Successful leaders lead by example because they possess the ability to inspire and drive the team in such a way that each member brings their best to the table. Setting clear goals and persevering to achieve them alongside the team goes a long way in building a great company. They give freedom to their team to explore, experiment, and achieve greater heights.
One such outstanding leader is Nikhil Taneja, the Managing Director-India, SAARC & Middle East of Radware India. He started his remarkable journey with Radware at the young age of 28 on April 2002 as Country Head – India & SAARC Operations.
A Passionate and Enthusiastic Leader
Being one of the first persons in the company, it was his job to build it from ground zero. This entailed developing local business, and setting up units across India with the objective to add to the global numbers.
During its early days, when the Indian market was working with Layer 3 technology, Radware was way ahead offering Layer 4 to Layer 7 technologies. Nikhil led the team to crack two of the biggest deals in data security business in the Indian IT industry’s history – IDRBT and Indian Air Force.
Over the years, Nikhil’s responsibilities extended to the growth and expansion of Radware’s market presence across the entire Asian subcontinent. A significant contribution to the remarkable growth of Radware in the region led Nikhil to take over the position of MD, India, SAARC and Middle East recently. His great journey at Radware will turn 16 years with 64 successful quarters on 31st March, 2018.
The past 16 years brought rapid business growth along with HR challenges, compliance challenges and expansion challenges. Dealing with all these provided great exposure and experience, and helped him grow as a team player, leader and a guide.
Growth of India as a region year-on-year increased the management’s confidence in Nikhil and he has been given additional responsibilities of managing other geographies. He has been provided additional manpower to grow business, add more portfolios and most recently handle GSI (global system integrator) business out of India and address global business out of the region. He was one of the top 4 people historically who mattered for numbers to Radware globally during the 20th anniversary celebration at Israel recently.
Nikhil feels that when the work is driven by company goals and objectives, no challenge feels big enough. One can always find solutions to counter them in some form or the other. His journey so far in the company has only strengthened his resolve to always find solutions that sync with the overall goals of the company. He is inspired by the thought that if one sets their mind to succeed, everything they do will help, guide and motivate them to succeed. He feels lucky to get the opportunity to build a team that possesses entrepreneurial spirit; this has led to a very healthy working environment thus contributing further to Radware India’s growth.
Under Nikhil’s guidance and leadership, Radware leads the industry with its unified management and orchestrated framework for ADC and Security Technologies. It is one of the industry’s first vendors to launch virtualized solutions or specialized DDoS solutions.
Further, Radware is one of the only OEMs to offer fully managed, single vendor hybrid solutions that interoperate seamlessly and offers most comprehensive on-premise and cloud protection against volumetric attacks. Radware India has won many awards under his leadership, including ‘Best DDoS Attack Mitigation Solution’ in 2017 and ‘Best DDoS Vendor’ in 2016 by VAR India apart from ‘Application Delivery Controller Vendor of the year’ from SME Channels in 2016 to mention a few.
Nikhil advises young professionals to become masters at their work, and to become domain experts. While personal advancement is important, one should be a team player to be able to grow in an organization. Commitment to an organization is a good way to strengthen oneself both at a professional and personal level.
Nikhil, Leading Radware to Success
Under Nikhil’s astute leadership, Radware has delivered a record year in 2017, and is confident that 2018 will be an encore. He has great plans to expand the company within India, SAARC and Middle East in the coming years. He also intends to leverage Radware’s global partnership with Cisco and Check Point in the coming months. He will lead the company towards focusing more on the telecom sector while increasing investments in the same. He aims to aggressively pursue business from other SAARC countries going forward. Innovation is in the company’s DNA and it will continue to strengthen its cyber and application security offerings in the coming years.
Source :-The 30 Most Admired Tech Leaders to Watch in 2018
Nikhil Taneja: A Zealous Leader Pursuing the Dream of Success
