"Trade.com is a technology leader in trade portals worldwide and equity participation from them will create a stronger bond for the technology support for our portal. Moreover, the association will provide integration to the global trade market," he said. The company has already applied to the Government for the approval and the request has been supported the Ministry of Information Technology. The Department of Economic Affairs has also supported the proposal subject to the joint venture confining its activities to the area of NBFC services and not undertaking any non-NBFC activities such as real estate consulting, on line travel services, etc. According to Government sources, the US company is picking up the 50 per cent equity for an amount aggregating to around Rs 14 lakh. The rest of the stake will be retained by two L&T group companies: L&T Finance and L&T Information Technology.

However, Mr Kelkar has added that it is only a token amount. In fact, the equity is being offered in return for the software and technology support and hosting services from the foreign company. "Technology is of utmost importance for the success of such online trade exchanges in the long term.

While L&T has a strong domain knowledge to contribute, Trade.com will chip in with the technology bit, in the venture, to make it a world class trade portal," he justified. Trade.com has developed Web trading technology platforms to facilitate global connectivity and online trading. The intellectual property rights of the software are owned by Bluestone Capital which is the parent company and based in New York. Bluestone is engaged in investment banking and securities brokerage and Trade.com delivers online financial transaction service through co-branded and privately-owned trading platforms. L&T also has plans to sell its services to some Indian and foreign banks as a hosting service for online trading where the front-end will be customized under the customer's brand name. "This will reduce the set up time substantially for a bank wanting to offer online services," said Mr Kelkar.