Cognizant Sells its Headquarters in Chennai, Unveils Plans for an Immersive Learning Center in Siruseri
India’s Tech Solutions firm Cognizant has sold its headquarters in Chennai, Hindustan Times has reported. The company sold the headquarters to Bagmane Constructions at a cost of ₹612 crore. Cognizant sells its headquarters in Chennai at a time when the tech company is planning to set-up an immersive learning center on its Siruseri campus.
Strategic Location
Cognizant Chennai headquarters were strategically located in Thoraipakkam along Old Mahabalipuram Road (OMR). The property sits on 13.6 acres of land. According to Siva Krishnan, Senior Managing Director at JLL, this is one of the major IT corridors in Chennai. JLL is the firm that brokered the deal,
“The property will be redeveloped into an office park with a potential development of about 3 million sq ft. This will be one of the largest deals in the Zone 2 region of OMR,” Krishnan added.
Zone 2 of OMR stretched from Sholinganallur all the way to Kelambakkam. The road is also referred to as Rajiv Gandhi Salai. Zone 1 of the OMR runs from Madhya Kailash Temple to Sholinganallur.
According to Krishnan, Zone 1 of the OMR stretch hosts a higher number of IT businesses compared to Zone 2. The stretch has a vacancy rate of between 4% and 5%. With limited land not available along the Zone 1 stretch, that focus is now shifting to Zone two where the Cognizant’s Chennai office headquarters were located.
“The deal marks Bagmane’s foray into Chennai’s commercial real estate market while also highlighting the growing interest in Zone 2 of the OMR region, driven by metro connectivity,” Krishnan said.
Immersive Learning Center
As Cognizant’s corporate office sale takes shape, the Indian tech company has unveiled plans to construct an immersive learning center at its Siruseri campus in the same city. The center, which will be established on a 14-acre piece of land, is expected to train at least 100,000 people in AI each year as part of the company’s skilling and innovation program.
The learning center will serve as a hub for Cognizant’s graduate school program in India. The company plans to use it to support other training centers that Cognizant is setting up in its campuses that are located in Pune, Coimbatore, Hyderabad, and Kochi. It will feature 14,000 seats, incubator hubs, smart classrooms, design thinking centers, residential accommodation facilities, and client experience spaces.
“Our new state-of-the-art centers will power new skills and our culture of continuous learning, enabling our people to drive business impact for enterprises globally,” Cognizant CEO Ravi Kumar S said.
Cognizant will also host intensive boot camps for fresh graduates in the immersive learning center. The company envisions it as a critical collaborative space where scholars in academia, tech partners, and clients can engage in learning and research programs.
Focus on AI
Cognizant has been increasing its focus on artificial intelligence. In 2024, the tech giant trained 277,000 employees on generative AI skills. 168,000 of them completed a GenAI course. Currently, 220,000 of the company’s associates have upskilled in GenAI.
The tech company’s planned expansion in Chennai is part of its plan to grow its infrastructure across India. In 2024, Cognizant opened new delivery centers in Indore and Bhubaneswar. The company is set to open a techfin center in Gujarat’s GIFT City. The Indian tech giant has also modernized the Kolkata campus and upgraded close to one million square feet of its Hyderabad facility.
Cognizant’s 2024 annual revenue rose by 1.98% to hit the $19.7 billion mark. The revenue growth reversed the slight drop that the company experienced the year before when its yearly revenue stood at $19.3 billion. This represented a 0.39% drop from 2022.
