Nile, a pioneer in AI networking and Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) for the enterprise, announced that it has expanded its executive team with the addition of enterprise network veterans Stephen Patak, who joins Nile as Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) and Surbhi Kaul, who will serve as the company’s Vice President, Customer Experience.
Patak comes to Nile from Ubiquicia, a leading provider of intelligent infrastructure, where he served as CRO and, in three short years, grew revenue by over 600% with more than 500 customers. In his new role at Nile, Patak will be responsible for all aspects of go-to-market strategy, global sales, sales operations, and sales enablement.
Kaul joins Nile from Juniper Networks, where she served as Global Vice President of SaaS Products and Customer Experience (CX) and built the company’s customer success program from the ground up. Once established, her new program was able to drive a holistic strategy for customer acquisition, growth, and retention, resulting in significant increases in customer lifetime value. She was also able to improve customer efficiency, dramatically reducing support and service costs through automation and generative AI-based self-service platforms. At Nile, she will be responsible for global customer success, customer support, and service delivery.
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“With Stephen and Surbhi, we have two rare executives who have seen success across a diverse set of markets and companies,” said Pankaj Patel, CEO and co-founder of Nile. From giant enterprise network behemoths to agile startups, both individuals have shown they can build and sustain a company’s growth and introduce disruptive new technologies. Each will play a critical role in helping to grow Nile into a leader of the enterprise network market.”
Patak comes to Nile with over twenty years of sales and leadership experience. Before his roles at Nile and Ubiquicia, he served as SVP of Americas for Extreme Networks and HERE Technologies, both billion-dollar companies. Patak also led a successful 14+ year career at Cisco, working with service provider organizations throughout the United States and Asia, where he was based in Singapore for five years.
“Nile is more than just another enterprise network vendor,” said Patak. “Its vision for the transformation of this market is the most compelling value proposition I’ve come across in my entire career. I’m incredibly excited to lead the execution of this vision together with Pankaj and the rest of the team at Nile.”
Kaul brings over 20 years of experience in customer success and product management to Nile. She started her journey in the networking industry at HP, Cisco, and Force10 Networks and went on to build and launch the very first Networking products at GCP (Google Cloud Platform). Venturing into the consumer space, she led YouTube and Google Home initiatives and launched multiple groundbreaking products, incorporating cutting-edge AI and machine learning technologies. A fervent advocate for inclusion and diversity, Surbhi spearheaded Global Inclusion & Diversity initiatives at Juniper, including Women@Juniper ERG. She leads the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) AI/ML Forum for 1800+ strong alumni, serves as a National Board Member at ASEI, is a Board member at the IIT Foundation, and is a former chapter lead Women in Product.
“Nile is one of those ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ opportunities to transform an entire industry,” said Kaul. Their pioneering use of AI to disrupt the existing enterprise network paradigm is very exciting. I’m looking forward to leveraging my deep experience in building new customer experiences with Nile’s new approach.”
SOURCE: GlobeNewsWire