The company currently focusses on two key areas of application development for banking requirements based on its proprietary platforms - BPRO (total branch/bank process automation) and teleserver, a platform for computer telephony integration, (CTI). Datanet chairman and managing director A Prabhakar told eFE that the company was currently looking at leveraging the large scale requirements of the public sector banks across the country for its range of solutions. ``With the opening up of the banking sector, Indian banks are facing pressure to upgrade technologically. Our solutions are positioned to provide total solutions which allow the banks to offer advanced services along with economical investments,'' Prabhakar said.

Datanet's latest solution Enterprise Telebanker has been positioned to facilitate the bank to offer anytime/anywhere banking across its branches through easily accessible telephone lines.

``Earlier telebanking solutions once implemented at a branch could not be used across all its branches. Our solution will facilitate the bank to run the centralised solution across all its branches within a particular region or city,'' he said. Telebanker could currently facilitate between 50 - 100 branches of each bank, he added. As for the services, the Telebanker facilitates authorisation of utility bill payments, dial in demand draft and cheque issue, credit card payments and bill payments. Datanet is currently in talks with close to five large Indian banks to implement this solution. ``Bank of Baroda will use Telebanker across its 12 and 29 branches in Ahmedabad and Chennai respectively, while in Bangalore Syndicate Bank will go onstream across its 12 city branches,'' Prabhakar said.

Incidentally, Datanet has solution implementations (both BPRO and CTI) in close to 750 banks/branches and 350 Post Office Saving Bank branches across the country.

The company currently operates out of its only development center in Bangalore. As part of its diversification plans, Datanet is looking at entering the insurance segment in 2001 and taking its products to the global banking segment in the following year.

The compay is looking at a turnover of Rs 15 crore this fiscal compared to Rs 5 crore last year....To launch 4 e-payment solutions
As part of its thrust on e-payment, Datanet Systems Ltd is all set to launch four e-payment mechanism solutions --e-cash, e-cheque, e-DD and e-credit card -- which would be enabled by smart card technology. Once the banks adopted the solution, they will be able to offer e-payment facilities (through the Internet and telephone) across services for its customers. While paper payment instruments cannot flow easily over a network, e-payment will revolutionise modes of payment for customers, Prabhakar said. The company is currently in talks with a few banks for this solution. As part of its expansion plans, Datanet is also currently working out modalities for an IPO within this year. The approximate size of the issue was likely to be in the Rs 3 crore range, he said.