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BANGALORE: Karnataka’s first mobile telephony service
provider Spice Telecom (Spice) has plans for a public issue
totaling $150 million.
Modicorp (51% stake) along with Telekom Malaysia (49% stake)
own Spice. The red herring prospectus will be filed with Sebi
and the IPO is likely to open in end March this year with
Spice to planning to dilute around 15-20% of their stake.
Spice has recently been awarded a railway outsourcing contract
by IRCTC to provide services to the customers for a payment
of Rs 1 billion over 10 years. The scope of work includes
providing customers with information services across India,
IVR, information and other services. The voice call to IVR
ratio is around 20:80 according to Spice officials. The contract
commences from March this year.
Spice is present in 2 circles – Karnataka and Punjab
with a customer base of around 2.5million of the total 100
million plus Indian subscribers. India has over 6000 railway
stations and almost 80-90% of these are covered by mobile
service providers. Spice is in negotiations with other service
providers for carriage and other services in the other circles.
This contract means that over the next ten years other service
providers can provide railway information only through Spice.
To ramp up and meet the service requirements, Spice plans
to set up 4 regional hubs all over the country. This contract
has been obtained by an equally shared joint venture between
Spice and Spanco Telesystems (Spanco) from Mumbai. Spanco
are to be the hardware system integrators for this venture.
Speaking during a press briefing in Bangalore yesterday,
Modicorp chairman BK Modi said, “Railways cover the length
and breadth of the country physically, Spice will help connect
the country telephonically,” while announcing that Spice
planned to have kiosks on every platform in the country, where
valid passengers can pick up sub $20/- mobile and with a Rs
50/- chip that can receive incoming calls free.
“Currently we were lacking in distribution. Now with
6,000 railway stations we can take telephony to the bottom
of the pyramid, a mobile is no longer a luxury, it is a necessity,
and with 4 billion passengers that travel by train, the aim
for reaching a subscriber base of 500 million by 2010 could
be met even earlier,” Modi said.
Spice along with Taiwanese suppliers provide low end as well
as high end mobile phone instruments.
Unconfirmed reports also indicate that Bollywood diva Katrina
Kaif has been appointed brand ambassador for Spice. Priyanka
Chopra, whose three year contract ends in December 2007, will
also continue as brand ambassador, a company source says.
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