Indian networking industry records ‘commendable’ growth

NEW DELHI: The networking equipment market in India has just emerged from a

not so good fiscal, according to Voice&Data's Networking Masters 2001

survey, the only independent networking industry survey conducted in India. This

annual survey gauges the performance of networking equipment and network

integration services market in the country.

The Indian networking industry for the period 2000-2001 had Rs 3,217 crore-worth

network equipment sales and Rs 1,675 crore worth of network integration services

sales. Total network equipment sales can be further broken up as Rs 2,751 crore

worth NICs, hubs, LAN and WAN switches, structured cabling, router, RAS, dial-up

and leased line modems, access multiplexers, VSATs and wireless LAN equipment.

This apart, fiber-optic SDH equipment worth Rs 466 crore were sold. From a

pure LAN perspective (where only products such as NIC, hubs, LAN swichtes, and

structured cabling go) the market size in fiscal 2000-01 was around Rs 931 crore.

The growth patterns recorded was 53.7% in the LAN/WAN segment (from Rs 1,790

to Rs 2,751 crore), 28 per cent in LAN segment exclusively (from Rs 729 to Rs

931 crore), and 64 per cent in network integration services (from Rs 1,020 to Rs

1,675 crore). These growth rates are considerably less than the growth seen in

the previous year.

According to Ibrahim Ahmad of Voice & Data, who is heading the Networking

Masters 2001 project, "Such a show is commendable, considering the general

slowdown that is being felt, and the below par performance by telecom/ISP

sector. Expectations, as in the past, are high expecting a near 100 per cent

growth with major networking purchases, he added.

The two fastest growing segments in networking equipment industry, that fed

the growing infrastructure of telecom/ISPs during the previous fiscal, the

Remote Access Servers (RAS) and leased line modems grew only 21 percent and 22

percent in fiscal 2000-01. This is in contrast to the 385 per cent and 406 per

cent recorded in 1999-00, respectively.

However, the banking and financial sector acted as a perfect counterfoil,

showing urgency to deploy networks. The IT sector in its own way contributed

significantly through deployments from outsourced development centers, call

centers and Internet Data Centers (IDCs). Incidentally, Voice & Data had

forecast a growth of over 60 percent for the networking this year.

Here are some of the key findings:

• The market for networking equipment industry, including NICs, hubs, LAN
  
  switches, structured cabling, router, RAS, dial-up modems, leased line
  
  modems, WAN switches, access multiplexers, VSAT equipment and wireless LAN
  
  equipment, was Rs 2,751 crore in 2000-01.
• The network integration industry registered revenue of Rs 1,675 crore
  
  during the period under review.
• The networking products distributors achieved networking sales worth Rs
  
  687 crore.
• Cisco Systems has emerged as the largest networking company in India. With
  
  a sales revenue of Rs 765 crore in the last fiscal, it stood high over the
  
  rest of the industry. Cisco, Enterasys Networks, D-Link, 3Com and Fibcom
  
  were the top five networking firms in 2000-01, in terms of sales revenue.
• Wipro Infotech marched ahead of the others in the network integration
  
  category with NI revenue of Rs 269.7 per cent, registering a 110 per cent
  
  growth over fiscal 1999-00.
• Along with Wipro, Datacraft, HCL Comnet, CMC Ltd and IBM Global formed the
  
  elite top five Network Integrators (NIs) club during the last fiscal.
• The top five networking product distributors during the last fiscal were
  
  MRO Tek, Tech Pacific, Ingram Micro, i2I Media and Apcom Computers.