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Strategies & Market Trends : India Coffee House -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mohan Marette who wrote (10146)	12/20/1999 4:37:00 PM
From: Mohan Marette	Respond to of 12475

ICICI, SIFY to set up 1,000 cybercafes THE battle for Indian mindspace is entering a new orbit. The newly-engaged dot. com venture icicisify.com has drawn up plans to create huge brick-and-mortar cyber-structures to spread the click mantra and cross-sell financial products on the Net, report Madhvendra P Das and Sourav Mukherjee from Mumbai. The plan, to be executed by parents ICICI Ltd and Satyam Infoway (SIFY), envisages the setting up of around 1,000 cybercafes by SIFY in which ICICI Bank would implant around 500 automated teller machines (ATMs) and cash dispensing counters by December 2000. "The Net will be the largest channel for pushing ICICI products. It will generate 50 per cent of our total business in no time," KV Kamath, managing director and chief executive officer (CEO) of ICICI, told ET. The idea is to capture the "younger" Net-savvy crowd and push retail ICICI products. This would create a brand awareness among this sub-set of society and help the ICICI group to cross-sell all its products. The group is currently working on a new range of products specifically targeted at the cafe-crowd. "Our presence at SIFY cybercafes will help in the acquisition of New Age customers in a cost-effective fashion. It also fits into our strategy of targeting young cybercafe customers in their late teens so that we can build life-long relationships with them and fulfil all their financial requirements," Mr Kamath said. The ICICI group already has a presence in most retail product segments and plans to get into the credit card and insurance markets soon. "We will be pushing several products through these cybercafes," said Mr Kamath. "We will also target NRIs through this channel and the SIFY portal is a winning strategy," he added. The fact that both parties are well-known brand names with recent US listings will also come in handy. SIFY recently listed on Nasdaq, while ICICI got itself listed on the NYSE. That the Net strategy is paying dividends is apparent from the fact that the ICICI ADS closed at $16.31 or a 66 per cent premium to the issue price of $9.8 on the NYSE. There are huge gains also for SIFY, which is fresh from its Rs 500-crore acquisition of IndiaWorld. As per the agreement between the partners, SIFY will be allowed to put up Internet kiosks at all ICICI customer centres and ICICI Bank branches. ICICI has decided to set up 115 customer centres, while its banking subsidiary has about 80 branches. The entire gameplan will involve an investment of around Rs 50-75 crore for ICICI. "This is the age of partnerships and we can grow only by holding hands. On the web, it?s like a relay race. One has to pick a partner who can take the baton further," said Mr Kamath. He said that SIFY's 'seek and source' facility on the Net and ICICI's 'i-payments' were a tremendous fit. That is why the ultimate aim is to make ICICI Bank the dedicated bank for the horizontal SIFY portal. "We will be a dedicated portal within the bigger SIFY portal." According to Mr Kamath, 50 per cent of ICICI?s business will be driven by the Net in the near future. With the world-wide web making transactions cheaper, product delivery costs also come down. This is already evident in ICICI's business-to-business product, which is expected to generate 1,000 relationships by March 2000. The product ensures on-line settlements, better competitiveness in costs and avoids several accounting issues. economictimes.com