Cisco draws up new strategy for India

"The company has formed industry business councils to tranform it from a product company to solution provider in six high-growth business verticals like banking and financial services, IT services, manfacturing and healthcare, retail and infrastructure," Cisco Vice-President (east) Amit Malik said.

The company would focus on Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) with help of lease financing from Cisco Capital, its financing arm.

"We have exhausted $150 million corpus since we launched the financing from June 2005. And now we are waiting for the next tranch of funding," Cisco Capital country Manager Gautam Munish said.

The company had launched a special lease finance rate of 7 per cent for the SMEs. This rate of financing was very attractive and likely to boost sales in the SME sector.

"Cisco Capital gets entire funding from the parent company and no funds are being raised in the domestic market," Munish said.

The new financing scheme would help the company to tap a larger market.

Cisco was upbeat about the West Bengal growth story and expected a sizeable business.

Several large corporates like Vedanta Resources, Tata Motors, JSW Steel and Jai Balaji have announced large investments in the state.