The S. Kumars Group, an established textile and clothing company, recentlyfloated S Kumars.com on the stock exchange in the western Indian city ofPune to spearhead the group's entry into information technology. Thestrategy is to link computers at 30,000 S. Kumars clothing retailers anddistributors nationwide and a further 20,000 franchisees through VSAT, orvery small aperture terminal, satellite links to create a marketplace forservices ranging from classified ads to educational courses to buying farmtools and commodities. The cost of the initial phase of installing theseelectronic kiosks in 1,008 towns will be $230 million.

``Rs 50 crore ($11.5 million) of that will be advertising in the firstyear,'' said Kasliwal. Promotional campaigns to lure franchisees will beginthis month, and the network is slated to be operational by the middle of2000, he said. The anticipated ad budget will place S Kumars.com among thetop spenders in India, after brands such as Coca-Cola, Pepsi and Colgatetoothpaste.

S Kumars.com intends to build its own intranet, a closed data-transmissionand computer-network system, to circumvent India's low telephone and PCpenetration to bring e-commerce to the broader middle-class population,particularly outside of large cities. Even within urban areas such as Bombayand New Delhi, S Kumars.com envisages strong demand for access to computerdatabases, which it is wooing as content providers. So far, creators of aWeb-enabled database of court judgments have signed on. Many Indian lawyersdon't own computers or extensive legal libraries.

Kasliwal said S Kumars.com initially is aiming for 50,000 kiosks by nextSeptember and predicted the network will expand to 200,000 franchises in5000 locations within three years.

(The Asian Wall Street Journal)