& #8220;We Will Avoid Discounting Policies To Fight Competition & #8221;

Ajay Pandey, chief operating officer (COO) of Tata Teleservices (Maharashtra)

With the Tata group's acquisition of a controlling stake in Hughes Tele.com, it has been rechristened as Tata Teleservices (Maharashtra). The company has a healthy subscriber base of 2,00,000 users and reported a 41 per cent growth in topline to Rs 259.8 crore for the nine-month period ended December 2002. Net loss also reduced to Rs 80.3 crore as compared to Rs 104.3 crore in the corresponding period last fiscal. After the change of promoters, its day-to-day operations are now headed by Ajay Pandey who was the chief operating officer (COO) of Tata Teleservices' Andhra Pradesh operations. He was also instrumental in setting up Tata Cellular operations. Pandey, the present COO of Tata Teleservices (Maharashtra), spoke about the company's recent performance and business plans.

Do you plan to make any significant changes in the company's operations or in its business plans?

There are several issues that need to be sorted out like cultural integration, systems, and processes, among others. But these are all soft issues. Apart from these, there are four priority areas that we are focusing on right now.

First of all, we have earmarked a Rs 350 crore budget to roll out CDMA-based limited mobility services in Maharashtra. We plan to introduce limited mobility services in all the five key markets like Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur, Nashik and Aurangabad within this year.

Second, the funds will be also utilised to expand our fixedline services in other areas of the state. In addition to Mumbai and Pune, we would like to tap opportunities in other major commercial centres of Maharashtra.

Third, we are exploring all the possibilities of deriving maximum synergies with the Tata group's existing infrastructure in Maharashtra. For instance, Tata Power has a 400 km long optical fibre network in and around Mumbai. We are also looking at utilising some of VSNL's infrastructure. Lastly, the Tata group has a significant presence in this state in terms of the number of offices and commercial establishments like hotels etc. The in-house business