Microsoft names Abhai Singh Senior Director, SMEC India

Abhai Singh has taken on a new role as Senior Director, SMEC India at Microsoft, marking the next stage of his career following more than six years in senior leadership roles at LinkedIn.

Abhai shared the move as he begins his new position at Microsoft, bringing experience across sales leadership, go-to-market strategy, customer engagement and business growth.

His new remit follows a career that has included leadership of LinkedIn's India Sales Solutions business, India and APAC SMB Sales and, most recently, the company's India Sales organisation.

From LinkedIn Sales Leadership to Microsoft

Abhai joins Microsoft after more than six years at LinkedIn, where he held a series of progressively broader sales leadership roles.

Most recently, he served as Director and Head of India Sales, following four years as India & APAC SMB Sales Head and an earlier role as India Sales Lead for Sales Solutions.

That progression gave him exposure to different segments of the B2B market, from sales solutions and SMB customers to broader India sales leadership.

Leading SMEC India

As Senior Director, SMEC India, Abhai will take on leadership responsibility across a business segment that sits close to Microsoft's relationships with small, medium-sized and corporate customers in India.

The role brings together the commercial and go-to-market experience he has developed throughout his career, with a focus on helping organisations adopt technology and use it to support business growth.

For a market such as India, where businesses range from emerging companies to large corporate organisations, understanding different customer needs and routes to market is an important part of sales leadership.

Building Businesses From the Ground Up

Abhai's LinkedIn experience highlights a track record of building and scaling sales businesses.

At LinkedIn, he launched the Channels business as a pilot for LinkedIn Sales Solutions from India, with the model later scaling to EMEA.

He also described growing the LinkedIn Sales Solutions business sevenfold from the time he joined, with India becoming one of the company's most profitable markets globally.

Expanding the SMB and APAC Remit

Earlier in his LinkedIn career, Abhai served as India & APAC SMB Sales Head, expanding his responsibility beyond India to include the Asia Pacific SMB business.

During that period, he worked on a two-hub resourcing strategy across India and Malaysia, alongside initiatives focused on standardising sales playbooks and reducing customer churn.

The experience gave him exposure to both local market execution and regional sales operations.

From Oracle to LinkedIn to Microsoft

Abhai's technology sales career extends beyond LinkedIn.

Before joining LinkedIn, he spent more than 15 years at Oracle, where he held the position of Sales Director.

That combination of enterprise technology experience and more recent leadership across B2B sales and digital business gives him a broad commercial background as he moves into his new Microsoft role.

Connecting Technology With Business Growth

A consistent thread across Abhai's career has been the connection between technology platforms and business outcomes.

At LinkedIn, his responsibilities included helping customers strengthen brand perception, increase engagement, generate additional revenue and use data and social insights to support their go-to-market strategies.

At Microsoft, that experience now comes into a broader technology ecosystem serving businesses across India.

A New Chapter at Microsoft

Abhai's move to Microsoft marks the next stage of a career spanning enterprise technology, B2B sales and go-to-market leadership.

His progression from Oracle to LinkedIn and now Microsoft brings experience across established technology platforms and different customer segments.

As Senior Director, SMEC India, he will bring that experience into a new leadership remit focused on Microsoft's business customers in one of its strategically important markets.

About Microsoft

Microsoft is a global technology company whose portfolio spans cloud computing, productivity and collaboration software, business applications, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and developer technologies. Its products and services are used by organisations and consumers across markets worldwide.