Achal Kataria has joined Cognizant as the vice president and country head (India). Kataria succeeded Anantharaman Sreenivasan, who served at the post for four years before stepping down in August this year.

Before Cognizant, Kataria has worked with companies like EXL, Tech Mahindra, and Genpact. His longest stint was at EXL where he joined as vice president (head global technology operations) and was consequently elevated to the post of vice president and global head of technology.

Kataria comes with an experience of over 26 years in the IT/ITes industry — operating in sectors such as insurance, healthcare, travel, and transport. He is well versed with emerging technologies like analytics, robotics, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and IoT. He describes himself as a cloud evangelist and has carried out functions like business-aligned model deployment, building technology architecture, and model design and implementation.

In his career, he has received several awards including CIO 100 Awards (2020) and a mention in the CIO Hall of Fame by IDG India (2020).