After helping build Cognizant into one of the world's most valuable IT services giants from scratch, Francisco D'Souza is now switching gears with a global PE fund to back tomorrow's winners in the same sector
The tech services space is three times the size of the software space, and yet has only attracted a third of the PE capital compared to software: Francisco D’Souza, co-founder and Managing Partner, RECOGNIZE
Image: Nir Arieli / Recognize
Two years ago, when Francisco D’Souza left Cognizant Technology Solutions—after more than 25 years at the company he helped start and build—he wasn’t clear about what he was going to do next. Even in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, there was one thing on his mind though. It was that the technology industry, and therefore the tech services sector, was going through some profound changes. And history had taught him that when the industry goes through periods of significant transitions, almost inevitably, there will be a new generation of winners.
“It was this recognition that there’s this opportunity for tremendous disruption and innovation in tech services that led me to getting together with my partners to form Recognize,” D’Souza says. Recognize is a private equity (PE) firm at which D’Souza and his three co-founding partners—long-time colleague, former president of Cognizant, Rajeev ‘Raj’ Mehta; Charles Phillips, former president of Oracle and former CEO of Infor, an enterprise software company; and David Wasserman, a PE veteran who’s led several well-known deals—announced their inaugural fund of about $1.3 billion in January.
The plan is to identify the next generation of tech services companies early in the game, and get in with operational control, offering the prospect of tremendous growth in return. All this, on the back of Recognize’s founding partners’ collective 100 years of experience in building multi-billion dollar businesses.
(This story appears in the 08 April, 2022 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)