Cisco plans manufacturing base in India

Mumbai: Computer networking major Cisco Systems is planning to set up a manufacturing base in India, for some of its mainline products like routers and switches. The San Jose, California-based company dominates the networking market in core technologies of routing and switching as well as WLAN and network security worldwide.

"The only thing we have not got here is manufacturing. We will talk about it in the evening. The company had committed $1.1 billion investment in November last year. So far in India we have presence in R&D campus, R&D resources, Cisco capital, business development/ventures and service agreement," Cisco Systems CEO and chairman John Chambers said at the CII-CEO forum. India, he said, is a strategic market and Cisco has its largest R&D centre in the country.

Chambers who met minister of information technology and broadcasting Dayanidhi Maran after the meeting is expected to have discussed the company''s manufacturing plans with him. The $30 billion dollar Cisco is a market leader in 10 of the 12 product segments in networking worldwide. It is also among the most aggressive companies in the merger and acquisition front. Chambers, however, has his India plans under wraps.

Cisco is likely to set up a facility in the South for manufacturing some of its products. Cisco Capital, a $100 million venture fund, the company already holds close to 16 per cent investment in Bharti group manufacturing company Bharti Teletech, which makes telephones and some low-end telecom products.

Cisco also has a one-million square foot, 3,000 people campus in Bangalore for R&D, IT, sales and customer support. The company is spending approximately $50 million on this new, integrated campus, expected to be completed by June 2007.

Cisco also has joint development centres with Wipro Technologies and Infosys Technologies in Bangalore, HCL Technologies in Chennai and Zensar Technologies in Pune. Cisco has seven sales offices in India.