Friday, September 26, 2008

3I INFOTECH MULLS 12,000 SELF-SERVICE KIOSKS

Shyamala Seetharamanan, Chennai
Financial Chronicle

IT company 3i Infotech will invest close to Rs 200 crore in the next 18 months to set up about 12,000 self-service kiosks across different states.

The company has won deals from state governments including Tamil Nadu, Goa, Gujarat and Haryana. The citizen service centres will help to pay utility bills and apply for certificates including those that require mandatory registrations — land, birth and death.

“About 30 per cent of the amount will be spent from internal accruals and the rest has to be raised through debt,” said Amar Chintopanth, executive director and chief financial officer of 3i.

The company will run its own centres as well as work through franchisees, he added.

About 35 per cent of 3i’s revenue comes from the domestic market and government is a major contributor, Chintopanth said.

3i offers consulting services; does turnkey projects such as setting up of data centres, and runs citizen service centres for government.

The company also offers managed IT services and transaction processing for verticals including banking and financial institutions and telecom in India.

The company has diverse IT offerings and its operations are distributed among various geographies and hence it is well equipped to tackle the general economic slowdown, he said.

Apart from India, about 25 per cent of the company’s revenue comes from US, 17 per cent from UK, 9 per cent from Far East and APAC and the rest from Middle East countries. “Our overall order book size as of June 30 was Rs 920 crore, excluding the regulars worth Rs 600 crore.

“Even without any incremental growth in orders in the next two quarters, we would still go strong and meet our target revenue guidance of Rs 1,700 crore,” he added.

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