The fund infusion may be limited to 20 per cent of the project cost with theremaining being raised by eComServer, Nixon Patel, president and chieftechnology officer of the company, told The Financial Express.

Lucent's Conversant, a leader in the global IVR market, runs on the Unixplatform for which eComServer, one of Lucent's 11 ISVs, provides applicationinterfaces.

"We have not finalised the deal yet but hope to pen the agreement within afew weeks," Patel said. The two companies have an existing strategictechnology partnership.

This apart, eComServer will also be going in for additional infusion ofventure capital funds around March-April to finance its expansion plans overthe next year. "While the extent of fund requirement has not yet beenfinalised it is a derivative of how our plans actually evolve," he said,adding that there was also a possibility of an IPO towards the end of year2000.

eComServer has developed solutions for B2B ventures buildingcustomer-centric e-commerce and customer-contact solutions and products. Ithas tie-ups with five of the top IT companies in the world like Lucent, Sun,IBM, webMethods and Netscape.

Given the growth rates in business, the company is set to double itsmanpower at the Hi-Tec City development centre to 100 by the end of thismonth, C Satyanarayana Sarma, vice-president operations, added.

The company also plans to expand its operations in India with a marketingoffice proposed in Mumbai to cater to its financial sector clients apartfrom the possibility of another R&D centre in India in the near future,Patel said.

With the entry barriers for common consumers being quite high in India, theB2B segment presents the greatest potential for internet-based business, hesaid. However, at the same time there are several issues like security,transaction processing and social uses of the technologies which need to beaddressed, he felt.