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Look East policy seems to be the underlying theme for all major players in structured cabling. India is clearly the flavor of the season for global leaders in structured cabling, with the Indian economy on a roll.

The structured cabling industry has grown by 38% during FY '06-07 and the market is led by major world leaders like Tyco with a market share of 29%, closely followed by Systimax Solutions with a market share of 23%, and D-Link with nearly 18% market share.

But the excitement lies in the middle order with notable changes in the market positioning. Molex, with an impressive growth of over 80% grabs the fourth position. Delivering on its promise of doing above average business, TVSICS has also improved its ranking coming sixth in the list with over 50% growth rate. We also find new entrant, Clipsal Datacomm, a brand of Schneider Electric SAS, entering the list with Rs 15 crore revenue.

The overall industry size is estimated to be worth Rs 817 crore in FY '06-07 compared to previous fiscal's Rs 594 cr. The impressive growth can be attributed to the fact that apart from IT/ITeS vertical, verticals like government, educational institutes, retail and manufacturing are showing excellent growth.

India is the fastest growing market in the world today for practically every industry vertical leading to the incoming of MNCs. Data Centers have emerged as niche area for the structured cabling solution companies. There are promising business opportunities for both the fiber and cable solution providers. This is not surprising given the fact that enterprises are collapsing their data into data centers to reduce operating costs.

All the technology standards were well used in the year gone by. With the SME segment gaining momentum, one saw a lot of Cat5e installations come up. However, it is the Cat6 technology that dominated the market last year. Category 6a systems installations have been limited to backbone installations and have been successfully deployed for 10G applications where bandwidth is not a constraint.

The break up for the standards would be Cat6: 60%, Cat5e: 30% and Cat6A: 10%. Fiber has gained marginal acceptance while copper continues to command 85% of the total deployment.

Ratification of the 10G standard, increased demand for niche products in data center applications and greater customer interest in intelligent cabling systems seems to be the way forward.

Industry Stalwarts
Leading the pack in FY 2006-07 is Tyco Electronic's AMP NetConnect referred here as Tyco. It continues to lead the market growing by 43% with its revenue estimated to be Rs 234 crore. Tyco claims to have added 130,000 nodes of Intelligent Infrastructure management solutions (IIMS) in last one year. Of this most of the installations were for ITES, BPOs, KPOs, and BFSI segments. The company's upswing is attributed to a sizeable business deals for intelligent cabling systems, and high density of data centre projects.

Among the key orders bagged by Tyco, a leading BPO firm's multi-location offices in Gurgaon, Hyderabad and Jaipur were wired up using IIMS covering over 45,000 nodes. India's leading telecom provider connected 300 telephone exchanges on Tyco enabled structured cabling network, in addition to cabling in its data centers in Delhi and Mumbai. This project entailed Cat6 cabling solution for the network, high-density cable management; MPO trunks on OM3 Fiber; and zone cabling through consolidation points. Other top order was for over 30,000 drops for a leading ITeS company based in Bangalore where angled panels, IIMS, MPOS and MRJ21 were deployed. Cat6A installation was done for an ITeS customer in West India for over 15,000 nodes.

Tyco introduced several new products in the last year that include both high-density connectivity management systems and high-density cable management systems.

Systimax Solutions from CommScope commands the second largest market share with an estimated revenue of Rs 187 crore, showing a modest growth of 20% y-o-y. Mid last year it opened its executive briefing center (EBC) in Bangalore demonstrating the strategic importance of India as a market for the global leader. The center is the company's fourth such international facility that will cater to customers (from the SAARC region primarily).

Focus is on educating the customer and familiarizing them with the scope of cabling solutions. Some key accounts include a leading BPO provider that has acquired 16,000 drops, an investment and financial service provider in Gurgaon, New Delhi, has installed 8,000, and a significant order of 20,000 connects for the energy and materials industry.

D-Link has scaled up its operations with an impressive growth of 33% with the fiscal revenue at Rs 146 crore. It concentrated heavily in the tier-I and tier-II cities. It offered a wider choice for specific customer needs. Product ranges like Digi-XP800 and Opti-XP800 for mission critical and data hungry networks like data centers and the software industry, Digi-XP500 and Opti-XPU for enterprise and SME segments with huge headroom for installation margins, and Digi-XP200, Digi-X350, and Opti-XPU for conventional channel business. Efforts are on for introducing superior jacks with built-in collapsible dust covers. The company is confident of offering a range of installation-ready pre terminated fiber solutions.

