‘Pace of Technology Adoption is Faster in India’

A management consultant, a CIO, an entrepreneur and venture capital ist,
Rangu Salgame, president, India and SAARC Region, Cisco Sys tems India has seen
all sides of business. And of course, telecom has been close to Salgame, of the
18 years of industry experience, he has had 15 years of telecom experience.
Prior to joining Cisco last year, Salgame spent the last four years advising and
managing venture capital backed companies. He also was the president and CEO of
Edgix, an Internet infrastructure company, with operations across North America,
Latin America and Europe. Also he spent a long time with Verizon Communications,
a Fortune 10 company both on the technology, over 10 years, and the business
side. He was also the founder and President of Verizon’s data solutions
subsidiary, as well as vice president of Enterprise Marketing for the company.
Salgame holds an MBA from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.
Recently he spoke to Dataquest on Cisco’s strategy, competetions and other
issues Excerpts:

Rangu Salgame president, India & SAARC Region, Cisco Systems India

Is dealing
with CIOs different in the US and India

Not really. Indian CIO does business exactly like any other CIO in the US.
However, Indian CIOs have only recently realized the importance of technology
investment, and are now moving from tactical to strategic investments. Here
Indian CIOs have an advantage and I have seen the pace of technology adoption
faster in India compared to the US.

On
competition

We do have competition, but we continue to bag big ticket orders in most of
our segments. I think Cisco has been successful because consumers are looking
for a reliable supplier with strong balance-sheet and that’s our strength.

On
Cisco’s growth and future plans in India

While it might sound very clichéd, but India is an important market and we
aim to make as one of our top three strategic markets in the world. We would
continue on a rapid growth path and hope to double our revenues by end of the
second year. I think this is not difficult to achieve. Comparing it to the US
market where companies invest on average 8.5% of revenue on IT, Indian companies
are very low with just 1% investment. However, given that Indian companies are
competing at global level, they would need to invest in IT. I see that in the
next 3-4 years, investment would increase to 3 to 4% and that is huge potential
for all including Cisco.

On
SME strategy

Our strategy for the SME segment has been two pronged. Firstly we have
launched low cost low-end products. These products are sold by a channel-model
and we continue to ramp up our dealer network and capitalize the opportunity.
The second part of the strategy has been the Linksys acquisition. Given that
Linksys globally is catered to the price sensitive consumer and SOHO segment, we
feel, we have good products for the Indian market.

On
technology trends

On the consumer side, I think that they is a huge opportunity for the
mass-market Broadband e.g. DSL, Wireless and Metro-Ethernet. While on the
enterprise side, I see technologies like VOIP taking a lead. For instance, IP
Telephony was launched a year back and we have already deployed over 20,000 IP
Phones in India. To me, this is a clear sign that Indian customers are looking
at new-world technologies. Other trends that we are betting on heavily are VPN
Video-Voice communication and security.

Yograj VArma in New
Delhi