Cisco Investments has announced to offer $40 million of funds to early-stage startups in India under the 'India Innovation' program of Cisco. Cisco Investments is the venture capital arm of Cisco and is an active investor with more than 40 investment professionals with deep market and technology expertise located in major geographies, including US, Canada, China, India, Israel, and Europe.
Cisco has also also announced that its first investment under 'India Innovation' program will be in Covacsis - a Mumbai-based real-time analytics platform software provider catering to manufacturing production floors. The $40 million fund Cisco is offering to Indian firms under the 'India Innovation' theme is part of the $250 million that was announced earlier in the year, which will be allocated over the next two to three years to fund early-stage companies and further foster innovation in the global startup community.
The investment is focused on next horizon themes to accelerate the development of disruptive technology markets, including big data and analytics, the Internet of Things (IoT), connected mobility, storage, silicon, the content technology ecosystem, and India innovation, Cisco said.
Apart from offering fundings to early-stage companies, Cisco Investments would also helps them to accelerate their development by connecting them to Cisco expertise and resources such as Cisco IT, Cisco's business leaders and Cisco's network of partners and customers through major industry events, such as the annual Cisco Live.
"We are looking to invest in companies that make products for India which can also be taken to the rest of the world. Additionally, we are looking for start-ups that offer industry-specific solutions in education, healthcare, financial services, etc., and cloud-enabled enterprise apps/platforms," said Joydeep Bose, Managing Director, Corporate Development, Cisco Asia Pacific & Japan.
Cisco currently have an active portfolio of $2B with over 80 direct investments around the world. So far Cisco has made investments three growth-stage companies in India such as Netmagic, Apalya and social innovation funds like Aavishkaar.
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