Cisco in talks with stakeholders to localize in India

Networking major Cisco is looking to localize various aspects of its business here in India, ranging from building telecom gear in the country to building new data centres, and expanding its employee base. The company, which launched a dedicated data centre in India for its collaborative communication product WebEx, is also “working with the government” on manufacturing efforts in the country.

In an interview, Dave West, President, APJC (Asia-Pacific, Japan and China), said that the company has “cast the net wide” in discussing its manufacturing plans in the country, which include manufacturers, its own ecosystem partners and government. However, West noted that the plans aren’t set at the moment and the company is still only investigating its moves in the country.

Cisco provides telecom gear to the top two telecom firms in India, Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio, among others. While it imports the equipment supplied to these firms, the company has tried setting up manufacturing equipment in India in the past, to no avail. For instance, in 2016, the company had launched a local manufacturing unit in Pune, which it had to shut down later.

He added that Indian telcos are looking to ramp up enterprise use-cases with 5G rollouts in the country. “In their mind, to be successful with 5G, given its costing model, enterprises become the most important place. So, they’re all determining the right path and use cases for delivering 5G to their customers,” said West. “For the monetization model, it’s really the enterprise use-cases that will be most dramatic,” he added.

However, West also noted that it will be a little while before enterprises in India mature enough to adopt 5G use-cases. “When you think about introducing 5G into enterprises, you need to understand how to do that. Where to introduce 5G, how to introduce it into the enterprise architecture, where things like 5G and WiFi come together...The service providers are ready, now we need to ready the enterprises. The customers have to embrace 5G and have to be willing to prove out those use-cases,” he said.

In September, Cisco became the first over-the-top (OTT) internet-based service provider to get a Unified Licence from the Department of Telecom. The licence will allow the company to provide national and international long-distance services over WebEx to its users. West said that India is the second largest market for WebEx in the world. The country is also Cisco’s second largest research and development (R&D) facility after the US.

He added that the new data centre will allow the company to provide faster and better services to WebEx customers at lower cost.