The centre will come up in Gurgaon near Delhi and the company has taken 95,000 square-foot facility for the purpose.
The Gurgaon facility will be Ciena's first core research and development centre outside of North America, a release said.
Ciena's Gurgaon R&D Centre will focus on technologies such as storage extension and optical transport, including ultra long-haul, long-haul, regional and metropolitan applications, as well as multiservice switching, broadband access and network management.
The company has appointed Neeraj Gulati as vice president and managing director for India operations and Dimple Amin as vice president of engineering.
"Our Gurgaon development centre will enable us to capitalise on the significantly strong engineering resources in this region, and will establish Ciena in one of the fastest growing communications equipment markets in the world," Gulati said.
"Working closely with our North American-based development efforts, Ciena India will play a critical role in furthering Ciena's technology and market leadership, and in supporting our network specialist approach to delivering carrier-class solutions to customers across the globe," he said.
