'There Are More Than 50,000 Potential SMB Customers For Cisco'

Sudhir Nayar, Managing Director for Commercial Sales for Cisco India & SAARC, details about Cisco’S SMB roadmap and successes in India.

- Jyoti Bhagat

What is Cisco’s play with the SMBs in India?

Cisco is focused more on customers and partners because obviously we sell everything through our partners. Today the way we look at the market is that there are 51 millions, SMBs today and out of which there are at least 5 million which have some level of IT propensity into and that’s sort of become our first go to customer places as others are still working on their IT penetration. About 38 % of the GDP comes from the mid market customers and more than 46 % comes from exports. It is a very significant business for India and for other SAARC countries as well. Today we do business with about 25000 to 30000 customers in this segment and the big goal that we really have is how we really triple our customers over the next 3 years. If I further slice and dice the market, there are more than 50,000 potential customers based on various studies. What is important is that there are 50000 plus customers who are IT savvy and they have more than 100 to 150 employees.

What are the verticals amongst SMBs in which Cisco has made its presence felt?

We are present in Education, retail, Manufacturing, banking and finance and ITes or the services companies. These 5 will be the biggest industries in the SMB space and will cover about 75 to 80 % of the space.

What is Cisco START and what has been its uptake in the Indian market?