US slowdown to hit Indian software -- Cisco chief

US slowdown to hit Indian software -- Cisco chief

NEW DELHI, JAN 16: Cisco Inc president and CEO John Chambers today said the current slowdown in the US economy will hit India's software exports. The US accounts for more than 60 per cent of India's software exports which are estimated to touch $6 billion this year. "Indian companies which export to the US will be affected by the economic slowdown," Chambers said, adding that he was however hopefull that the US will take appropriate measures so that the impact on the trading partners will be less.

Speaking at a gathering of technology experts here, he said world-class engineers in India cost only a tenth of their US counterparts but infrastructure costs added to overheads. "The two equalisers in life are internet and education," Chambers said, "with infrastructure and the right education, you win."

KEEN ON TAKEOVERS IN INDIA: The networking major said it was open to acqusitions in India depending on the synergies of operations and announced its plan to utilise its venture capital fund to guide such inititaives in the country.

"We are extremely open to acquisitions in India to add synergies to our existing operations and the company will use its venture capital fund to guide merger and acquisitions in the country," Chambers said.

He, however, declined to divulge any further detailes on the steps taken in this regard on indentification of companies. "We are more committed to IT spending than ever before after the slowdown has been reported in mid-December," Chambers said and added that the same principle applied to the company's expansion and investnment plans.

Speaking on his meeting with Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee earlier during the day, Chambers said the meeting dwelt upon the infrastructural bottlenecks in the country and the measures to improve the basic telecom and information technology set-up.

"We also discussed on consistent methods by which India would lead the infotech revolution in the next century and its position comparatively with other global and particularly Asian economies," he said.

Cisco president also met Wipro chairman Azim Premji to strengthen both the companies' existing collaboration in the systems integration segment. Wipro has been the developement partner of Cisco in optical networking, voice switching, wireless network and network management.

Speaking on the emerging trends in Asia in service providers segment, Chambers said broadband would be key to survival of niche players over DSL, cable access, fixed and mobile wireless. "Cisco sees unique opportunities in the service providersspace with focus on voice and data, virtual private network (VPN), IP telephony, hosted call centres, content hosting and unified messaging", he said. He said India must catch up with broadband revolution as "it is the highway system of the future" for any substantial stride in information technology.