Netindia may partner with Bharti Enterprises

After developing 'ProAlpha' for e-mailing and voice mailing without a PC or an Internet connection - Hyderabad based Netindia Pvt Ltd is eyeing to partner with Bharti Enterprises for a national rollout of the product for the Indian market. 

"We are engaged in high level talks with Bharti to license our technology for the marketing and deployment of our portable, sleek, sophisticated, easy to operate product," said V Hari K Prasad, MD,
Netindia.

"It is a handheld electronic gadget, which can send and receive data to a pre-designated network of computers through any normal telephone by using a handset. Our prime vision is to enable a fully networked world that moves information seamlessly across any network to any device, machine or across any location. We have priced the product at around Rs 3,500, so imagine how affordable it could be for the Indian consumer," he added.

ProAlpha has an Integrated WAP Browser, which enables the device to connect to any WAP enabled site. The product has an Inbox and Outbox facility for storing Incoming and Outgoing Mails. "It took us a lot of time to master this technology, but we don't want to burn our hands in marketing as we are good at the technology level. This is the reason why we want to license this technology for big players like Bharti," he explained.

With a 2MB flash memory, the product converts all the typed text into specific signals and passes it through the telephone and similarly it can also receive these signals and convert them into text and display it on the LCD. One can avail the facility of instant messaging, sending voice mails to other servers like Yahoo!, Hotmail, etc as attachments and send voice messages to non-members also.

"If we compare the tele-density of other south-east Asian countries with India, then our country will be far below. The reason is not the buying power of the Indian consumer but the affordability factor. I feel that with innovative products like ours we will be able to address the problem of tele-density within the country as a number of people will get connected through this," he added.

It may be recalled that Bangalore based iNabling Technologies also has a similar product called iStation. Priced at Rs 10,000, the product has not done that well and cost may be the deciding factor involved in this. 

"We have taken all the measures to ensure that the cost does not go up beyond the buying power of the Indian consumer," Prasad informed.

Net India was founded in the year 2000 and the company operates under two heads - messaging solutions and industrial automation. The Company offers end user devices and server side solutions to enable secure, cost effective, scalable messaging solutions. 

"In the end user space, we offer handheld PDAs, e-mail terminals, Internet enabled PDAs, e-mail phones and SMS phones.

These products can be positioned for the retail and corporate applications and the phone range of products can be offered to the Telco and ISPs," he added.

The company has also developed solutions that address the need for Internet enabling appliances and devices on the shop floor. "We have solutions that can be used to remotely control and monitor critical parameters like current, voltage, pressure, etc of high-end legacy equipment. We offer standalone products that can interface to popular PLCs and sensors from ABB, Schneider and Rockwell etc and drastically reduces the cost of wiring up the shop floor either to the Internet or to the LAN," he informed.

Zia Askari

(CNS)