Cisco, Wipro top V&D’s Networking Masters survey

NEW DELHI: Cisco Systems and Wipro Infotech are the top networking companies in India, according to the results of ‘Networking Masters 2000’, a nation-wide survey conducted by Voice & Data, a Cyber Media India Ltd publication. The two companies emerged as the top companies in networking products and services categories respectively, on the basis of their networking sales revenue from India during the fiscal 1999-2000.

In all, there were 21 awards given away–10 each in the products and services categories, and a special ‘Waiting in the Wings’ award was given to Scientific Atlanta. Dewang Mehta, President, NASSCOM gave away the awards at a special ceremony organized in the capital.

Cisco with a revenue of Rs 360 crore was followed by D-Link (Rs 147 crore), which was at number five last time. 3Com was at third place with Rs 140 crore. In the network integrators category, Datacraft RPG (Rs 94.45 crore) was behind Wipro. Crompton Greaves moved up from sixth position last year to third position this year, with a revenue of Rs 68 crore.

According to the Networking Masters 2000 survey, the entire networking products including routers, switches, hubs, NICs, structured cabling, Remote Access Server (RAS), modems, multi-plexers, VSATs and wireless radio equipment, is estimated at Rs 1790 crore. The market for hubs, NICs, switches, routers and RAS, for which Voice & Data has estimates for the previous fiscal stands at Rs 1010 crore, up 88 percent from from Rs 537 crore in 1998-99. The services (network integration) market in 1999-00 grew by 85 percent to Rs 1020 crore, as compared to Rs 550 crore in the previous fiscal.

The growing Internet services market is seen as the prime growth catalyst for the networking industry in general. According to the survey results, the performance of almost all networking products during the last fiscal was influenced by the growing usage of the Internet. This phenomenon is clearly visible in the performance of the various product categories. Products directly linked to the Internet–RAS products and leased line products grew by leaps and bounds. Products which had more to do with LANs–NICs and hubs showed lackluster growth.

Market wise, the largest user of networking products was telecom (31 percent), followed by Banking and Finance (24 per cent), IT (20 per cent) and manufacturing (15 per cent).