Tata Tele targets companies with mobile solutions
The Hindu Business Line — December 27, 2006

Tata Teleservices (TTSL) is intensifying its marketing plans to capture the corporate market through its new value added service 'Tata Indicom Enterprise Solutions'. Launched in April, Enterprise Solutions enables wireless connectivity between a corporate office network and a handheld device. This includes providing all office software such as e-mail, ERP solutions, databases and projects on a handheld device through a secured CDMA-based wireless network.

According to Uttam Soni, vice-president and head (enterprise business), Tata Teleservices, this mobile office solution will help improve productivity of companies that depend on real time data to make decisions.

New service

Soni was in Chennai to promote the new service among corporates. The company has identified 60,000 corporates for providing this service. Of these, about 1,200 are companies with a pan-India presence, 10,000 are state-level corporates and the rest are small and medium enterprises. About 14 industries under five broad verticals have been identified including FMCG, food and beverages, hotels, BPO, steel, finance, pharmaceutical, automobile, banking and logistics.

Tie-up with TCS

Every industry has a different mobility requirement and the company will cater to this with different solutions, said Soni. To provide these solutions, TTSL has tied up with Tata Consultancy Services for developing software for the solution while it will provide the telecom infrastructure. "We will also partner with other companies to gain domain knowledge," said Soni.

He said the Tata Group companies such as Tata Steel and Tata Motors would share domain knowledge on their respective industries. TTSL has also tied up with handset manufacturers Nokia, LG and Samsung to offer mobile phones that can incorporate mobility solutions. Currently, 12 phone models ranging between Rs 3,000 and Rs 22,000 can incorporate mobility solutions, said Soni. When asked if all tie-ups were based on revenue sharing, he said the nature of the tie-ups was yet to be finalised. He also declined to share TTSL's investment on infrastructure and bandwidth for this venture.

Though the rates for the service are yet to be fixed, TTSL expects to end this fiscal with revenues of Rs 600 crore from mobility solutions. "Our strategy is to focus on increased average revenue per user (ARPU) value. At minimum investment, this service will give us an ARPU of Rs 1,100-1,200 as opposed to the Rs 110-130 that all other mobile services fetch," said Soni.

Focus on improvement

He [Soni] said the company would not look at merely having more number of corporate users, but focus on improving its service penetration among industries. Tariff structures are expected to vary depending on the complexity of solutions required by industries.