At Cisco for Startups, innovation and collaboration form the DNA of our mission to touch the lives of people with technology.
Program offerings
Mentorship
Cisco for Startups offers internal mentors and external experts with vast industry experience, providing transformative guidance for startups on their growth journey.
Tech platform and support
Leverage Cisco's cutting-edge technologies—from IoT to Meraki Wireless. Gain access to a robust platform, empowering startups with tools like Cisco IoT, Edge Intelligence, and more.
Ecosystem visibility
Cisco for Startups ensures global visibility, showcasing startups' solutions to a diverse audience for comprehensive exposure.
Co-working space
Access a world-class co-working space within the Cisco campus, fostering collaboration and idea exchange among startups.
Cisco certified partner
Become a certified Cisco partner, unlocking extended access to sales teams. Gain opportunities for PoC/demos and collaborative solution development.
Investor connect
Forge connections with angel investors and venture capitalists, tapping into new opportunities for your startup's growth.
Lab support
Cisco's lab provides an immersive environment for startups to launch ideas alongside customers and partners, fostering innovation in cutting-edge technology practices.
Redefine the modern business dynamics with Cisco for Startup's comprehensive solutions, allowing you to reshape success through Innovation, Connectivity, and Efficiency.
Startup enablement platforms
Cisco STEP
Startup engagement platform
STEP is an enablement platform for Cisco accelerated startups to collaborate with mentors, investors, and ecosystem partners. The platform works as a bridge in bringing all these entities together to explore opportunities and possibilities.
STEP keeps the startups abreast of all the Cisco for Startups initiatives. Also, it enables them to network with subject matter experts and ecosystem partners – all through an intuitive and easy-to-use dashboard.
Cisco Kalki
Metaverse for startups
Kalki is a VR-based interactive and immersive experience platform created by Cisco for Startups to demonstrate the capabilities, solutions and products developed by the startup partners with Cisco’s architecture across verticals.
It is a collaboration platform allowing the users to meet, greet, talk and interact in the virtual world. This platform enables startups, sales, partners, and marketing teams to showcase joint partner solutions to customers. The experience can be optimized using a VR headset (Oculus Quest) and works on Windows and Macintosh machines.
India Technopreneurship Series
ITS offers a series of workshops blending business and technology. Culminating in a pitch day, it provides emerging startups and innovators with an exclusive chance to present to corporate leaders for potential entry into the distinguished Cisco startup ecosystem.
If you are interested in exploring the series in your city or state, connect with us for potential collaboration.
Cisco startup partner roadmap
Discovery
Scoping and training
Product exploration and deep dive
Solution integration and validation
Explore new ventures with Cisco, your partner in innovation.
Customer pilot
Joint go-to-market
Register solution and onboard as Cisco partner
Explorer
Explore synergies with Cisco technology stack to develop solutions across different use cases.
Builder
Build, integrate and validate solutions powered by the Cisco technology stack.
Scaler
Scale up solutions and explore business opportunities across different verticals and geographies.
Tech fuel for startup growth
Focus areas
Power hybrid work
The global pandemic has changed the definition of work significantly. The future of work involves more employees working remotely — whether permanently or in a hybrid model. IT has to use the most reliable, secure, and productive technology to empower their teams to work from anywhere, on any device.
Reimagine applications
In the digital realm, apps drive business, and experiences are key. The post-pandemic landscape demands IT teams to rethink app design and deployment for seamless, impactful experiences.
Transform infrastructure
The network is the nervous system that allows everything to work together in today's connected world but it is changing. Cloud is the new data center, internet is an extension of the enterprise network and the complexity of evolving networks poses new challenges for businesses.
Secure the enterprise
A security breach is a business risk; it is not merely an IT issue. The shift to an increasingly remote workforce using unsecured devices from unsecured home networks has expanded the attack surface exponentially. Applications and data that span distributed architectures — may not be under an organization's control — make security more complex.
Cisco solutions
We leverage partner technologies and Cisco products to develop integrated solutions for industries across the spectrum.
A world of co-innovation possibilities
Finance
Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI) is the industry's umbrella term for companies that provide a range of relevant financial products or services.
This includes universal banks that provide a range of financial services or companies that operate in one or more of these financial sectors. BFSI comprises commercial banks, insurance companies, non-banking financial companies, cooperatives, pension-funds, mutual funds and other smaller financial entities.
Education
Education is going through a rapid pace of technology change and competition is intensifying in higher education globally. From teaching and learning, to research and administration, all aspects of education are experiencing disruptive innovation.
Some of the dominant themes across this industry are network platforms, cyber security, digital collaboration, IoT and analytics.
Coworking space
A coworking space is an environment that is designed to accommodate people from different organizations to share an office space. By using common infrastructure and services, such as phone, electricity, equipment, utilities, security, receptionist etc., the cost of running an independent office is saved.
This industry runs on a Space-as-a-Service model. The clients are charged on the basis of per square feet of space and per port basis.
Manufacturing
Manufacturing has emerged as one of the prominent high-growth sectors and is expected to be an engine for economic growth and jobs. With unprecedented growth, the pace of transformation in manufacturing has drastically accelerated to meet the needs of today’s changing world.
Healthcare
Healthcare includes various services like hospitals, diagnostics, and pharma. It comprises public (secondary, tertiary, and primary health centers) and private sectors, primarily found in tier I and II cities with different hospital sizes.
Hospitality
The hospitality industry encompasses lodging, food, travel, events, and emerging experiences. Technology is a crucial component, not only managing operations but also enhancing the guest experience.
Retail
Retail and E-commerce comprise companies selling goods and services to consumers, bridging manufacturers and end consumers for easy comparison and selection based on price and offerings.