Molex has unseated ADC Krone to notch up the fourth ranking in the market with a market share of around 8%. This dark horse, continues to map its impressive growth year-on-year registering an impressive revenue of Rs 70 crore, with one of the highest growth rate of over 80%.

Molex claims to have implemented over 750,000 nodes. Of these around 10% constitute intelligent cabling. Accounting for some of the leading projects, Molex completed a large campus cabling implementation for a leading Business School located in South India. It also undertook deployment of large networks for some leading top manufacturing companies in India. It has implemented three projects using intelligent cabling mostly for manufacturing companies. Although it hasn't introduced Cat6A, Molex finds the takers for Cat5e hasn't gone down with most BFSI and retail companies opting for Cat5e.

ADC Krone grew by over 38% registering revenues of Rs 36 crore in FY 2006-07. It made a significant number of installations on Cat6 and Cat6A. Some key orders include installation of CopperTen (CAT6A solution) for leading IT companies including TCS in Gurgaon and i2 Technologies. Among Cat6 installations key orders came from Shell in Bangalore and IDBI Bank in Mumbai. Neyveli Lignite Corporation based in Tamil Nadu opted for end-to end fiber solutions from ADC Krone.

Improving its ranking by two places, TVSICS has notched up 50% growth rate to clock revenue of Rs 24 crore. It scored a big leap with an order worth Rs 5 crore from ABN Amro bank to wire up offices in Delhi, Chennai and Kolkata catering to over 25,000 nodes. The company is providing cabling solution in the international airport infrastructure projects in Hyderabad, Bangalore, Kolkata and Chennai airports.

Panduit is in a makeover mode with its top management undergoing a major reshuffle early this year. The company has redefined its strategy in India with a major focus on channel partners. Its revenue is estimated to have grown by 15% to Rs 23 crore. Fiscal 2006-07 brought key orders from leading companies like Google and Computer Associates (CA). It provided end-to-end solutions for both these companies. Google's offices in Hyderabad, Bangalore, and Gurgaon were wired up with mostly Cat5e. Panduit wired up the Hyderabad office of CA using Cat5e standard.

CDT Belden improved its growth over the previous fiscal by 44% with revenue of Rs 22 crore. It installed over 160,000 nodes as of March 2007. This is another company undergoing major reorganization, but in the vertical sense. Its structured cabling division has sharpened its enterprise focus, with dedicated sales and technical team for this, and a separate team to handle its channel partners. Major clients of the fiscal include Cisco (cat5e), Yahoo, 3G, CGI, HTMT, SPI, Sutherland, etc. Most of these orders are above 3,000 nodes on Cat6. It also carried out intelligent cabling for Yahoo and Reuters. It introduced wireless solution, racks and cable management, enclosures, etc.

New entrant, Clipsal Datacomms that started its operations in April 2005 in India, has grown by 400% to register impressive revenue of Rs 15 crore. Its spread of clients is across education sector, ITeS, and infrastructure companies. It deployed over 10,000 nodes of Cat6 for Satyam Computers along with fiber backbone. Presently it is targeting the data centre and educational institution markets. Among education sector, some of the notable clients include VVIET College for campus networking of 1000 nodes; Madras Institute of Technology where it deployed 3.5 km of fiber and 350 nodes, and NIMHANS where it deployed 4,500 meter of single mode fiber. Some of its other clients include BBC, Wipro Technologies, Bangalore International airport, and Neilsoft to name a few.

Dax Networks grew by 11% clocking revenue of over Rs 10 crore. It bagged a key order from Tamil Nadu State Wide Area Network (TNSWAN) worth Rs 95 lakh, for over 18,000 nodes. TNSWAN is a Virtual Private Network linking all the Government departments to provide voice, data, and video connectivity. The other major order was also from an e-Governance project, Jharkhand State Wide Area Network (SWAN), worth Rs 20 lakh for 2,500 nodes.

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