Bharti Broadband shifts focus to SME market

Prachi Verma in New Delhi

BHARTI Broadband Networks Ltd, the new entity within the Bharti group formed by merging the Internet, satellite and broadband services companies, is now focusing on the corporate and the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) segments.

The ratio of revenues between corporate and retail or household segments was almost 50:50 in March 2001. Now, after clearly identifying businesses as its target group, the company is aiming at a ratio of 75:25 in favour of enterprises for March 2002.

Bharti Broadband is aiming at revenues of about Rs 100 crore by the fiscal ending March 2002 and expects to grow at a rate of 50 per cent every month.

‘‘We want to be the communications specialist for the corporates and small and medium enterprises,” Bharti Broadband’s chief executive officer, Mr Ashok Juneja, told the Financial Express.

The broadband company is also ready with its enterprise network architecture called Networkthree, which will provide complete access to all the corporates through Internet, broadband and satellite, ensuring continuous connectivity.

“Networkthree is a result of the merger of the divisions and will provide a continuous connectivity to the corporates even if one of links fails,” Mr Juneja said.

Networkthree is targeted at 1,000 corporates in the country and is at present upgrading the access connectivity of its VSAT clients to bring them to the Networkthree architecture.

“Networkthree architecture will reduce network ownership costs by almost 20-30 per cent for a company,” he added.

The company has about 25 clients for its VSAT services and its roster of clients include companies like SmithKline Beecham, Ranbaxy, Escotel and LG.

BBNL is present in seven cities and intends to ride on Bharti’s basic services backbone once it goes onstream across the country.

“In the first phase of the basic services roll-out by Bharti, our company is looking at entering 50-60 cities and towns. Our growth model will be based on Bharti’s basic services,” Mr Juneja revealed.