Cisco Systems will increase its workforce in India by about 60% over the next four years as part of its strategy for emerging markets, according to industry report.

This is believed to be the first big-scale recruitment by Cisco in India after it announced a 15% cut in global workforce in mid 2011. Most of the hiring will be for the company's research and development centre in Bangalore, which is its largest outside the US. The IT giant is increasingly using the Bangalore centre for innovating products for emerging markets such as India, China and Brazil.

Sanjay Rohatgi, Sr. VP said, "By 2015, we will be ramping up from 7,500 people to about 12,000 people, increasing workforce out of Bangalore. We want to innovate faster and at the right price point for emerging countries because the growth will happen in this part of the world now."

Rohatgi added, "Cisco is working with service providers on leveraging 3G by offering services such as e-education with the aim to take video and data services to consumers and enterprises. The telcos have direct access to Cisco's Bangalore engineering team, which enables them to get customised products."

In India, the $43-billion (revenue) Cisco will focus on growth areas such as mobile packet core, cable digitisation, cloud services and collaboration with the government.

The company has claimed to be hopeful of closing one or two major long-term evolution (LTE) contracts by the middle of 2012, as broadband wireless access (BWA) services are expected to begin by the year-end. Over the next three years, a third of the total revenue of Cisco's service provider vertical will come from these contracts.