India Telecom

May 21, 2004
Hinduja TMT to record 50 percent growth in ITeS

BANGALORE -- Hinduja TMT is a leading name in the Indian telecom and IT segments. In telecom, it is operating the Fascel network, now with Hutch, claimed to be the fastest growing operator in the region. Another division, In2Cable, is into dial-up and broadband services. A third unit, IndusMedia, is operating as InCable, an MSO.

Commenting on the CAS faux pas, R. Mohan, president and CEO, IT division, Hinduja TMT (HTMT), said that consumers might have lost out on CAS. "In case it returns, there will be good revenue ramp-up. However, this remains a challenge. Several MSOs have sunk in money on set-top boxes (STBs). It will likely become a distress sale," he said. Mohan felt that broadband will take off in India, and more enterprises and the SOHO segment will move toward it. It is now showing signs of moving into the mass market. According to him, some operators, such as Reliance, were trying to move into wide area Wi-Fi. This could well drive the future trend. Next, there is lot of underutilised dark fiber. Finally, Internet on train should soon become a reality.

The ITeS segment has been growing splendidly for HTMT. The firm is likely to record 50 percent growth this year. Last year, it had sales revenue of Rs. 115 crores. Mohan added that IT services primarily came out of Ashok Leyland IT. Its major revenue now comes from the BPO side. HTMT has 1,600 agents focusing on half voice and half data services. The IT services comprises of three parts -- insurance and health care processing, voice -- contact center for telcos, and remote repair and testing.

Mohan added that IP is unreliable, leading to migration issues, although it will likely win eventually. He said: "We receive around 15,000 calls per night. As people have not taken the plunge in larger centers, it is a bit difficult to migrate. It also involves costs, as IP phones, servers, etc., would change." It is also not easy to consider changing the PSTN switch with a softswitch. "We used a softswitch, but once we reached 150-180 agents, the performance wasn't good enough. So, we went with the regular switch," he noted. Mohan added that SLAs should be in place as well.

"We believe that 80 percent of the calls should be answered within 20 seconds." Touching on the BPO segment, he added that the current lot of players was becoming more specialised, and picking horizontals and verticals. Going forward, the segment would not go away. In fact, there would be three types of companies: MNCs with captive units; large BPO players -- cross verticals, large players; and niche BPO players -- smaller verticals, adding value. "In that sense, it will be a well spread out industry segment. There will be space for everybody," he concluded.