A full-fledged software solutions services division is expected to start functioning by next month, the company's director (business development) Ravi Krishnamoorthi told The Financial Express. The division will have over 300 software engineers. The company is in the process of finalising the appointments of new software engineers which it expects to complete by the end of this month. Initial investment is estimated to be around Rs 40 crore.

The biggest project is the proposed Rs 100-crore facility for the manufacture of optical memory cards (smart cards) for which the company has an exclusive tie-up with Lasercard Corporation of the US. Krishnamoorthi said these cards should actually be called "smarter" cards since they are much superior in all respects to the conventional smart cards like magnetic stripe card and chip card.

Shonkh is also investing about Rs 40 crore for expanding the manufacturing capacity for production of information dissemination systems (kiosks) and computerised medical equipments. The company recently launched the first-of-its-kind endoscopy equipment which is being marketed under the brandname "Endokit MRG" (medical report generator). The product has a monitor, an in-built printer, back-up devices, embedded software controls and report generation software, Krishnamoorthi said. The same technology is being used for manufacture of another new product related to ultrasound technique.

The information dissemination systems being manufactured by the company are industrial PC-based very rugged systems, he said. The company has recently developed kiosks for AIDS disease which will be known as "Greeniosk".

According to him, Shonkh has developed the world's fastest information retrieval technology named "D-pol" and "Ladder" technique. The new technology almost doubles the speed of the computer and information retrieval without loading any additional hardware. It also increases the data storage capacity between 53 to 98 per cent, depending upon the configuration of the machine, he said.

He said the optical memory cards are counterfeit proof as these cannot be broken into and neither can the existing records be erased while chip card and magnetic stripe cards (generally used in credit cards) can be tampered with.