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Mahindra, Cisco gear-up to tap new biz

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CIOL Bureau
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MUMBAI, INDIA: In a bid to strengthen the IT offerings, India’s Mahindra Group on Tuesday announced a strategic partnership with networking giant Cisco to co-create solutions in the areas of smart cities, virtual dealership, sports, entertainment and cloud services.

This key business development comes after this year’s Davos Summit, where Mahindra Group’s vice chairman and managing director Anand Mahindra and Cisco Systems’s chief executive officer John Chambers had held talks with each other and discussed opportunities to work as strategic partners.

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“This partnership is not just for one contract but it is for many contracts, where Mahindra, Cisco and their customers are going to gain benefits and services. This is for the first time that an Indian company is moving from being simply a service provider and going to become a joint partner globally,” Anand Mahindra said.

Stressing on the common belief of the two companies, Mahindra said that Internet is going to change businesses functions, the way people work, and also the way they will provide services to customers.

“Cisco believes that Internet will change and transform businesses and Mahindra also believes the same. If companies like Cisco join hands with Indian companies they can leverage their business and can become a game changer through innovation and have a deeper reach,” Mahindra emphasized.

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For Mahindra Group, Cisco is a significant partner as the US-based firm is the biggest customer for Mahindra Satyam, its Hyderabad-based IT services arm.

“About five years back, Cisco came as a customer for Mahindra Satyam and today it is the biggest customer and now a strategic partner of Mahindra Group,” said C P Gurnani, Mahindra Satyam’s chief executive officer.

This partnership will further provider bigger scope for the group’s IT firms, namely Tech Mahindra and Mahindra Satyam, to leverage tech capabilities, skills and tap market opportunities in the areas of smart cities, virtual dealership, sports, entertainment and cloud services.

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According to Gurnani, the addressable market of these segments — smart cities, virtual dealership, sports, entertainment and clouds services — is globally estimated around US$5 billion. “The solutions will be co-created and jointly go-to-market to provide new platform and services to customers,” he added.

“These solutions will be virtual, delivered virtually over cloud and Internet; hence can be offered anywhere. However, we are targeting 4-5 different markets which include the US, Europe, India, Brazil and Middle East region, explained Gurnani.

Mahindra Group and Cisco had jointly invested around Rs.10 crore for this global partnership and the solutions are expected to be rolled out in the market in the next few quarters.

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In terms of business between the two entities, it is worth around US $100 million; however, with this strategic tie-up, this business is expected to grow 10 times from its current worth in next 10 years' time.

While, Naresh Wadhwa, Cisco Systems’ president and country manager for India & SAARC informed that the solutions will be built out of India and will be taken to global market. “The solutions will be integrated and implemented by Mahindra Group,” he added.

“Out of the estimated US$ 5 billion global market, we expect around 10-15 percent share of business from India,” Wadhwa said. For Cisco, this is the third such partnership. Prior to this, it had announced partnership with Lavasa Hill City project and Gujarat International Finance Tec- City (GIFT) for smart city project.