Avinash Thakur
About Avinash Thakur
Transformational thought leader with a passion for all things Product. • Expertise includes collaborating with stakeholders to define product vision/strategy, roadmap, architecture, technology and lead high performance product teams to accelerate the delivery of business outcomes. • Proven track record of delivering value, driving consistent growth and innovation, while ensuring an intuitive and guided customer experience. • Customer centric mindset. • Partnered with key stakeholders including corporate strategy, business units, sales, ops and customers, to lead Cisco's business model transformation to XaaS (IaaS, SaaS, PaaS, UCaaS etc). • Designed and built a scalable, full stack cloud-native CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) platform for enabling new XaaS monetization models. The platform currently transacts ~$12 Bn in annual XaaS revenue across 1-tier, 2-tier Channel Partners, Distributors, Enterprise Customers, Direct to consumer, SMB customer segments – part of the overall ~$50Bn annual revenue across hardware, software and services on the current platform. • Led the enablement of Cisco Plus Hybrid Cloud flexible consumption models (Network/Hardware As a Service) on the eCommerce platform, including a new guided buying experience for customers. • Lead Architect for the enablement of Cisco’s Collaboration Offers portfolio (UCaaS, Contact Center, Conferencing, End Points) on the eCommerce platform and built capabilities to scale across the different stages of the subscription lifecycle – land, expand and renew. This included automating B2B capabilities for Cisco’s technology partners, re-sellers, by providing an API-based framework. • Led the integration for 3rd party software products including numerous Cisco acquisitions within the Collaboration, Security portfolios • Platform Evolution: Evaluated, integrated with industry standard solutions where necessary, to allow for quicker go to market for low touch models within the direct to consumer, SMB market segments. • Designed and built integration solutions for enablement of Cisco’s products on re-seller XaaS marketplaces by providing APIs across Order Management, Provisioning, Usage, Billing, Renewals. • Worked closely with key customers to evangelize products, gather feedback, discuss new features, highlight key differentiators, and prioritize strategic wins. • Effective use of data science, data driven analytics/intelligence and machine learning to accelerate business outcomes.