"While we have tied up with jobsdb.com, South-East Asia's largest jobs portal, we are also seriously looking at a travel property to add to our online job site jobsmantra.com", N Arjun, CEO, Bharti BT said.He was talking to the The Financial Express on the sides of a press conference to announce the launch company's ISP operations in Hyderabad.

"The aim is to be among the top four portals by March 2001", he said informing the jobsdb.com tie-up would rollout by May 20th. The company was also looking at strengthening shopmantra.com and midwicket.com soon.

Mantra Online is the only Indian ISP to provide a private key number (PKN), facility on the Internet with offline registration by consumers. This is more secure than a credit card transaction on the Net, Arjun said.Infact, in the near future, the ISP would setting up its own payment gateways and get into e-trade and e-tailing apart from offering mobile Internet and data mining services on mantraonline.com, he said.

Strengthening the portal presence will add considerably to the revenue streams of the company with all the four Cs of the Net- connectivity, content, commerce and community being provided by it, he felt.

Some of the other strategic tie-ups Mantraonline has are with `looksmart' for a search engine and Web directory, properties alliance with indiaproporties.com, with Trend Micro for providing an on-line anti-virus programme for subscribers and with Amadeus for flight, hotel and car rental information and reservations.

Firm unveils ISP services in HyderabadÎBharti BT Internet Ltd has launched its ISP operations in Hyderabad increasing presence to 17 cities, including 12 in Madhya Pradesh.The ISP, which has a subscriber base of 70,000, will be adding ten more cities to the list by September this year, N Arjun CEO, BBIL told mediapersons recently. The company has invested about Rs 50 crore while a total investment of Rs 100 crore is planned over the next 12 months, he said.

"We hope to have a 20 per cent share of the market within the first year of operations in Hyderabad which has 12 operating ISP", he stressed. "We are looking at doubling our subscriber base over the next six to eight months with greater aggressiveness in retailing as well as expanding to more cities shortly", he said. The company will be setting up eight international gateways the rollout of which would start by July 15 and be over by August 15, he added.