Satyam to invest Rs 160 cr on e-com initiatives

Satyam to invest Rs 160 cr on e-com initiatives
PRESS TRUST OF INDIA

NEW DELHI, SEPT 10: Nazdaq-listed Satyam Infoway today said it would invest upto Rs 160 crore over the next one year to expand its Internet operations including rolling out new e-commerce strategies in the country.

"With the hotting up of the internet market, Satyam has decided to invest about Rs 160 crore for strengthening its infrastructure and for rolling out new brand building exercises," president and chief operating officer of Satyam Infoway, George Zacharias said.

Zacharias said that part of the investments would also be channelised for chalking out new Business-to-Business (B2B) and Business-to-Consumer (B2C) strategies to support vanilla internet access services and added that Satyam would pump in the entire amount by September 2001.

Zacharias, quoting industry analysts, said that Satyam still had about $75 million left from its two American Depository Receipt (ADR) issues totalling $235 million.

"The company would be supporting the upcoming investments through the amount it has retained from the issues after paying off the IndiaWorld acquisition," he said.

It may be recalled that last year Satyam acquired Rajesh Jain's IndiaWorld.com for about Rs 499 crore making the deal the biggest one in the history of acquisition of Indian Internet firms.

The company is also looking at the option of a domestic listing for offering liquidity to its employees stock option plan (ESOP) and generating additional cash for future requirements, Zacharias said.

"A listing on the Indian bourses would certainly work tothe benefit of the company but finer details about the feasibility of the proposal and time frame amongst others are yet to be worked out," he said.

The company has also applied to department oftelecommunication (DOT) for 13 gateways to support its internet services across all a category cities in India, he said adding that the company currently has 46 points of presence (pops) across the country.

He said that as the first step towards implementing thebrand building strategy, the company recently relauched its flagship portal "satyamonline.Com" as "sify.Com". "Sify" which is also the exchange trading code of the satyam on nasdaq, would allow the company to shorten its url (universal resource locator of internet id), zacharias said.

The first Indian internet company to hit the nasdaqearlier last year, satyam computer services currently holds about 54 per cent stake in satyam infoway.