USHACOMM EYES ACQUISITIONS IN EUROPE

Pradipta Mukherjee, Kolkata
Business Standard

UshaComm, a member company of the Rs 3,000 crore conglomerate Usha Martin Group, is looking at acquisitions in Europe, in an attempt to grow its client-base without any upfront marketing expense as well as to expand its presence in untapped markets.

According to Saugata Banerjee, executive director of UshaComm, “We are also looking at acquiring services firms in India for expanding our offerings. Though we have not put a budget for acquisitions, we will be looking at acquiring companies of similar size like ours.”

UshaComm currently has a turnover of $10 million.

“Also, with the overall economy slowdown, now the buyer situation is good for pitching a lower amount compared to what it was a year ago,” Banerjee claimed.

The company is also investing in improving its state-of-the-art billing system Unicorn.

According to Tamal Kumar Bardhan, head-marketing of UshaComm, “We are looking at introducing updated versions of our product.” For one, it will introduce a web-based client system for remote customercare. With this, a call centre can have its customer-care officers answer customer calls from home, while connected on the same call-centre network.

“This will help a lot of small and medium companies reduce their overhead and infrastructure costs but still boost sales,” Bardhan explained.

Among other features, the company is planning to introduce a pre post-paid convergence to allow telecom operators to switch pre-paid users to post-paid and vice versa during the same day.