NEW DELHI: Joining the league of global technology giants who are making a beeline to invest into and nurture the booming India startup ecosystem, US networking major Cisco has committed $100 million over the next 18 to 24 months. The series of investments will include $40 million that will be used to fund early-stage and growth-stage companies in the country, and train around 250,000 students by 2020.The rest of the funds will go towards opening six new innovation labs and three centres of expertise, apart from collaborating with universities and making other investments for skill development, Cisco announced on Friday in the presence of its executive chairman John Chambers Cisco will collaborate closely with state governments on strategic initiatives, it said. "India is well positioned to lead in digitisation," said Chambers. India may have been slow to adopt technology but it is leapfrogging now as compared to other Asian countries, he said. "The entire economy is burgeoning because of digital economy," said Chambers who met Prime Minister Narendra Modi . He praised the government’s flagship projects of Make in India, Digital India and Start up India.Dinesh Malkani, president at Cisco India and SAARC, said the company has expertise in areas such as security, cloud, and the Internet of Things which it can lend to emerging companies. "There is a lot of scope for development in IP driven technology software companies in India," he said.The $143-billion firm has over 10,000 people in India. It is also setting up a manufacturing base in Pune to locally make products to "support the Digital India vision" and aims to eventually make it an export hub.Chambers backed India's move to approach the World Trade Organisation (WTO) on visa issues, but said elections are an "emotional" time for the US and stressed that one will have to be "little patient" on resolution of these issues. "Middle class in America has not seen economic appreciation for the last 15 years so when people talk about job loss or global trade agreements or H1-B immigration issues, it's an emotional time in an election year. So I very much understand. I think it's a logical move by India to bring this to the WTO and say how do you address that," he said. Earlier this month, India had filed a complaint in the WTO against the US decision to impose high fees on temporary working visas."Over time, I am a huge believer in immigration, I am a huge believer of bringing in talent from around the world," Chambers said.Asked about the issue of net neutrality , Chambers said he was a supporter of the principle as everyone should have access to the Internet. He also highlighted that regulations need to be in sync with the changes in technology. "Regulators and law makers have to understand that the decisions that they make today can't be the decisions that they would have made few years ago... They have to be educated about the implications and eventual fallouts... Governments and regulators and industry will have to come together and work together on this," he said. Several technology majors are investing in India.In February this year, Oracle global chief Safra Catz announced a $400 million expansion of their India facility, a host of incubation centres for startups and an extensive training programme to groom young talent in the country.