Three months after Raghunandan Kadambi, Head of Services, Cisco India & SAARC, quit citing personal reasons, Amit Malik, a Cisco veteran of 11 years, has taken over the role, effective November 9.
Malik will report to Dinesh Malkani, President of Cisco India & SAARC, and be responsible for the sales of Cisco Services to the enterprise, public sector and commercial segments; playing a crucial role in helping the company’s sales force move from selling products to selling solutions, architectures and outcomes.
Previously, Malik was Cisco’s Regional head for the East, responsible for driving business growth for the commercial segment across North East and SAARC.
Before that, he was responsible for leading Cisco’s small and medium business across India & SAARC.
In an internal email to employees, Malkani said, “Cisco is well set to be a transformational partner for governments as countries embrace the power of digitisation. We have enabled our entire leadership team to move quickly to define our differentiated strategy to lead the digital future.
“Over the last year, we have underlined our commitment to groom internal talent and provide exceptional performers with opportunities for growth. I am pleased to announce that Amit Malik will take over as leader for the Services organisation for India & SAARC.”
Frequent changes Over the last five years, Cisco’s Services business has seen several leadership changes. Valsan Ponnachath, who took over from Cisco’s star performing India Services head Kumar GB, quit in two years.
The next Services head, Anil Bhasin, who took charge in October 2012, quit in seven months. Markus Bischof served as the interim head of Services for three months, subsequently handing over the charge to Raghunandan Kadambi, who joined Cisco in July 2013 and lasted for two years.
Services revenue, which includes Advanced Services and Technical Services, constitutes 35 per cent to Cisco India’s overall revenue of over $1 billion.
Confirming his new role, Malik said, “We have embarked on a journey of building a solutions-oriented sales approach to solving customer problems. We are in the process of transforming the Services business by coming up with outcome-based, domain-specific solutions in the areas of healthcare, mining, contact centre, BPO, etc.
“Besides providing technical services to support all Cisco products, we will offer customers consulting and professional services, project implementation expertise, and new business models such as Software-as-a-Service, Infrastructure-as-a-Service, etc, all of which will bring in recurring revenue for Cisco.”