Global networking major Cisco is aggressively stepping up its next phase of investments in India, further to its $100 million investment in India so far. The company is scouting the region for equity investments in media, broadband and real estate, Cisco Ventures managing director Joydeep Bose said.
Of the $200-million investments in India, Cisco has already invested nearly $ 100 million and the company hopes to exhaust the next $100 million in another 18 months. Immediate on the company’s plans, is forming investment-backed alliances in India. The company already has such an alliance with Satyam in the healthcare sector and is in talk with two more companies in India aimed towards the real estate and collaborative networking space in India.
“We hope to close at one such equity-backed alliance deal by the end of December this year,” Mr Bose said. Cisco would seek out investment opportunities in its areas of focus, by asking partner companies to spin off such target operations into a subsidiary, in which it could take a stake of up to 18%.
In addition to such alliances, the company is looking to pick up minority stakes in small and emerging companies with a ticket size of $5-15 million for each of its lined up investments. “With the central government’s active focus on deploying broadband to rural and semi-urban areas in the country, we are looking to invest into companies with a kiosk-based business model using Cisco’s technology as a platform to provide the last mile connectivity solutions to such regions,” Mr Bose told ET.
The company is also looking to invest into low-cost network equipment manufacturers enabling last mile wireless broadband deployment and service providers helping private telcos penetrate rural telcom and broadband markets, he added.
Cisco is also at investing into the real estate sectors not only in India but also in the Middle East. “We are looking at picking up stakes into software companies that are developing technologies aimed towards the real estate sector.
The companies that we are actively looking at would be primarily into development of building management systems and IP-based surveillance systems,” Mr Bose said. The company is also looking to leverage its acquisition of Scientific Atlanta, the US-based set-top-box maker, through investing and integrating companies building value-added solutions for set-top-boxes in India.
“These would be companies providing localised applications or web-enabling applications for set-top-boxes,” Mr Bose said.
Source: Economic Times