TCS may bid for RIL's retail backbone

It could be the first-of-its-kind business deal between the Tatas and the Reliance group.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) may bid for the IT and Internet backbone to be set up by the Mukesh Ambani-controlled Reliance Industries (RIL) for its retail initiatives.

The company, according to industry sources, is considering putting in its bid as a system integrator for the project, even as the Mukesh Ambani group is slated to come out with a functional requirement specification (FRS) shortly.

TCS executives did not confirm the news, only saying that the company was open to all opportunities.

Other Indian IT majors are also expected to bid for RIL's backbone project, considered one of the largest in the world. The IT infrastructure backbone "" working on thousands of servers and using myriad platforms and technologies "" will connect to over 2,000 Reliance stores in the country, sources told Business Standard here today.

The RIL retail network is expected to go live in December.

The company is believed to have initiated talks with Hewlett-Packard, Texas Instruments, IBM Global, Cisco Systems, Alien Technologies Corp, AeroScout, Philips and Siemens for hardware, apart from system integrators like Infosys, IBM and Satyam.

On the software front, Sun Microsystems, Microsoft and Wipro are the other companies Reliance is in talks with.