Geojit to set up disaster recovery site in Bangalore

Acquires new technology from Reuters for Rs10 cr.

Geojit Financial Services Limited (GFSL), a leading retail broking house, has invested about Rs17 crore to acquire technology from Reuters and to establish a disaster recovery site in Bangalore.

Geojit Technology, the fully-owned arm of GFSL, which focuses on financial services and shipping industry, will soon open an office in Dubai.

Addressing a press conference, C J George, managing director, GFSL, said that its earlier technology was not scalable and the new technology from Reuters, in which the company has invested about Rs10 crore, will allow about 20,000 clients to trade simultaneously.

The company hopes to increase its revenue from online business from the present five per cent to 25 per cent by 2007.

He also said that GFSL has invested about Rs 7 crore in setting up a disaster recovery site in Bangalore. This facility, which is expected to come up in the next three weeks, will be hosted by Wipro, which is its hardware partner.

At present, the company has a trading client base of about a lakh and the company expects this to grow to five lakh in the next three years in tune with the expected growth of 50 per cent per annum of Indian stock market investors.

Of Rs 5 lakh, around one lakh is expected to be online client base. Currently, GFSL's average daily online trading business volume is about Rs.20 crore. Geojit Technology offers back office products for financial services and shipping services.

"Our software is well-known in that country and Goeojit Technology got empanelled as back-office vendor for Dubai Commodity Exchange," George said.

He added that the Dubai office was expected to start operations with about 15 people. GFSL, which has about 295 offices across the country, reported a revenue of Rs 54 crore during 2004-05 and targets to reach Rs 250 crore in the next three years.

It has been recording a 46.5 per cent compounded annual growth rate in profit after tax during the last ten years. It reported a net profit of Rs10 crore in 2004-05.

Geojit Financial Services Limited, which has five business units, earns 85 per cent of its revenue from brokerage (both equities and commodities).