Announcing the start-up to the media in Bangalore on Monday, Onscan's chief operating officer & president Arvind Rao said the wireless Internet market today was where the Internet market was in 1993. As advanced handsets and wireless network technologies like GPRS and G3 proliferate, opportunity for firms like Onscan was growing multi-fold, he said.

Rao said new location-based applications, intelligent alert and messaging software and voice-based transaction completion were just a few of the technology solutions Onscan had developed for the market. The new applications would be rolled out during the next month, he said.

Speaking on the occasion, Infosys co-founder and director and also chairman of the board of directors of Onscan SD Shibulal said, ``We are a product development and system integration partner of the company where we hold a minority stake.''

Infosys had put in 20 per cent of the total capital in terms of transfer of intellectual property and system integration, he said.

Rao said Onscan would focus mainly on Europe, Asia Pacific and North America.`` We are expecting to break-even with a cash flow in 18 months,'' he said. The company would have a strength of 250 people in 24 months including people from Infosys.

Shibulal said Infosy's global delivery capabilities would support Onscan in implementing its solutions for new customers around the world. ``In addition, Onscan will also help us deliver new wireless solutions & application to our clients allowing them to wireless enable critical components of their core business systems such as placement, supply chain, customer relation management etc.''

Infosys deputy managing director S Gopalakrishnan said the company was in the process of incubating two to three other firms for various technologies. ``We will be floating them as separate entities once they are able to derive sufficient revenue as a stand-alone operator,'' he said.

Rao said the company was in talks with three portfolio firms and two wireless carrier firms in UK and Europe and was targeting to have 30 such customers in two years.

Onscan is targeted at developing and implementing wireless Internet solutions for the global enterprise, wireless carriers and e-commerce market segments. Onscan has developed proprietary infrastructure software enabling wireless transactions and hands-free voice-activated interactivity for mobile users.