BANGALORE: This comes as a downpour in Bangalore’s realty drought. Multinational networking giant Cisco has cleared the deck for developing an additional 6.6 lakh sq ft office space with a provision of scaling it up to 2.2 million sq ft in Bangalore, making this the largest development plan by an IT major in recent times. More than the realty expansion, the move perhaps signals the fact that the IT industry may be readying to invest on future growth, according to a realty consultant who works closely with many IT companies.
Cisco currently occupies 1.2 million sq ft at Cessna Business Park, an operating SEZ developed by Bangalore-based Prestige Group and has a staff strength of around 4,000. The 6.6 lakh sq.ft facility is targeted to be completed by the second quarter of 2012. Once that happens, Cisco will be occupying 1.8 million sq ft, making the India centre its largest outside of the US. In the long term, Cisco’s India centre could even touch 3.2 million sq ft. Subash Rao, director-HR , Cisco India , says, “Cisco has designated Bangalore as our globalisation centre East and indicated that we will have 10,000-12 ,000 employees based here over the next three to five years. The idea is for 20% of the top talent in Cisco to be based here.”
