India was among the highest growing country in the Asia Pacific, Japan and China (APJC) region during the last fiscal year for global networking major Cisco, a senior company official said. "India and Cisco have a very symbiotic relationship, where we drive good business yet very high growth rates. India was the highest growing theatre for me in the APJC region during the last fiscal year," Cisco President (Asia Pacific, Japan and Greater China) Miyuki Suzuki told PTI.

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She added that the company is witnessing high returns from the Indian market, along with innovation that is being fed back into its global portfolio of products and solutions.

In fiscal 2019 (ended July 2019), Cisco delivered strong top-line growth and profitability, reporting revenue of USD 51.9 billion from USD 49.3 billion in FY18, registering a 7 per cent growth year-on-year.

During this time, India registered 19 per cent year-over-year growth, highest in the APJC region.

Cisco has a large engineering team based in India with over 10,000 Research and development (R&D) staff.

"India is our second-largest R&D centre after San Jose for Cisco... They are involved in developing some of our core, what we call needle-moving new technologies, whether it is in cybersecurity, encrypted threat analytics... India is an important innovation hub," she explained.

Suzuki said sectors like banking and financial services, telecom and manufacturing are big bets for the company in India.

"The telecommunication sector is still a significant breakthrough for us, although they have a lot of debt. Telcos will work through it, as they need to be prepared when the fundamental trajectory of 5G becomes a reality in two or three years," she noted.

Suzuki added that telecommunication market is an opportunity and continues to be one of the significant area of growth for Cisco.

Aspects like cybersecurity are particularly important for sectors like financial services industry (FSI), she said.

"...These are some of the ongoing conversations I have had with our banking customers. Also, manufacturing sector continues to be a big area, whether it is in terms of automation or IoT," she said.
Suzuki said Internet of Things (IoT) also extends into other areas like smart cities, logistics and transportation.

"We also see opportunities in the automotive industry and the railways," she added.