ANUP JAYARAM
Batra Mediways is an ordinary pharmacy in West Delhi’s Mansarovar Garden. When proprietor Gurjeet Singh installed a sleek new phone terminal at the store, it began to attract a lot more customers than before.
That is because, this isn’t your ordinary public call office (PCO). The green dangler above the terminal at Batra Mediways says it all. Soon, this wonderful little jack-in-the-box will be able to provide customers with a whole new range of services, including recharging pre-paid mobile cards from any service provider. And this is just the beginning. Over time, consumers will be able to pay utility bills, buy movie tickets, check their bank balances, send e-mails and even transfer money, all via the Indepay terminal that operates on Tata Indicom’s CDMA (code division multiple access) mobile network.
Indepay Networks, led by CEO and president Rajib Saha, is all set to unveil a variety of applications. Indepay is a retail distribution and payment network that links retailers directly to service providers. Singh is one of about 1,000 retailers in six cities who are currently being trained to use the terminal. Many others are undergoing user trials.
While the consumer gains from the wide variety of services, Indepay also adds muscle to retailers. With an initial investment of just Rs 9,000, shop owners are able to provide scores of services that they do not physically sell. And since all these are electronic services, inventories get totally eliminated. Additionally, with commissions for retailers who use the terminal on par with existing sales commissions, Indepay provides retailers with an additional stream of income.
Indepay vice-president and chief financial officer Sameer Kakar is loathe to reveal details of how the company generates revenues, but he does divulge that there are different partnership models for different service providers. Tata Indicom, for example, gets paid for calls made and for the time its network is in use, in addition to instrument rental charges.
While initially available only in Delhi, Indepay terminals will hit nearly 150,000 lakh retail outlets in 63 cities by mid-2007. Of this, 40 per cent will be deployed in the metros and 45 per cent in the next 21 big cities, with the remain-der going to another 36 smaller cities. There are plans to deploy one million terminals across the country over the next couple of years. Currently, the terminals come from a Malaysian facility of Flextronics. Terminals that operate on the GSM network may be introduced at a later stage.
For these plans to roll out seamlessly, Indepay is tying up with various service providers. Customers will soon be in a position to book airline tickets from Flightraja and Yatra, book railway tickets from the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) and even buy flowers from Ferns & Petals simply by pushing buttons to browse through the terminal’s on-screen menu. There are also plans for installing Indepay terminals at Sulabh International outlets. These terminals will be utilised primarily for recharging mobile phones and booking railway tickets.
In future, consumers may even enjoy the convenience of paying by swiping credit cards on the machine. Banks stand to gain from this big-time with access to a whole new set of small retailers. With currently only about 300,000 point-of-sale terminals for credit cards in India, Indepay could contribute to taking this number to as high as one million.
As Saha puts it, “The beauty of Indepay is that it will reach the un-reached, connect the un-connected and bank the un-banked.”
Search for Indepay Networks at the bottom of this page
