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Microland.net to become a subsidiary
Mini K Joseph
As a part of its revamping exercise, the Microland Group is floating a subsidiary for Internet infrastructure services -- architecture and management of e-business infrastructure -- christened Microland.net within three months, according to Microland president (global networking services organisation) Sharad Heda. Mr Heda told The Financial Express that Microland had already identified a core team for the subsidiary and drawn up its business strategy. "Once you have the core team and business plan in place, what is required more is a good set of investors who find the business space interesting," Mr Heda said. Initially, he said, Microland.net would be a wholly-owned subsidiary of Microland Group and later the company might look for overseas partners. "The group will invest in technology and practicing businesses. But later we might go in for equity partners. But, initially, what we need is strategic alliances," he said. However, he did not reveal the size of the investment Microland was planning to pump intothe new subsidiary. Microland currently has strategic tie-ups with Cisco (networking), Hewlett Packard (networking & web infrastructure management) and Check Point (Web security). The new subsidiary will be looking for more such partners in the areas of Web publishing platforms, B2B platforms, Web servers, caching and mirroring products and platform architecture, he said. Mr Heda said, "we have identified the spaces but we are yet to locate the partners. All partners are expected to be on board within a couple of months." He said at the inception, Microland.net would have personnel strength of 400 and in a year the number would be enhanced by 300. According to Mr Heda, the new subsidiary had finalised its logo which was designed and conceptionalised by IT Space and Lintas. The logo stood for solidity, forward looking and dynamism with a byline -- your e-infra life line, he said. He said the restructuring activities of Microland -- which began during the Q1 of fiscal 2000-01 -- would be completed by the end of the fiscal. Being a holding company, Microland would incubate new companies and float them as separate entities, he said. "We will do this for all the businesses we are in. There is a lower possibility of our floating more subsidiaries in the Web-related and newer areas by March," Mr Heda said. Each of these entities will have a 10-15 member core team. Microland recently set up an Emerging Internet Technologies Lab -- Emeitlab. The company has already invested half a million dollars in the lab and a similar amount will be pumped into it soon. Copyright © 2000 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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