Touchways scouting for partners for e-kiosks

Touchways, a US-based company with its wholly owned subsidiary based in Hyderabad, is all set to provide e-kiosks all over the country. The company is going to offer e-solutions that are turnkey to include software applications, equipment, networking and configuration. "Initially we are looking at tourism, medical, banking and e-governance segments for our product, as it will provide a solution long waited by these segments," said, G Sunil Kumar, BDM,

Touchways.

The e-kiosks to be provided by the company are compact, mobile and offer smart card applications for secure and custom-based transactions. "We are looking at a price range of around Rs 2 lakh for the product, which is far less than what is being offered by other players in the same space. We are also in the process of identifying channel partners to market this product. Initially we are looking at prime cities like Bangalore, Chandigarh, Chennai, New Delhi and Mumbai and after that we would like to go into the second most important cities of the country," he added.

The portable kiosk offered by the company is a fully integrated counter top kiosk solution and is ideally suited to display Internet applications, motion picture quality video, text and graphics in almost any acceptable environment. To create an instantaneous Internet access station, customer service center or interactive exhibit, one just needs to remove the kiosk from its box load the website or application and then plug the kiosk into a standard electrical outlet.

The services where this product could be used include retail sales, customer services, protected public Internet access, visitor information and ticketing system. "We believe that a product like this would help in bringing down the digital divide among the IT haves and have-nots in a big way," he added. The same product could also be used to support services like bar code readers, telephones, cameras, integrated wireless connectivity and zip drives.

Touchways started its operations in Hyderabad about two months back and is an arm of Object Technology Solutions Inc, a US-based IT services and e-solutions organization, with offices and representatives in the US, Europe, Middle East, North Africa and India. "Ideally we would like this product to be firmly placed at all the mentioned segments and by the end year 2002, we are planning to have our own manufacturing unit based near Hyderabad. We are already in the process of acquiring more than 50 acre land for the manufacturing unit where e-kiosks and smart card based solutions will be designed and manufactured," explained Sunil.

(CNS)