Cisco’s enterprise & public sector sales head Puneet Gupta resigns

Puneet Gupta, Managing Director, Enterprise & Public Sector Sales at Cisco India & SAARC, has put in his papers and will continue in office till April 30, the third quarter end for Cisco.

Nal Gollagunta, Managing Director, Commercial Sales at Cisco, is the most likely candidate to take over Gupta’s role, said sources.

Gupta’s exit comes four months after he got implicated in two fraudulent deals worth ₹300 crore involving BSNL and Cisco and ₹2,000 crore involving the Army, BSNL and Cisco, that were exposed by

The Quint in November and December 2016. Sources said the two cases are under investigation internally by Cisco US and India officials and currently 53 such cases of corruption involving the company and public sector entities are also being investigated by the same officials.

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.

Prior to Cisco, Gupta has been with IT majors IBM and Wipro and a small stint with a start-up company for 21 years. An IBM veteran with 14 plus years in IBM handling a diverse portfolio of responsibilities including PC sales, leader for Unix Server business and the last stint as Vice-President for Public Sector, Gupta joined Cisco in June 2012 as Senior Director Sales.

In that role, he lead Cisco’s public sector business across the India & SAARC region driving strategy and sales operations for this segment with a focus on growth across e-governance, defence and homeland security, strategic infrastructure projects in Central and State governments, data centre and cloud, security, collaboration and video.

His role included working with Cisco’s public sector customers and partners to support government in their overall NeGP (National eGovernance Plan) Framework and governance objectives.

Asked to comment on Gupta’s exit, Cisco in a statement said: “Leadership transitions are a very natural and normal part of a company transformation. While it can be hard to see good leaders go, it gives other talent a chance to step up and gives the company a chance to bring in new perspectives. With an exceptional leadership team and wealth of engineering talent and skill, Cisco India will continue to focus on delivering value to our customers, partners and employees.”