Hughes to open 200 centres in Gujarat

The 200-crore Hughes Escorts Communications Ltd (Hughes), the country's leading satellite service provider, plans to open over 200 DirecWay Fusion Centres, its retail super store in Gujarat as a part of its mega expansion plans.

The company plans to tie up with leading telecom service providers and private insurance companies in the state.

The company is aggressively forging tie-ups with leading banking, stock trading and travel companies. With this, customers of these companies will be able to make payments for their telephone services, insurance premiums in cash across all DirecWay Fusion centres.

The company has already tied up with Hutch, the leading cellular service provider in the state with a subscriber base over 12 lakh, and is in process of tie-up with Air Tel for providing billing solutions through its 'DirecWay Fusion' centres.

The company has at present over 150 DirecWay Fusion centres across 47 cities in the country and plans to add over 200 centres by March 2006 in Gujarat alone.

"We see a huge potential for DirecWay Fusion services in Gujarat and are confident that with its ease of use and secure mode of transaction, it will become the preferred electronic service store for the consumers. DirecWay Fusion is a unique offering from Huges and allows any service providers in India to build a point of presence for delivery of services to their customers." Pranav Roach, director, Hughes told Business Standard.

Hughes Direcway Fusion is a multi service neighborhood super store and offers services in high-speed broadband access over the DirecWay satellite broadband platform, utility bill payment, educational courses and travel services amongst others.

"Huges currently has five operational DirecWay Fusion centres in Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Rajkot, Junagadh amongst others. The consumers can also enjoy high-speed broadband access for internet at the DirecWay Fusion centres at the rate of 33 paise per minute during peak hours and 25 paise per minute during off peak hours," said Roach.

In the banking sector, Hughes has tied up with Standard Chartered Bank and the consumers can pay their bills at the fusion centre and receive an acknowledgment slip from Standard Chartered Bank, which records all details of the entire transaction.

The company also represents an unique opportunity for the students to avail state of the art tutorials in their neighborhood from trained and professional tutors, for which the company tied up with Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta (IIMC) for providing a programme for development of successful entrepreneurs.

Similarly the company also got tied with Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IIT Delhi) for providing continuing education programmes on project management, with BBC for learning course called English Edge and with MAHE for programme on development of successful entrepreneurs.