(This story originally appeared in on Apr 18, 2017)

NEW DELHI: Network equipment maker Cisco said it wants to make India a global export hub for its hardware products and is working with its global component making partners so that they too set up shop in the country to facilitate this plan.The $50-billion company, for whom India has been one of the best-performing countries globally over the past four-five quarters, launched its first Made-in India product last month, a router, one of the most popular products in its portfolio globally."We are working with the global ecosystem providers to set up shop in India and as they start moving in, costs will be less as we will not have to import the same components that are needed to manufacture the product," Dinesh Malkani, president of Cisco India and Saarc told TOI.Malkani said he was bullish about manufacturing in India, given policy changes lately. "The government has made progress, it is collaborative, and GST will simplify the process. What we need is to encourage industries such as the chipmakers to set up shop," he said.The router, one of the six products that Cisco has planned to make in India from its manufacturing base in Pune, is expected to help small and medium businesses ( SMBs ) across multiple industries.SMBs make up about 20% of Cisco's business in the country and the company claims it to be the fastest growing.For SMBs, the company has launched Cisco Start, a small kit priced at about Rs 5,000 to help digitise their businesses. "We have established proper distribution in the country through tier-1 resellers, trained and certified them and set up an India supply chain through distributors so that we can reach out to the smallest SMBs and provide them collaboration tools, contacts, networks, security and servers," Malkani said.Cisco manages deep engagements with six-seven states across 50 projects under its Country Digitisation Acceleration programme. It has set up six innovation centres in Bengaluru, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Jaipur and Gujarat to co-innovate with customers, startups and partners to build new solutions and products.The company , which files two patents per week in India, also started a Cyber Range Lab in Gurugram, to provide highly specialised technical training workshops to help security staff build the skills and experience necessary to combat new-age threats. It has similar such centres in US, Poland and Japan.