Raghunandan Kadambi, Managing Director of Services Sales, Cisco India & SAARC has quit, effective end July. The exit comes exactly two years after taking over from Markus Bischof, who was brought in to serve as interim head of Services for three months.

Kadambi, who joined Cisco after a 20-year stint with IBM, has cited personal reasons for quitting, and sources told BusinessLine that he is no longer reporting to work although he will remain on the rolls of the company till September 30, 2015.

On being contacted, the company declined to comment, stating it is in the quiet period.

Services hot-seat After Cisco’s star performing India Services head Kumar GB, who is credited with tripling Services revenue from $50-150 million in three years, was elevated to a global role, Valsan Ponnachath, who had earlier taken over the reins in October 2010 quit in two years.

The next Services head, Anil Bhasin, took charge in October 2012 and quit in seven months, after which Markus Bischof served as interim head of Services for three months, handing over to Kadambi in July 2013.

“While the vision for Services revenue, which includes Advisory services, Professional services and Tech support services, and also constitutes 30-35 per cent of Cisco India’s overall revenue is well in place; frequent leadership changes, failure to commit to goal timelines, and lack of on-ground execution capabilities, have all made the Services Head position a hot-seat, where the incumbent succumbs to target pressures and quits,” explained a Cisco insider, who wished to remain anonymous.

Cisco Services fell short of the $1-billion target it had set out to achieve in its India operations during 2011-2014 and is still far from achieving that target, given that Cisco India President Dinesh Malkani had given a commitment last June to CEO John Chambers, to cross $1 billion in India revenue during FY 2015.

In addition, Cisco has rolled out the new combined product and services sales structure in India effective August 1 (when Cisco’s FY 2016 begins), which was rolled out globally last August.

BusinessLine had reported last May that the new integrated structure, which will no longer have separate product sales and services sales teams, when rolled out will make many roles redundant at Cisco India, including top management levels. “You can expect many more exits in the coming months,” added another Cisco veteran.

Cisco has seen a spate of top management exits over the last 11 months with the exits of Aravind Sitaraman, President (Inclusive Growth), in September 2014; Rajesh Rege, Country Head (Data Centre & Cloud Business), in October 2014; Sanjay Mathur, Vice-President (Global Technology Centres), in January 2015.

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