Jeff White, Cisco’s President and Country Manager for India and SAARC region has quit. White had moved to India in January 2013 replacing Naresh Wadhwa, who had spent almost fifteen years in Cisco.

White was earlier the Vice-President for Cisco’s Service Provider Business in Asia-Pacific, Japan and China. When contacted, Cisco India spokesperson confirmed the development and said Jeff is going back to the US to be closer to his family.

After his exit, Cisco in India will be led by Dinesh Malkani who is currently Vice-President, Sales, Cisco India and SAARC. Malkani will report o Irving Tan, President for Asia Pacific and Japan. Amit Phadnis, Vice President, Enterprise Networking Group will expand his role to become the new India Site Leader. Amit replaces Surya Panditi who re-focuses his role as Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Service Provider Networking Group. In addition, Cisco has appointed V C Gopalratnam, Vice President, IT and CIO for Asia Pacific, Japan and Greater China, to a newly created role as Chief of Strategy, Planning and Operations for Cisco India.

This comes even as Cisco’s India revenue declined 18 per cent in the first quarter of fiscal 2014. But India is not the only country to record drop in first quarter revenues. Cisco’s emerging markets business declined 21 per cent with Brazil down 25 per cent, Mexico down 18 per cent, India down 18 per cent, China down 18 per cent and Russia down 30 per cent.

The technology giant, which at present gets about 2 per cent of its global revenues of over $48 billion from India, expects the number to grow to 5 per cent over the next five years on the back of growing demand for cloud and networking services.

White was handpicked by John T Chambers, Chairman and CEO of Cisco to take charge of the opportunities India. John T. Chambers, during his visit to India in April last year, had said that India was crucial to the company’s growth

“I am betting my future on India. We have already made significant investments in setting up our research and development here. We will have 30 per cent of our talent base from India and going forward we want to partner the Government in enabling socially relevant projects such as in education and healthcare,” Chambers had said.

Globally, Cisco has been strong in the switching and router space but with technology shifting towards new areas such as cloud, mobility and big data analytics, the company has embarked on a transformation game plan towards IT services and solutions. Apart from the enterprise segment, the company is using these capabilities to get deals from the Governments, one of the biggest consumers of IT.

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