|
|
|
|
|
            
|
STATS & STRATS What's Hot! The domestic bandwidth scene looks up as the country's first peering exchange nears fruition; Global Tele becomes a bullish VC; and call centre major Davox comes, well, calling. Team BT e-lead
Please greet the newest term in the Indian dotcom lexicon-peering. With India's first Internet exchange, INIX Public Peering Point Pvt Ltd, set to roll out, peering bandwidth will finally become a reality in India. Unlike now, when even domestic Internet traffic between ISPs has to be routed through international gateways, once the Internet Exchange (also called public peering point) is in place, domestic internet traffic will be exchanged in the country itself, saving ISPs valuable money spent on buying international bandwidth. INIX is being promoted by international bandwidth exchange, Bandx. However, all that Pran Mehra, CEO of Bandx's Indian ops, would say is that the project is nearing completion. e-news
Money, some folks say, will come sooner or later. Some Indian dotcoms are discovering this now, courtesy Global Tele-Systems, which through its associated companies, has picked up stakes in an agriculture and a travel portal, for around Rs 8-10 crore. However, Global Tele refused to identify the two portals, which it has added to its portfolio. In fiscal 1999-2000, Global Tele-Systems made some investment in The Voice Company and Razorfinish.com. Global Tele's partners in this venture was 3I, a UK-based venture capital firm. Here comes the hotstepper. Davox, which provides technology to more than 75 per cent of all call centres in India, including GECIS, Spectramind, Global, and iSewa, is planning to set up its own call centre in the country by August 2001. The US-based company is also looking for solutions partners in India to provide professional services on customer interaction systems. It has already tied up with Global Tele-Systems and Futuresoft and is believed to be in talks with a couple of other Indian companies. The proposed centres would be based in either Delhi or Mumbai, depending on the partner. According to a report by Frost & Sullivan, the company has close to 40 per cent market share in pan-Asian call centre outbound systems. Next in the marketshare hustings was Lucent with 23.8 per cent, while E-share commanded a respectable 15.6 per cent. The leviathan is worried about its mindshare. Even as it stumbles ahead with its plans for the divestment of VSNL, the Department of Disinvestment has appointed a specialist financial advertising agency, Sobhagya, to develop a communication strategy and handle the disinvestment process. The agency will advise and assist VSNL's management in highlighting the benefits of privatisation to employees. The move comes in the wake of reports that the latter had threatened to go on strike expressing concerns over the divestment process. Balco is still fresh in the minds of many! Q&A Vinay Chajlani, CEO, Webdunia, talks to BT's Vinod Mahanta on, what else, a vern perspective of the Internet economy.
So, how is the vern space developing? I think it's high time we got it enabling done in the vernacular. That's the only way to ensure that the masses reap the benefits, whether it's e-governance, retailing, or banking. But even those who talk and write in vern prefer surfing in English... I think it has to evolve. It is more a matter of getting the product right. I think it's a matter of inventing and innovating to get the product right. The entire etiquette/environment has not evolved. What are the key issues that are holding back progress in this space? The key issue is that the proven products are not yet there. Besides, we need more entrepreneurial approach. Non-availability of key products like speech-recognition tools, OCR (Optical Character Recognition), and text-to-speech convertors, etc also serve as some bottlenecks. Why have you branched out into three more languages? The needs are very different, so we took this route. Each one of the four sites has its own identity and has content tuned to the needs of the community. For example, our Malayalam channel, Weblokam, focuses news from the Middle-East. You are using lots of offline activities to educate people, like the Kumbh Mela initiative... Well, vernacular users in this country have been carrying this heen bhavna (inferiority complex) that the computer is not for them. Our initiatives are a part of educating them and getting them to the IT turf. Many leading sites have started giving vernacular content... Well, they know that they will lose certain customers if they cannot offer vernacular. They are experimenting. 1 2 |
|
Issue Contents Write to us Subscription Syndication INDIA TODAY | INDIA TODAY PLUS | COMPUTERS TODAY |
TEENS TODAY
© Living Media India Ltd |
 |
 |
