Cisco plans to up headcount

Cisco, the $18.9 million networking equipment giant, is planning to increase its headcount in India by 50-60 per cent from the current 75-80 employees.

The company is looking at process outsourcing /technology-enabled sector, retail, telecom and government sectors as growth drivers in India.

Christian Hentschel, director, business development, advanced technologies, Asia Pacific at Cisco, said, "Cisco has over 3,000 customers across enterprises, service providers and small and medium enterprises. We now address relationships on vertical lines, with the sales team specialising in delivering technology consultancy and solutions specific to the vertical. Accordingly we are aiming to increase the sales headcount in India by 50-60 per cent."

Cisco has already installed voice over internet protocol phones in several call centres such as vCustomer, Phoenix, Nirvana, Manjushree, Transworks. Cisco recently strengthened its strategy by restructuring itself along vertical specialisation route from the earlier geographical focus.

Hentschel added, "We have even come out with business-ready solutions for the verticals. We have "branch of the future" for BFSI segment, "shop of the future" for retail industry and business-ready data centre solution for ITeS sector."

Cisco's "branch of the future" is an integrated approach that offers solutions to specific business problems associated with retail banking.

Interestingly, Cisco's grip on the domestic networking market grew stronger in 2003-04 and it registered its best-ever performance by growing at 47 per cent to Rs 1,630 crore from Rs 1,109 crore in 2002-03.

Routers and switches together contributed almost 80 per cent at Rs 1,050 crore of Cisco's product business. The rest 20 per cent came from what it calls advance technologies such as wireless, IP telephony, security, storage and optical. The growth in advance technologies was reflected in the growing number of specialised partners in these areas.

Cisco has 22 partners specialising in wireless, 18 in security, two in voice access and 12 in IP telephony. Around 90 per cent of these specialisations have come in the past 15 months.