Cisco to start manufacturing in India, eyes export from India

Global technology giant Cisco is once again commencing manufacturing in India. The company targets over $1 billion in combined exports and domestic production in the coming years. Cisco Chair and CEO Chuck Robbins during his visit to India announced the creation of a new manufacturing operation in India.

Cisco is now building core manufacturing capabilities in India, including testing, development and logistics, and expanding in-house repair operations. In addition to supporting supply chain resiliency, reducing lead times, and elevating the customer experience, this will add further impetus to the local economy.

“We are going to launch manufacturing here in India. And we're launching it as a global full manufacturing global node in our 17 country manufacturing footprint that we have around the world,” says Robbins.  “We would expect over a billion dollars to come out of that factory first year relative to both domestic but also exports. We're going to use this as a global manufacturing node to actually export to region as far as Europe.”

Cisco is launching two of its highest volume product lines in India - switching platforms, which are at the core of a lot of data centre networks in the country, and also a cutting-edge routing platform that sits in the core of some of the 5G network infrastructure

According to the information shared by Cisco, the company’s manufacturing facility will build Cisco's best-in-class technology, designed to provide flexible, cost-effective delivery of next-generation services and applications and support complex cloud computing environments.

"India is of strategic importance for Cisco, and we continue to bet on India. Today's announcement marks a significant milestone to power the next phase of growth for Cisco. This investment will enable us to bring state-of-the-art technologies to more people and businesses and help accelerate India's transition into a leading digital economy," said Daisy Chittilapilly, President, Cisco India and SAARC.

Previously in 2018, Cisco had launched manufacturing efforts in India that were focused on the domestic production of Cisco products. Due to a lack of consistent demand and a supporting ecosystem, those production lines were closed. However, the company hopes this new initiative will focus on manufacturing for the Indian and global markets and aims to build an ecosystem of local suppliers.

Before announcing the Make in India initiative, Chuck Robbins also met Prime Minister Narendra Modi and had a series of strategic engagements with Dr S. Jaishankar, External Affairs Minister, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Union Minister of State for Entrepreneurship, Skill Development, Electronics & Technology, B.V.R. Subrahmanyam, CEO of NITI Aayog, and K. Rajaraman, Telecom Secretary.