According to Pyramid director Umaesh Khaitan, the portal aims to provide information on copper trading worldwide. "We have tied up with Reuters and S&P for the information link. By subscribing to the site, the international copper community can acquire latest buy and sell copper in any form at a single source," he said. The company is also planning to set up similar portals for other non-ferrous metals.

Other offers include private conferenceroom facilities for corporates over the Net. Corporates can have a password protected conference faciiity, which can be used like a video-conferencing or any other mode.

On Wednesday, Pyramid launched Scanfax, an office communication software that integrates the fax with the economy of using e-mail. According to Khaitan,the software, which was designed and developed in association with Scansoft Inc, aims to reduce the cost of communication and increase working efficiency among corporates using the internet. Scansoft is a subsidiary of the Xerox Corp of US. Scanfax has been priced at Rs 9,500 per scanner version and Rs 2,500 for each node license.

Pyramid, which was set up in 1998 by the Rs 400-crore Satya group, is planning to sell 10,000 units of Scanfax and has targeted a turnover of Rs 10 crore this year, Khaitan said. "Our target for 2002 is Rs 100 crore which will come from all these new ventures," he said.

The company has added new features to the product. Using Scanfaxes' own network of servers, the cost of sending a standard sized document to any destination in the world can be cut down by as much as 25 per cent as compared to DoT rates, Pyramid claims.