Mumbai, May 31: Mumbai-based CityMainStreet.com India proposes to investnearly $300 million in Maharashtra to provide integrated broadband services,lay optic fibre cables and facilitate the processing of funds transfers andpre-paid services including telecommunications cellular and Internet.CityMainStreet.com India is a 51:49 joint venture between Vinay Patil andMahesh Deshmukh from Maharashtra and the Illinois-based CityMainStreet.comand. The company has a national ISP licence and it will soon begin carryingIP traffic.The integrated broadband services will be provided with the high bandwidthof 100-200 Mbps which can be used for video-conferencing and speedy transferof data.
Company managing director Vinay Patil told The Financial Express thatit has applied for national, local, long-distance and international gatewaylicences. "Our strategy is to become a leading provider of retail longdistance and Internet access, debit cards and funds transfer servicesbasically in India, Spain and Portugal," he added. The financial serviceswill not be restricted to money transfer and pre-paid life and healthinsurance.
Patil said that the company is currently holding talks with several vendorsto deploy optic fibre network in Maharashtra and data centres to support ae-commerce and hosting. The contracts with various vendors are expected tobe complete in the next 30 days. This will enable the company to begin rapiddeployment of the Mumbai Super Data Node which will be known asIndiaMainStreet.com.
The company is also negotiating a strategic agreement for access to a salesforce and customer service organisation that serves thousands of corporateand government accounts.
Patil said that CityMainStreet.com's integrated debit card is currently usedfor funds transfers and cash and carry services such as ISP, wireless,local, long distance, cable and life and health insurance and above all fortraditional credit card purchases. It has already joined hands with CasaBahia, the largest Brazilian retailer of appliances, electronics andfurniture to undertake a store-in-a-store for one stop shopping foressential services in a central location. The Casa Bahia has over280 centresin Brazil.
CityMainStreet.com has already acquired Global Interconnect CommunicationsCorporation to provide Latin Americans with the highest qualitytelecommunications services at fair prices. It is negotiating a preferredmaster carrier agreement with AT&T and "most favoured nation" agreementswith key distributors for Qwest, MCI/Worldcom, cable and wireless carriers.According to Patil the company will go in for an initial public offering orprivate placement by the end of this year.
Copyright © 2000 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.