US$40 million to Fund Early-Stage Firms 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 US$2 billion worldwide and the $40 million early stage allocation under the India Innovation theme is a part of the $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.

The strategic investment philosophy of Cisco Investments has evolved over the years. While the company will continue its nearly 20-year history of strategic investing focused on Cisco’s existing core businesses, the launch of the thematic investing approach extends this perspective to support companies who have innovative ideas that will shape the overall global networking ecosystem in the future.

Besides contributing capital to early-stage companies, Cisco Investments helps accelerate the development of these companies by connecting them to expertise and resources such as Cisco IT, Cisco’s business leaders and Cisco’s network of partners and customers through major industry events, such as the annual Cisco Live.

Dinesh Malkani, President, Sales, Cisco India and SAARC remarks: “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."

Joydeep Bose, Managing Director, Corporate Development, Cisco Asia Pacific & Japan says, “India is committed to rapidly building out its communications infrastructure, which presents a unique opportunity for local entrepreneurs to develop new technologies and applications. As a leading strategic investor, Cisco Investments is committed to support the building of entrepreneurial capacity and nurture the local early stage startup eco-system in India. By spurring and accelerating technology innovation, we want to help India evolve as a global hub for innovation and help Cisco become a defining player in taking technology investment in the region to the next level.”