Move Product Marketeers to India

Cisco announces $1.1 Billion investment in India, outlining a strategic emphasis on the geography.

This strategy, especially the $750 Million ear-marked for R&D, will only pay off if Cisco is able to apply sophisticated product marketing to the Indian market.

Indian IT industry has developed as a service hinterland for the US. Consequently, they know very well how to deliver projects based on other people’s specs, but the talent pool of actually coming up with original products has been, by and large, non-existent.

The good news, however, is that Cisco has over the years acquired many India-born entrepreneurs’ startups to string together its product portfolio. Many of these startups also had product marketing talent, and if Cisco can move some of these folks back to India with the express charter of inventing products for the local market, then this $750 Million will be put to good use.

Without a pool of product marketeers, however, all this money will generate is a bunch of technology solutions in search of problems!