Reliance Infocomm to launch 4 more WebWorlds in Bangalore

Reliance Infocomm, the country's leading CDMA-based telecom service provider, which recently ventured into broadband services with the launch of its Reliance WebWorld stores, is increasing its presence in Bangalore.

However, the lack of market potential in other cities of Karnataka, which neither have the population nor the broadband awareness and usage like Bangalore, is bothering Reliance.

Currently, Karnataka has 15 WebWorld stores with nine stores in Bangalore. Reliance will open another four stores in Karnataka by October, of which two will be located in Bangalore. These stores will be located at J P Nagar and Airport Road, respectively. With this, Bangalore will have 11 outlets.

In terms of customers using broadband, Bangalore has always been lucky for Reliance. On occasions when it has runs of a series of promotions, the customer walk-ins have more than doubled.

Normally, each WebWorld in Bangalore attracts anywhere between 200 and 300 customers per day. On days when these WebWorlds run special promotions, including those for the telecom subscribers, footfalls increase to nearly 600 customers.

This, despite the fact that Bangalore has fewer WebWorlds than Mumbai or Delhi, has encouraged Reliance to open more WebWorld stores in the city.

"While Bangalore has even proven that it can compete equally, if not better, with Delhi and Mumbai, other cities of Karnataka lack the population and the market potential for broadband service. We are hampered by the lack of a large second city in Karnataka, unlike in Tamil Nadu where Coimbatore looks promising," Akhilesh Prasad, circle head-Karnataka, Reliance Web Stores Pvt Ltd said.

Prasad added that Bangalore is indeed a major contradiction to the rest of Karnataka which may be inclined to using broadband but lacks the potential in terms of customer base.

He feels that the presence of over two lakh IT professionals in Bangalore has also added to building awareness about broadband.

Currently, these WebWorlds across Bangalore is being used by those who intend to send or receive bulk data like voice and video. Gaming is another popular application. While many cyber cafes provide anywhere between 128 kbps and 256 kbps speeds, they are mostly preferred for simple text-based e-mails.

Reliance, on the other hand, provides speeds of nearly 760 kbps across most of its terminals in its WebWorlds.

Prasad added, "Earlier this year, Reliance had committed an investment of nearly Rs 200 crore for its WebWorlds across the country."