New Funding Boosts Cisco’s commitment to driving product and technology innovation in India
Cisco Investments, the venture capital arm of Cisco, today announced an additional allocation of USD $ 40 million to fund early-stage firms in India under the ‘India Innovation theme’. The new funding allocation builds on Cisco Investments’ momentum in India and is focused on product and technologies that are unique and relevant to India and other emerging markets, including cost optimized designs, industry vertical solutions and application of cloud. As part of the India Innovation theme, Cisco also announced its first investment under this theme in Covacsis – a Mumbai-based real-time analytics platform software provider catering to manufacturing production floors.
Today’s investment theme announcement underscores Cisco’s commitment to India and marks a new phase of support for innovation in India, aligned to the country’s national transformation agenda. The venture investment in India is consistent with Cisco’s long track record of driving IT market growth through investment in the innovation economies. Over the years Cisco has been an active equity investor in India, and has made significant strategic investments in growth stage companies such as Netmagic, Apalya and social innovation funds like Aavishkaar.
Cisco Investments’ existing portfolio is over USD $ 2 billion worldwide and the USD $ 40 million early stage allocation under the India Innovation theme is a part of the USD $ 250 Million that was announced earlier in the year focused on next generation technologies globally, including big data & analytics; the Internet of Things (IoT); connected mobility; storage; silicon; and content technology ecosystem. Cisco invested in MobStac, a Bangalore based start-up company, as part of its global connected mobility theme.
Dinesh Malkani, President, Sales, Cisco India and SAARC: “Cisco’s belief is that the innovative application of technology can have a positive impact on India’s competitiveness, diversification of its industry base, its ability to create jobs and improve quality of life for its citizens. Today’s announcement underscores Cisco’s recognition of the tremendous innovation and potential that the India technology market offers. Our objective is to help catalyze and accelerate that potential into action that will have a positive impact in India and globally.”
