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