Cisco Capital-India to infuse fresh funds

Cisco Capital-India, the technology financing arm of networking solutions provider Cisco Systems, is looking at raising fresh funds.

According to the company, the decision to go in for further funds is due to the "good response it got from Indian firms in taking loans for their IT investments."

A proposal in this regard has been sent to the parent company in April this year, company sources said.

"Since we are left with just 20-25 per cent of our initial corpus of $150 million, our parent company is looking at infusing fresh funds. We have already sent a second request, which is under due consideration," Gautam Munish, country manager, Cisco Capital-India told Business Standard. He, however, declined to divulge further details about the quantum of funds they had sought and the timeline for that.

Cisco Capital began its operations in India with a corpus of $150 million, which was part of the $1.1-billion investment in India that was announced by Cisco chairman John Chambers in 2005.

Cisco Capital gives loans under different programmes basically to buy Cisco technology, and the technology of other companies who do not compete with Cisco. So far, Cisco Capital-India has financed about 76 companies in India including Symphony Services, Call Centres India, Ocimum Biosolutions and Knoah Solution.

In the fiscal 2006, Cisco Capital managed a corpus of about $7.4 billion globally, which is expected to increase by 26-27 per cent in FY07. In India, 12.7 per cent of Cisco's technology solutions were sold in FY06 with Cisco Capital funds.

"Cisco capital penetration in Cisco's business in the matured market is in the range of 10-15 per cent. Even though India is relatively a newer market for us, our penetration in Cisco business in India was 12.7 per cent in fiscal 06," he added.