In its second year this year, India Internet World '99, which ended in the capital on Friday, is likely to break even this year, according to Microland chairman Pradip Kar. Billed as the largest internet event of Asia, IIW ended with over 1 lakh people visiting the three-day show. As many as 20,000 business visitors and 2,000 delegates participated in the show. "The show has come just before the winter session of Parliament which is expected to frame a legislation for electronic commerce, received tremendous response from visitors representing all walks of life," said Kar, while addressing the media. The number of small companies setting up presence in IIW proved how internet was the sign of times, he said. "See their size and scale grow next year," Kar added. The company has booked the same venue of Pragati Maidan for next four years. Next year, the show will have separate pavilions for e-commerce, internet service providers and Web content developers.

Matrix launches new service on Net

Matrix Information Services, a Kotak Mahindra company, launched a new service on the internet called `Sourcerer' aimed at all internet service providers, portal companies and corporate websites which seek to offer information content on websites. The Sourcerer service is expected to ensure relevant, credible and up-dated content to site delivered technologically to integrate seamlessly into the "look and feel" of the site, company officials said. "From news to corporate financials, yellow pages to business lists, weather to maps, horoscopes to entertainment, Sourcerer is positioned to meet the needs of India-centric portals, niche portals, e-commerce site or company websites," they claimed.

TCS to shift focus to product development

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), a major money spinner for Tata Sons, aims to increase revenues from product and product-related services to 30 per cent by the year 2002 from the current eight per cent, top TCS official said. "We intend to add another 10 more to our half-a-dozen products available now which would make TCS earn a significant portion of its revenues from product-related services," Phiroz Vandrevala, executive vice-president, TCS, said. The software major with 11,500 employees clocked about Rs 1,700 crore turnover in the 1998-99 fiscal by offering services and products in over 52 countries. The company has identified nine focus areas after restructuring itself on the lines of core businesses. They are banking, insurance, securities, manufacturing, healthcare, telecom, utilities, government, leisure and tourism. "We have marked out these areas on the basis of our domain expertise gained over years. But with internet blooming, we would have to retrain some of our employees on Web technologies."The company is also considering entering into joint ventures or to float separate companies for providing IT-based solutions like call centres and ATM.