Cisco will invest $100 million in India to spur digital connectivity

Networking giant Cisco has committed to investing more than $100 million in India to support the country's digital connectivity initiatives.

The investment will span a bevy of research and technology organizations with the aim to boost India's GDP growth, create jobs, support infrastructure and move more services online.

Cisco plans to direct roughly $40 million of its total investment into funding innovative technology startups in the region.

The company also plans to support the launch of an "Internet of Everything" research center in Visakhapatnam, part of Andhra Pradesh, and the Technology Center of Excellence and Research Lab in Tirupati.

"Andhra Pradesh is a blueprint for a digital state for other states to follow," said Cisco chairman John Chambers. "Our investment is a commitment to help the state develop an ecosystem of talent, entrepreneurship and innovation to drive growth, generate jobs, diversify the economy and support sustainable growth."

For Cisco, an international investment in digital technology has become a more common event. Earlier this month, Cisco committed to invest $500 million to accelerate digitization in Germany. Prior to that in January, Cisco said it would pump $100 million into Italy's digital technology push.

But India in particular, with its thousands of remote villages still without reliable Internet access, is considered one of the most untapped growth markets in the world. Last year, Microsoft's Indian-born CEO Satya Nadella offered to bring Internet connectivity to 500,000 of India's villages, while Google CEO Sundar Pichai pledged to provide high-speed public Wi-Fi in 400 train stations across across the country.