Brand, Demand & GTM Alignment: Joshua on Leading B2B Marketing with Purpose

Joshua Mathew, Head of Marketing at Cisco India, brings 18+ years of B2B marketing experience. He shares insights on balancing brand and demand, aligning sales and marketing through GTM collaboration, leveraging MarTech for ABM, and using AI to drive hyper-personalization—positioning marketing as a strategic force in today’s evolving B2B landscape.

Joshua, it’s a pleasure to have you in this interview. Could you tell us about yourself and your journey to becoming a marketing leader?

Hi, the pleasure is mine. If I could define my journey in one word, it would be fortuitous. After I started my degree, it didn’t take long for me to realize that I wasn’t cut out for engineering (no surprise that my professors at my college discovered that before I did!), and a degree in marketing seemed about the only thing that appeared interesting. I started my career with advertising (pure chance because jobs were hard to find when I graduated), and while I enjoyed that stint, I felt that I could contribute better if I had a marketing job that was not just about communication. The last 18 years have been in B2B marketing, and though not by choice, somewhere along the way, I’ve realized that this is where I belong. I’ve done roles as both manager and individual contributor, and part of my self-discovery was the joy I get when I encourage and lead teams to do their best to deliver business outcomes.