KK Shetty, country manager, AMP Netconnect

What is growth rate of the structured cabling business in India and how do you expect it to grow in the future?
Currently the market should be around Rs 300-350 crore with a growth rate of 18-20%. But for Tyco, it has been one of the best years and with a very high growth rate. For the industry till 2008-2010 no problem is foreseen in the growth rate. I expect minimum 12% growth, which may go up to 36%, based on various conditions. The growth of structured cabling can be gauged by the PC sales and developments in the IT sector. If the finance minister talks of eight mn jobs in the IT sector, then we have a reason to cheer. Because even by conservative estimates, a 12% growth will take place.

KK Shetty

Which market verticals are buying structured cabling?
Vertically IT & ITeS and the financial institutions are the biggest buyers. They are followed by the government and the corporates. The education institutions are also not far behind. The manufacturing sector has been laying low. But they are showing signs of revival and are expected to be big buyers in next couple of years. More than anything for us 40 % is repeat business. Geographically Bangalore is still the biggest market but Chennai and Kolkata are fast picking up followed by places like Hyderabad, Gurgaon, Noida, Chandigarh, Jaipur, Pune and Mumbai. In a nut shell where ever infrastrcture is being built structured cabling is showing good growth. Especially in places where data center, disaster recovery sites and software development centers are coming up.

How do you see BiCSi increasing the market acceptance of trained installers?
BiCSi would certainly improve installation standards in India as they are active in training and educating industry professionals. However, Tyco has been putting money into training centers and educating installers and customers on its own. We already have 1,000-1,200 trained installers in India. More over our focus has been on better design and world class installation rather than pushing products in the market. We try to improve quality and add value through these centers. If BiCSi would add value over and above what Tyco has being doing it is good. But over all it is a good effort at least people are waking to the fact of improving installation quality.

Like other segments of networking where the focus is more on services, will structured cabling also move towards this?
The market is moving towards intelligent infrastructure and its integrated management. Real time logs of unutilized cable capacity, online status report and computer based management would be the call of the day. We work with our integrator partners for services. But slowly the customers are defining the service level from the installations being made and market is becoming more SLA based.