Advantage Tata

Tata Indicom Enterprise Business Unit (TIEBU), the specialized sales and
marketing team of the different telecom ventures under the Tata Group focusing
on the enterprise segment, has crossed the Rs.500 crore milestone in incremental
orders booked during the year since its inception in April 2003. The entities
initially involved in the consortium were VSNL (national, international and
Internet services), Tata Teleservices, Tata Teleservices (Maharashtra) (access
services across 6 circles in the country; to be extended across 11 new circles)
and Tata Internet Services (corporate data services), while Tata Net (VSAT
services) came to the board at a later date. 

TIEBU is conceptualized to be the single point interface through which the
different companies deliver telecom services to key enterprise customers of the
Tata Group across India. On behalf of the five companies, TIEBU targets
enterprises with sizable telecom spends and offers them customized end-to-end
voice and data solutions, under the Tata Indicom brand. Having started with
400 existing accounts from the participating companies, during the course of the
year TIEBU has added more than 100 virgin accounts. While other service
providers like Bharti and Reliance have been till now only talking about their
enterprise strategy, Tatas through TIEBU have thus walked the talk and bagged Rs
500 crore into the group kitty.

The biggest beneficiary of the incremental annualized orders booked by TIEBU
is VSNL, with its share constituting 69%, followed by Tata Teleservices
(including the Maharashtra Circle) (21%), Tata Internet Services (7%) and Tata
Net (3%). Not surprisingly, VSNL is the greatest beneficiary of these order
bookings, adding Rs 345 crore to its topline during the year from the enterprise
segment. The order bookings witnessed a distinct skew towards data with 84% of
revenues coming from the segment and 16% coming from voice. Within data itself
while 55% was contributed by IPLC, rest came equally from Frame Relay and IP-VPN.
The bandwidth intensive IT, ITES and BFSI industries were primarily the core
sectors, which have contributed to TIEBU’s incremental revenues. The key
products that witnessed growth during the year include IPLCs & E1 PRIs in
data and DELs in voice.

While Bharti’s M-business solutions and Reliance’s enterprise offerings
through IndiaMobile and IndiaPhone are geared up towards the same clientele,
Tatas with TIEBU might just have stolen the first march.

Rajneesh De in Mumbai