ByCell says owners are Russians; hopes for licences

ByCell Telecommunications India, the company which had applied for mobile licences in five circles in January 2006, has said that its foreign shareholders include three private individuals of Russian origin and some other private investors also from that country.

The roots of the telecom company, which is owned by ByCell Holdings AG that's based in Switzerland, were hitherto not known. The other private investors are said to hold a 74 per cent stake.

ByCell is in partnership with BitCorp, which is promoted by Guntur-based Jayalakshmi group, an exporter of tea and tobacco products. BitCorp is among the largest exporters of tobacco to Russia. The company also has some infrastructure projects and spinning mills.

Optima Wireless, floated by investors with projects in Somalia and the Caribbean, also has a minority stake in ByCell Holdings AG.

Andrey Polouektov, ByCell's director in India, said he would divulge the name of the promoters of the Jayalakshmi Group later.

Responding to a query about whether they would "" like Egyptian giant Orascom which had come under security scrutiny "" face similar problems in India, Polouektov said, "We have been given FIPB clearance after all the scrutiny has been done." However, ByCell Holding AG executives also admitted that the company which has been looking for telecom opportunities in developing countries had drawn a blank for most of its projects and had no concrete telecom project currently.

Polouektov said the company had looked at Afghanistan and Mongolia, where the tendering process was on, but had lost the race. It had also tied up with a partner for a GSM project in Indonesia, but the government said GSM spectrum was not available and so they had pulled out.

ByCell also looked at acquiring telecom companies in Africa but the transaction price was unacceptable. The company also looked at Venezuela where applications for private telecom were called for, but decided against this on account of the political turmoil there.

ByCell planned to invest over Rs 2,000 crore to launch mobile services in the five circles of Assam, North east, West Bengal, Orissa and Bihar and it will focus on rural markets. It hoped to break even with a 5 million subscriber base and would use the latest IP-based backbone technology, which it said would reduce its rollout costs by 30-40 per cent and result in rock bottom mobile tariffs. It is also talking to Railtel and Power Grid Corporation to utilise their optic fibre backbone towards reducing costs. "By using the IP backbone, which is a new technology, and sharing infrastructure with others, we will reduce our rollout cost," said Alexandrew Louzine, vice-president (operations).