Vebtel eyes 3-fold growth this fiscal

Vebtel Obconic Internet Protocol Private Limited, a city-based internet telephony service provider (ITSP) using voice over internet protocol (VoIP), is expecting a three-fold growth in its revenues for the current financial year.

The Rs 5-crore company is also gearing up to launch its flagship service VebXchange in the next one month.

Two leading internet telephony calling card providers in the country are at present in talks with the company to utilise its network as well as solutions like billing developed in in-house at the company.

Kusumba S, president and director of Vebtel Obconic, told Business Standard that the company had recorded a revenue of close to Rs 5 crore during 2003-04, the first year of commercial operations of the two-year-old company.

"The company has already crossed the last year's revenue in the just-concluded first quarter and we expect it to grow three-fold during this year. That is a modest target. The soon-to-be-launched VebXchange, a global telecom exchange using the Internet as the platform will propel the growth of the company in the future," he said.

The company is also slated to launch a voice mail service for its corporate clientele.

VebXchange will offer a wide range of services like voice mail, call forwarding, call transfer, virtual PBX etc. "An IP-based call centre can be set up in no time without any significant investments as compared to the conventional call centres using leased lines," Kusumba said.

Vebtel at present offers customised enterprise network solutions to the corporates. For individual customers, the company has set up several Vebtel retail outlets to enable people to use the internet for communications.

There are 119 Vebtel cyber cafe franchisees in the twin cities. Vebtel's calling cards are available in various denominations right from Rs 50 to Rs 10,000.

They are at present available in 20 countries and 15 more countries would be added in the next six months.

Vebtel is now focusing on convergence technologies to enable the corporate networks for voice, video and data applications.

Vebtel has tie-ups with 38 gateway carriers to route its calls to and from telephone networks. It has inter-connect points in London, San Jose and New York.

It also plans to set up its full-fledged operations in the US and later spread them to UK and Singapore.

The company is currently undergoing the ISO 9000 process and expects the certification by the year-end.