Next-Gen Leadership For Cisco In India

Cisco today announced the next generation of its leadership in India, reflecting the strategic importance of Cisco India for the company. The new leadership comprises Dinesh Malkani, President - Sales for India & SAARC; Amit Phadnis, President - Engineering & India Site Leader; and V C Gopalratnam (Gopal), President - Strategy, Planning and Operations, India and CIO, Asia Pacific and Japan & Greater China. Together, this leadership team will help accelerate Cisco’s momentum in India by strengthening its focus on innovation to lead market transitions. This announcement underlines Cisco’s commitment to India and marks an exciting new phase of growth, aligned to the country’s national transformation agenda. The Cisco India site is a complete ecosystem with a significant presence of engineering, Services, Sales, IT, and other support functions.

Dinesh Malkani takes over from Jeff White and will report to Irving Tan, Cisco’s President, Asia Pacific & Japan. India is at the heart of Cisco’s emerging markets strategy, and Dinesh will lead the company’s efforts to help transform the country’s economy through technology. He will drive Cisco's senior level external engagement, including those with government and industry associations, to drive growth and market leadership in India and SAARC.

Amit Phadnis as the new India Site Leader will lead Cisco’s focus on innovation, ecosystem and talent development in the country. Amit will drive the India Site charter, focusing on strengthening the interlock between Cisco’s teams, including engineering and sales, and customers, while aligning the company’s India site strategy with evolving customer and partner needs. As part of his focus on the India site, Amit will drive the university relations strategy, employee engagement and talent development for the employee base in India. Another major focus area for Amit is developing the Engineering and Independent Software Vendor (ISV) partner ecosystems. In addition to this role, Amit leads the Enterprise Engineering portfolio in India and will continue to report into the organization led by Rob Soderbery, Senior Vice President & General Manager of the Enterprise Networking Group in the US.

V C Gopalratnam (Gopal) will take on the newly created role of President of Strategy, Planning and Operations for Cisco India, in addition to his role as CIO for Asia Pacific, Japan & Greater China. Gopal will help create better synergies between Cisco’s internal IT organization and the company’s technology roadmap as well as drive infrastructure development and operations to facilitate growth and productivity. Gopal will work closely with the university relations team in shaping curricula to help produce next generation industry ready talent. He will also oversee enablement of Cisco’s priorities of inclusion and diversity (I&D), employee volunteering and corporate social responsibility (CSR). Gopal will continue to report to Rebecca Jacoby, Cisco’s global CIO. Gopal also serves on the board of the Cisco Foundation.  

Cisco is uniquely positioned to help its customers navigate the demands of the cloud, mobility, the application economy, and the Internet of Everything. In India, over the next few years, a key priority for Cisco is to be a transformational partner to the government and help build an ecosystem that brings technology and services into villages, and benefits the masses. The new leadership team will drive this agenda through sustained engagement with customers and external influencers; delivery of relevant products, services, and solutions; and an ongoing focus on local innovation and engineering to offer business outcome based solutions.