Explaining the rationale behind the strategic decision to focus on these key areas of business, new chief of H-P India, Ganesh Ayyar, told The Financial Express that these areas mark the third revolution. "Internet is the new phenomenon and H-P will work towards full utilisation of the opportunities that it will throw up," he said.

H-P is working towards creating a national "info-structure" and will seek participation of internet service providers (ISPs), telecom companies and all concerned for the purpose. On the other hand, the company will also focus on the home market through its PCs. "We will focus on end-users and hope to meet their demands too," Ayyar said.

The strategy is to cash in on the booming PC market. "We willfocus on providing information appliances, which we do not want to describe as a PC," he said. The idea is to propagate these machines as an essential educational tool. "Today, we hear a lot about e-commerce, which requires a strong and foolproof infrastructure. This can be shared by all and should be in the form of a utility pricing model. This will have to be created and maintained, which is a tremendous challenge. We expect participation of banks, financial institutions and various government agencies, technology companies and operators towards this goal," he said.

Verifone, an H-P subsidiary based in Bangalore, will play a key role in the proposed activities. "Verifone has a major presence in the smart card business and it can play a big role in India in internet banking," Ayyar said.

"We see tremendous customer expectations from us and would like to be a flexible, responsive and customer-oriented organisation," said Ayyar. He however, admitted that H-P has a lot of catching up to do in some areas.Onthe need for expansion or restructuring, he said that H-P India is in good shape and not likely to be tinkered with. Worldwide, H-P has announced a revamp, splitting into two companies looking after two different areas - computers and related areas and measurement business.

Ganesh Ayyar said that as of now the global revamp has not in any way, influenced the Indian operations. "In India, we are highly focussed and only the future can tell whether we need any kind of organisational changes," he added.