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NEW DELHI: Cisco chairman and CEO John Chambers on Wednesday said his company would increase its commitments to India, especially in the area of inclusion that the Indian government was so focused on.
Chambers, who earlier in the day met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, as also the ministers of IT and commerce , said one of the company’s key objectives was to work with the government to find technology solutions to India’s challenges in education and healthcare.
“With broadband and cloud, we can change the school system, have many more children learning from good teachers remotely. Every village can have a healthcare facility with a fast network connection, where the health data of a person can be captured and a doctor in a remote location can take a look at it,” he said. The $46-billion Cisco runs a number of pilot projects around the country in education and healthcare in towns like Raichur and Shimoga in Karnataka and Chhindwara in Madhya Pradesh. Wim Elfrink, the company’s chief globalization officer who accompanied Chambers , said over 6,00,000 hours of learning had happened in these projects across seven states.
“Real scale will come when the national optical fibre network is in place,” he said. In 2011, the Indian government had announced a plan to connect all 2,50,000 Gram Panchayats with a broadband network, and this work is in progress.
Cisco in India recently innovated a box that combined a computer, router, projector, camera, speakers, microphone and a power management system. This affordable all-in-one box is expected to radically simplify the implementation of remote education and healthcare projects. In the early pilot projects, these were all separate elements bought from different parties, each with its own annual maintenance contracts.
“It used to be a nightmare managing all that. This single box has brought costs down, power consumption down, is dust and humidity resistant, and we expect it will be very viable for ordinary schools to adopt them,” Aravind Sitaraman , president of Cisco’s inclusive growth strategy, told TOIrecently. Chambers, who has led Cisco since 1995, when the company had just $1.2 billion in revenues, has over the past decade invested enormously in India, and in a way that few MNCs have. In 2006, Cisco established its Globalization Centre East in Bangalore, which it calls its second headquarters . Some 11,600 of its 70,000 employees are now in India, including the majority of its R&D staff.
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Many of the innovations that have come out of the India centre are being used around the world. “We are not here for labour arbitrage. This is where the future direction of the company is going to come from,” Chambers said.
Asked if an Indian could succeed him, Chambers noted that two of his seniormost executives were Indians . He described Padmasree Warrior, Cisco’s chief technology & strategy officer , as “absolutely amazing” , and Pankaj Patel, the chief development officer, as an “engineer’s engineer” . On US technology companies working against the interests of Indian IT companies on US immigration issues, Chambers said Cisco worked closely with a number of Indian IT companies and Cisco’s welfare was closely tied to the fortunes of these companies.
Cisco’s India R&D centre is also highly focused on urbanization solutions. That work has enabled the company to receive the mandate to do the ICT (information and communication technology) master plan for four of the seven smart cities that will come up along the Delhi-Mumbai Infrastructure Corridor. These include the Shendra Industrial Park in Maharashtra, Dholera Special Investment Region in Gujarat, Manesar-Bawal Investment Region in Haryana and Khushkhera-Bhiwadi-Neemrana Investment Region in Rajasthan.
Chambers, who earlier in the day met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, as also the ministers of IT and commerce , said one of the company’s key objectives was to work with the government to find technology solutions to India’s challenges in education and healthcare.
“With broadband and cloud, we can change the school system, have many more children learning from good teachers remotely. Every village can have a healthcare facility with a fast network connection, where the health data of a person can be captured and a doctor in a remote location can take a look at it,” he said. The $46-billion Cisco runs a number of pilot projects around the country in education and healthcare in towns like Raichur and Shimoga in Karnataka and Chhindwara in Madhya Pradesh. Wim Elfrink, the company’s chief globalization officer who accompanied Chambers , said over 6,00,000 hours of learning had happened in these projects across seven states.
“Real scale will come when the national optical fibre network is in place,” he said. In 2011, the Indian government had announced a plan to connect all 2,50,000 Gram Panchayats with a broadband network, and this work is in progress.
Cisco in India recently innovated a box that combined a computer, router, projector, camera, speakers, microphone and a power management system. This affordable all-in-one box is expected to radically simplify the implementation of remote education and healthcare projects. In the early pilot projects, these were all separate elements bought from different parties, each with its own annual maintenance contracts.
“It used to be a nightmare managing all that. This single box has brought costs down, power consumption down, is dust and humidity resistant, and we expect it will be very viable for ordinary schools to adopt them,” Aravind Sitaraman , president of Cisco’s inclusive growth strategy, told TOIrecently. Chambers, who has led Cisco since 1995, when the company had just $1.2 billion in revenues, has over the past decade invested enormously in India, and in a way that few MNCs have. In 2006, Cisco established its Globalization Centre East in Bangalore, which it calls its second headquarters . Some 11,600 of its 70,000 employees are now in India, including the majority of its R&D staff.
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Many of the innovations that have come out of the India centre are being used around the world. “We are not here for labour arbitrage. This is where the future direction of the company is going to come from,” Chambers said.
Asked if an Indian could succeed him, Chambers noted that two of his seniormost executives were Indians . He described Padmasree Warrior, Cisco’s chief technology & strategy officer , as “absolutely amazing” , and Pankaj Patel, the chief development officer, as an “engineer’s engineer” . On US technology companies working against the interests of Indian IT companies on US immigration issues, Chambers said Cisco worked closely with a number of Indian IT companies and Cisco’s welfare was closely tied to the fortunes of these companies.
Cisco’s India R&D centre is also highly focused on urbanization solutions. That work has enabled the company to receive the mandate to do the ICT (information and communication technology) master plan for four of the seven smart cities that will come up along the Delhi-Mumbai Infrastructure Corridor. These include the Shendra Industrial Park in Maharashtra, Dholera Special Investment Region in Gujarat, Manesar-Bawal Investment Region in Haryana and Khushkhera-Bhiwadi-Neemrana Investment Region in Rajasthan.