BENGALURU: Cognizant has become the second IT company to have more than 2 lakh employees in India. It has a global strength of nearly 2.9 lakh. TCS is India’s biggest white-collar employer. It has a global headcount of over 4 lakh, much of that in India. Infosys has 2.3 lakh employees globally, but at least 40,000 of those are outside India.Cognizant would be the country’s second biggest whitecollar employer. And considering it is headquartered in the US, it will also be the biggest MNC employer in India.Among other MNC IT companies, Accenture employs 1.7 lakh people in India, IBM about 1.2 lakh and Capgemini 1.08 lakh. DXC, formed by the merger of CSC and HPE services, has around 43,000 employees in the country.In a note to employees on Tuesday, Cognizant CEO Brian Humphries said: “Through countless interactions with our leaders and teams inIndia, not to mention two week-long visits there, I’ve developed a deep appreciation for the jewel that is Cognizant India—the hub of our global delivery, solutioning, and innovation. We are fortunate to have many talented and engaged colleagues in India, more than 200,000 in all, who excel at serving our clients. The bright future of Cognizant India will see us building the industry’s most admired delivery engine, blending efficiency with innovation.”Cognizant added 66,000 people in the last five calendar years, from 2014 to 2018. Accenture is estimated to have seen a similar headcount addition. In the first two quarters of this year (January to June), Cognizant saw a net headcount addition of over 7,000 professionals.Even as IT firms have moved away from headcount-based revenue growth to a model based on business outcomes, the growing headcount in India shows how important the country remains as a robust delivery engine.Hansa Iyengar, IT analyst in London-based Ovum Research, said the push to increase the offshore base goes to show that having a lower-cost resource base is still important despite all the talk about customer proximity. "However, the key to success in the digital era and the question that needs to be asked here is not how large the offshore resource base is, but how well equipped/qualified they are to tackle digital technologies and the business challenges these throw up," she said.