COVACSIS™ - Key Persons
Alok is a senior executive with over 17 years of diverse experience with some of the Top global companies (AT&T/BellSouth and Bain & Co - both in the US; Tata Administrative Service and Cisco in India). He has also been a successful entrepreneur, co-founding a B2B e-commerce company in India which was later acquired by a large public listed organization in 2005. In his current VC and M&A leadership role for CiscoAsia Pacific, he works closely with high growth technology companies as a Board Member.
Prior to Cisco, Alok was a Vice President with Tata Communications (TCL) and led their Managed Services and Industry Solutions businesses. This portfolio included several business lines that were strategic to TCL as it transitioned to an Enterprise telecom company from a wholesale bandwidth provider. He was also the head for Marketing for Tata Communications.
Alok currently leads Cisco's venture capital investments and M&A for India and Australia/NZ. In this role he and his team are responsible for driving new investments and managing Cisco's existing portfolio of investments (both direct investments in companies and LP investments in Funds). Besides Covacsis, Alok serves on the Boards of Servion (Chennai), WSO2 (Sri Lanka) and Global Talent Track (Pune).
Alok's international experience includes working with BellSouth in the USwhere he led product management for their enterprise data products. He also worked with Bain & Company (US), a top global management consulting firm.
Alok holds a Bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering from IIT, Delhi and an MBA with Honors from Wharton Business School, USA.
Job Titles:
- Vice President of the Enterprise Networking Group With Cisco Systems in Indi
Amit Phadnis is the Vice President of the Enterprise Networking Group with Cisco Systems in India. In this role Amit leads the strategy, engineering, and business direction of Cisco's networking technology for the enterprise segment in India and South East Asia. This includes the Cisco Catalyst families of switches; Enterprise Routing; Wireless networking; and Solutions for all industry segments of the Enterprise, Industrial Automation, Small Business, and Emerging markets.
Amit has made significant contributions to Switching and Routing technologies. A technical leader with over 22 years of experience, he has grown in pace with Cisco in India. Currently, he has 25 patent applications filed with US PTO, of which over 20 of them have been already issued.
Amit was one of the first managers to join Cisco when it started operations in India circa 1999. Over the years, he has worked towards building world classteams in India. Today he leads over 1500 engineers directly and has been leading the site strategy for India with the India EngineeringBoard, contributing to a number of Engineering-wide initiatives on the talent and technology innovation fronts. Amit has also been driving the Capability BuildingProgram, designed for developing site capability across India, with active participation from the Distinguished and Principal Engineer community across Cisco.
Before joining Cisco, Amit was the Country Manager/CEO and Vice President of Engineering at Symbol-Motorola. In his role with Symbol, Amit was involved in building a strong product organisation as a country manager. He contributed to technologies related to handheld computing, wireless and RFID. Amit has a Masters degree in Electronics and Communication from the Indian Institute of Science(IISc), Bangalore. As a speaker, Amit has shared his views on technology in the areas of Networking, Supply Logistics, Asset Visibility, and Technology in Retail, among others.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Directors
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Directors
Manpreet is an alumnus of Nirma University and Panjab University. He brings expertise across various domains of strategy, sales, finance, digital transformation and business consulting. He has a system oriented approach with a knack of simplifying complex ideas. As Head of Sales, he leads a global team focused both on connecting Covacsis to new markets and working with customers to drive significant value through digital interventions. In his role as COO at Covacsis, he is responsible for smooth execution of all projects across geographies.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Directors