crore as against Rs 307.90 crore in Q2FY22.

EBIDTA for the December quarter was at Rs 40.44 crore and EBIDTA margin stood at 12.4 %.

Other income includes net foreign exchange loss of Rs. 0.70 Cr. for the quarter ended December 31, 2021.

30^th November 2021, Dallas: Cigniti Technologies, a global leader in independent quality engineering and software testing services, expands its portfolio of pioneering innovative digital assurance and experience solutions for next generation 5G technologies by forming a strategic partnership with innovate5G.

As companies move to 5G, they are going to be challenged in optimizing for the plethora of possibilities that 5G has to offer and with that, customer expectations and demand for new services will increase at a rapid pace. So, whether it be enhanced video, telehealth, adaptive manufacturing, AR/VR, gaming, consumer IoT services, connected vehicles, to name just a few, the pivot to the 5G paradigm will be significant as will the manner in which these new solutions are rolled out.

Dallas, TX, 27th Oct, 2021 - Cigniti Technologies has been recognized as a market leader in continuous testing specialists for the US by Information Services Group (ISG), in its ISG Provider Lens™ Next-Gen Application Development and Maintenance (ADM) Services report.

Speaking on the occasion, Srikanth Chakkilam, CEO, Cigniti Technologies, said, “Cigniti is a leading Digital Assurance company that enables global enterprises to accelerate their digital transformation and continuously achieve their digital next. We continue to significantly invest in our IP, BlueSwan™ and enhance its capabilities, to create new IP-based solutions, such as AI-led test data management, test environment management, and security engineering. We have enriched Verita and Velocita with AI-based analytics use cases which are helping our enterprise clients to achieve significant acceleration in their org-wide test automation initiatives. Cigniti’s AI-based script-less test automation platform – iNSta – enables building of production grade test automation suites. The test execution engine integrates with the latest CI/CD tools and cloud (Sauce Labs, Browser Stack) infrastructure to support continuous testing, leading to reduced cost of quality, and improved productivity, stability, & reliability.”

Hyderabad/Mumbai, October 21, 2021: Cigniti Technologies Limited, a global leader in independent quality engineering and software testing services, announced the consolidated financial results for the quarter ended September 30, 2021.

The Company’s Consolidated Revenue from operations for the quarter under consideration grew by 16.5% to Rs. 307.90 crore as against Rs. 264.36 crore in Q1FY22.

The company’s Net Profit for Q2FY22 stood at Rs 22.17 crore as against Net Profit of Rs 20.42 crore in Q1FY22.

Reported EBIDTA for the September quarter was at Rs 31.92 crore and EBIDTA margin stood at 10.4%.

During the current quarter and six-month period ended September 30,2021, the Company has written off export incentives amounting to Rs. 9.74 crore pertaining to the financial year 2019-2020, pursuant to notification no. 29/2015-2020 dated September 23, 2021, issued by Ministry of Commerce & Industry. The Operational EBITDA margin would have been 13.5 percent if the export incentives had not been written off.

Other income includes net foreign exchange gain of Rs. 1.87 Cr. for the quarter ended September 30, 2021.

Prague, 8^th Sep 2021: Cigniti Technologies, world’s leading Independent Quality Engineering & Software Testing Services company, announced the opening of their office in Prague, Czech Republic. With this new expansion, Cigniti further extends its global footprint in the European region to meet the growing digital transformation needs of leading enterprises based in the region. Cigniti is currently serving enterprises from eight countries in the Europe and the U.K.

“Being the best country for business in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), with rich scientific tradition, incredible talent pool, and well developed R&D infrastructure that supports business’s ecosystem, Czech Republic was a natural choice for us as we looked at expanding our presence in the Europe region,” said Srikanth Chakkilam, CEO, Cigniti.

“This new office will enable us to be more agile and responsive towards the needs of our existing clients in the region and serve them from close proximity. This will also be the nearshore delivery centre for our clients in the UK & EU and tap into the rich talent pool available locally” said Nanda Padmaraju, Cigniti’s head of RoW business.