Inaugurating the 71st centre (an extension counter in Chennai) the bank's senior executive vice-president MN Gopinath said that 50 more ATMs would be added to the existing 87 by March 2000 and networking would be in place by October this year. The bank sources its machines from two companies NCR and Diebold HMA, but the switching technology for the networking is to be provided by NCR.

ATMs would be a major focus area of the bank and will be taken to smaller mofussil towns as was done inGobichettypalayam and Periyanayakapalayam, near Coimbatore. These measures are expected to make the bank see a 100 per cent growth in the retail segment. The bank pioneered the idea of installing ATMs in corporate offices to get bulk accounts and retail business currently comprises only 25 per cent of its activity, but the latter is expected to see a steady growth.

The networking of ATMs is to cost Rs 5 crore, while ATMs cost Rs 13 lakh each. By end October, all ICICI Bank ATMs will be linked to the switching equipment in Mumbai and get routed to the servers.

While ATMs continue to fulfill basic requirements of withdrawals and deposits, the bank is also giving thrust to Internet banking (giving information on deposits etc) and call centres. Banking through the net was set up last year primarily to target NRIs, and the initial response was limited.

However, in the last four months, there has been a phenomenal jump in Internet banking with 200 responses at least a day, and 70 per cent from the domesticpopulace sourcing information, Gopinath said.

The response was more from software companies, though ATMs in corporate offices have aided in facilitating greater use of the net and in trying out other products and services of the bank. Call centres already available in Mumbai are to come up in other places such as Delhi, Pune, Chennai in the next five months.