Cisco Systems has bought 17 per cent stake for Rs 27 crore, in a digital media start-up Qyuki, founded by Oscar award-nominee Shekhar Kapur and AR Rahman. Qyuki, which was set up last year, will allow the co-creation of creative content. For example, lyrics could be posted by one user, another could score the music and a third could be a publisher who packages it and takes it to market.

"Qyuki will not be as inert as Facebook or as passive as YouTube. We want to shepherd people's creativity to create new films and score music collaboratively," said Kapur.

Cisco is the only venture investor in Qyuki, which has been valued at around Rs 160 crore on the strength of an idea alone. "Imagine the ecosystem of a rainforest, where you don't know which root belongs to which tree; we have created an open platform where people can come in and fasten themselves on the technology trunk, become better than us and take our sun," said Kapur, whose previous entrepreneurial venture was Liquid Comics, a comic book company he co-founded with Richard Branson of the Virgin group and new-age spiritual guru Deepak Chopra.