Cisco splits ‘Enterprise and Public Sector’ role into two

Cisco has split the key Enterprise & Public Sector Sales role in India for the first time, with the appointment of two separate heads for Enterprise and Public Sector.

The two heads will replace Puneet Gupta, Managing Director of Enterprise & Public Sector Sales who exited the company last month after he got implicated in two fraudulent deals worth ₹300 crore and ₹2,000 crore involving the Army, BSNL and Cisco.

In line with

BusinessLine ’s report that Nal Gollagunta, Managing Director of Commercial Sales at Cisco, is the most likely candidate to take over Gupta’s role, Cisco has appointed Nal as the Managing Director of Enterprise Sales and has promoted Gaurav Agarwal, Director, Operations & Sales, Public Sector who was reporting to Gupta, as head of Public Sector Sales. Sudhir Nair has been roped in from Microsoft to take over Nal’s role as Managing Director of Commercial Sales.

According to sources within the company, the Enterprise & Public Sector Sales role was split because Nal refused to take on the “hot seat” of Public Sector Sales. At present 53 cases of corruption involving Cisco and public sector entities are being investigated by Cisco US and India officials.

Interestingly, Agarwal, who has been handling Public Sector Sales for a while now and reported to Gupta, has promised to deliver $150 million in sales by the end of quarter ending July 31, 2017, against a target of $120 million, said Cisco insiders.

The Government and Service Provider (Telco) verticals are among the top drivers of revenue growth for Cisco as it looks to net revenue targets of $2 billion in FY 2018 and $5 billion in FY 2020 under the leadership of Dinesh Malkani, President, Cisco India and SAARC.

Nal, who was Associate Principal with McKinsey before joining Cisco as head of Strategy and Planning in February 2012, is known as a back-end strategist than as a hardcore salesperson that his new role as head of Enterprise Sales demands.

“Nal has been climbing the ladder steadily every two years, taking on lead roles in Business Development after which he led Commercial Sales, a business which is 100 per cent partner-led and requires the least amount of customer interface. Handling the high-touch Enterprise business will certainly be a stretch for him,” observed a former Cisco top management executive.

Security expert Cisco has also appointed security industry stalwart of over 20 years - Vishak Raman as Director, Security Architecture Sales, Cisco India and SAARC, earlier this month. Security is a $2-billion business for Cisco globally and a special area of focus for the company in India too.

Raman has logged stints as Senior Regional Director India and SAARC at Fortinet Technologies, Country Manager India and SAARC at WatchGuard Technologies, Associate VP of Managed Security Services at Tata Communications and more recently as Senior Regional Director India and SAARC at FireEye.

On being contacted, Cisco did not deny the appointments and said, it did not wish to comment.