Cisco India managing director Naresh Wadhwa is a busier man these days with recessionary

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pressures tapering off. He tells Darlington Jose Hector that government and public sector units will prop up an otherwise lethargic market.

Excerpts:

A year ago, when you spoke to Financial Chronicle, the recession had just kicked in. How do you assess the situation now from a Cisco viewpoint?

Cisco’s financial year runs from August to July, and the recession fell right in between. From September the ripple effects of recession started showing, the SME segment started delaying decisions and the election phase slowed down the decision-making processes further. The IT services companies are still continuing to struggle, but it is also possible that they will be the first to come out of this slump. SMEs are continuing to adopt a wait-and-watch policy. But the shift will happen from the government and public sector points of view. There will be more business coming from these two sectors. In fact, Cisco hopes to see double the business emerging from these two segments.

What kind of business opportunities are you seeing with the government and public sectors?

There is this drive to secure citizens, and that’s a major initiative. Securing government installations, deploying sensors and indulging in smart analytics are key moves. With government spending increasing we expect that for the next 3-4 quarters, the government and public sectors will be our biggest clients, though I can’t reveal the revenues generated from them due to competitive reasons. We are also trying to bring our best practices to this sector, but tailored to Indian conditions.

What are the kind of lessons the company imbibed during this phase?

Cisco believes in bringing business relevancy to its clients. We partner companies in their endeavour to develop transformational business models. So we are not just box providers who expect clients then to just carry on with their business.

What kind of work is Cisco doing in relation to community services in India?

We are working with the government to help put together data centres in districts. Cisco is also engaged in a big way with community service centres. There is a lot of work happening on smart connected communities too. In Gujarat, Cisco has tied up with the Gujarat International Finance Tec-City Company (GIFT) to develop a financial services centre with infrastructure and facilities benchmarked to global standards. GIFT promises to be a central business hub, not just for India, but also for the rest of the world. The city is designed to provide next-level infrastructure, services and platforms backed by state-of-the art information and communication technology (ICT), secured and resilient data centres, integrated and intelligent townships with high-tech city services management.

Can you elaborate on the work done on smart connected communities?

Today, hundreds of different systems and protocols across an urban centre are not interoperable. If these systems converge onto a single open-systems based network, significant opportunities for productivity, growth and innovation can be unleashed. The smart connected communities initiative brings together a broad portfolio of partnerships, products, services, and solutions to address this significant emerging opportunity using the network as the platform. It changes the way cities, towns and villages are designed, built, managed and renewed to achieve economic and social sustainability.

Will Cisco India start to hire again soon?

There has been a pause in hiring for some time, and unless we find opportunities which call for hiring we will not do so. At present, we are more concerned about skill upgradation of employees.