Eyeing telecom business, Cisco Systems to increase India staff by 60% in 4 years

By Telecom Lead Team: Networking major Cisco is planning
to increase its workforce in India by 60 percent over the next four years.

 

The expansion is part of its strategy for emerging
markets. The company will recruit most of the personnel for its research and
development centre in Bangalore, which is its largest outside the U.S.

 

The expansion is happening at a time when telecom majors
such as Nokia, Nokia Siemens Networks, Tellabs, Alcatel-Lucent and others
started looking at reducing their global workforce. Several telecom operators
have also reduced their manpower in India.

 

Cisco is increasingly using the Bangalore centre for
innovating products for emerging markets such as India, China and Brazil. This
will be the first big-scale recruitment by Cisco in India after it announced a
15 percent cut in global workforce in mid 2011, according to a report in Times
of India.

 

“By 2015, we will be ramping up from 7,500 people to
about 12,000 people, increasing workforce out of Bangalore. We want to innovate
faster and at the right price point for emerging countries because the growth
will happen in this part of the world now,” said Sanjay Rohatgi, senior
vice-president of service provider business in India, Cisco.

Cisco’s service provider vertical contributes about 36 percent to the company’s
total revenues from India. 

 

Recently, the company posted increase in its service
provider business revenue from APJC region. For the second quarter FY12,
Cisco’s revenue from service provider business stood at $1.01 billion.

Cisco is working with service providers on leveraging 3G by offering
services such as e-education with the aim to take video and data
services to consumers and enterprises.

The company is hopeful of closing one or two major LTE contracts by the middle
of 2012, as BWA services are expected to begin by the year-end. Over the next
three years, a third of the total revenue of Cisco’s service provider vertical
will come from these contracts. 

 

In its Indian business, Cisco
is also focusing on SMBs and going by Partner-Led strategy.

 

The company has experienced remarkable growth in the
Partner Led segment and accounts of one third of Cisco’s India
revenue. Its partner-led business has grown at 45 percent CAGR in a short
span of 3 years. And, its small business revenues have grown 4 times in 3 years.