‘India is emerging as a startup hub’

BENGALURU: India is emerging as a popular location for American startups who want to set up a second centre, according to John Chambers, serial investor and chairman Emeritus of Cisco Systems Inc. Chambers, who has invested in two Indian companies, Uniphore and Lucideus, was in Bengaluru recently to launch the new research and development centre of cloud data management company Rubrik, in which too he has invested.

In an interview, Chambers, a board advisor in Rubrik, explained why he was bullish on the Indian startup ecosystem and also spoke about his investment strategy. Edited excerpts:

As an investor, what do you look for?

I look for four characteristics. One is markets that are in a business transformation, enabled by new technology. Every market is starting to be changed by the cloud and the cloud moving to the edge. The Internet of Things (IOT) is huge and so is the security and the cyber security implications for that. The ability to move big data around with privacy and government compliance is interesting.

The second thing I look for is the chief executive officer.

They have to be CEOS who have a chance to become a world-class CEO but aren’t yet because their companies are just starting to grow. Somebody who wants to be coached and I’m more of a strategic partner with these companies. They can use my experience. The third thing I look for…i’m always customer-driven. All the companies I acquired at Cisco, the customers told me to do it. So, I really listen to customers’ view and look at what the opportunity overall is.

Then I see if they’re really close to an inflection point, and whether they can be the number one or two player and I’m really interested in number one, with more than 40% market share on it.

Then I look at the make-up of their team and their board.

How many companies have you backed so far? What kind of work are they doing?

Eighteen, about $100 million invested, all personal money. These companies are heavily into the transition—so around cloud, a large amount in security companies and security. The focus on customer experience is huge.

Which Indian companies have you invested in? What do you think about the startup ecosystem here?

There is Uniphore (speech recognition solutions firm); it was a very small startup with customers primarily here in India. Now, it is valued at $145 million, the prediction is that they’ll be a unicorn within 18 months. Their second major centre of excellence will be in the US. One that’s about two years behind is Lucideus (a cybersecurity firm). What is exciting is, almost all my startups are coming to India for their second location. Sprinklr is a top company, a unicorn, on social media and customer experience management. I was talking to them recently on establishing a huge centre of excellence here. You see Rubrik’s doing it, several others will follow shortly. India is becoming a startup hub, not just for startups, but also American firms wanting to have their second centre here. Not big companies, but the startups and that’s where the job growth occurs.