‘We are poised at the cusp of tremendous opportunity’

Cisco’s president for India and Saarc sees big scope in the digitisation of multiple industry sectors that have been poor adopters of technology

Daisy Chittilapilly, president of Cisco for India and Saarc, who is responsible for strategy and sales, operations, and investments to drive the company’s long-term growth in the region, sees the firm poised at the cusp of tremendous opportunity.

A Btech from the College of Engineering, Trivandrum, who holds a post-graduate certificate in general management from XLRI, Jamshedpur, Chittilapilly was elevated in July to her current position at the US technology giant.

Cisco’s increasing pivot towards software and services (especially amid India’s post- Covid economic rebound), she says, entails an opportunity for it to engage with customers, partners and governments in newer ways. There is also the call of Digital India, which involves digitisation of multiple industry sectors that are traditionally poor adopters of technology. And this has only been accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic.

“You could call it the perfect storm for us to leapfrog our next phase of relevance and our next phase of doing business in India,” says Chittilapilly.

“The accelerated pace of digitalisation of India and its businesses for the surrounding economies in Saarc, for which we have responsibility, presents a tremendous opportunity,” she adds.

Indeed, India will need to invest $4.5 trillion by 2040 to develop infrastructure and boost economic growth and community well-being, according to various reports.

Cisco is looking at tapping traditional industries like manufacturing, transportation, education, healthcare, utilities, and agriculture in India — areas in which massive programmes are conducted by the government. “So the intersection of these two — our transformation as a company and the transformation of India — is the sweet spot, in terms of opportunity, for Cisco. We are actively looking at it.”

Chittilapilly sees a big role for Cisco in the provision of technology for the Jal Jeevan Mission (where it can be used to monitor the quantity and quality of water, as well as its distribution to households), the power sector, and agriculture.

The company runs a “digital acceleration” programme which seeks to validate the impact of technology in areas where it has never been tried in the country. Through this programme, it is helping Kerala’s prawn and paddy farmers raise yields, in collaboration with Krishi Bhavan and the state’s information technology (IT) ministry.

Cisco is developing partnerships with the government, which revolves around projects such as smart cities, national broadband and Bharatnet, and defence modernisation. It is also eyeing financial services and IT services.

It is working on innovations in areas such as 5G, Wi-fi 6 and the Internet of Things. The aim, says Chittilapilly, is to provide connectivity to every Indian citizen. Also, work-from-anywhere or hybrid work has scaled up multifold over the last 18 months owing to the Covid-19 pandemic. (Cisco has a platform called Webex for video conferencing, and so on.)

The Cisco India boss thinks India’s economic rebound will inevitably rub off on the IT sector. “If we look at the IT industry’s growth in terms of domestic consumption of IT, it’s a fairly healthy growth forecast of about 8 per cent, and in that software is at 17 per cent and services is at 10 per cent,” says Chittilapilly.

With over 25 years of experience in the technology industry, including 17 years in leadership roles at Cisco, Chittilapilly has been involved in transforming operations and cultures to drive growth at scale. Before joining Cisco, she worked with tech company Wipro Limited across multiple sales management roles.

“I really wasn’t intending to pursue an engineering degree,” she recalls. “I had my heart set on a doctorate in physics but then I was advised by my school to pursue engineering.”

Her entry into IT was pure coincidence. She initially cleared the interview at a construction company, but it never sent her an offer letter. She qualified to participate in the next company that came along on campus, which happened to be Wipro, and this was where she worked for the next eight years. “This was quite coincidental, and probably one of the luckiest things that happened to me,” says Chittilapilly.

Our increasing pivot towards software and services will enable us to engage with customers, partners and governments in newer ways

DAISY CHITTILAPILLY President, Cisco (India and Saarc)