Pankaj Patel Founded Nile Global Inc in 2018 with John Chambers and two other co-founders. He is the CEO of a paradigm shifting company in the networking industry aiming to disrupt an available TAM of more than $116B annually. Pankaj was Executive Vice President and Chief Development Officer at Cisco Systems, Inc., a worldwide leader in IT, creating solutions built on intelligent networks that solve customers’ challenges with 71,000 employees and $49 billion in revenue (FY2016).  Mr. Patel reported into the CEO as the Engineering head of the company’s $38 billion product and solution portfolio and drove the business and technology strategy across Cisco’s Routing, Switching, Wireless, Security, Mobility, Video, Collaboration, Data Center and Cloud offerings delivered by a global team of over 29,000 engineers. He was responsible for defining the priorities and investment allocation of $6 billion in R&D spend annually.

Mr. Patel retired from Cisco Systems, Inc at the end of Oct 2016 and now serves on Board of Directors of several startups. He is focused on incubating and advising startups with their strategy, go-to-market, building and scaling them.

Mr. Patel is a leader who prides himself in helping his teams achieve success. In addition to enabling the careers and business success of many executives (past and present), he is a mentor and sponsor to numerous employees throughout the company and the industry.