Icici May Spin Off Payment Gateway

ICICI Ltd is on the lookout for foreign partners for its e-commerce venture which is expected to be hived off as a separate company.

At the same time the upcoming payment gateway of the institution to be set up jointly with US computer major Compaq is likely to be made a separate division with stake being offloaded to other banks.

According to sources, the reason for offloading of stake in the payment gateway could be due to the reasonably large investment of $5-$8 million being made in the venture. "It is possible that some amount of investment in this payment gateway could be made by the other banks in the country as a consequence of this," a source said. Chanda Kochhar, senior general manager and head e-commerce group at ICICI, said, "There has been no final decision on the structure that the e-commerce venture is likely to take as yet though it should be decided in another month. Even the portals to be included in the company are being mulled over."

 

For the e-commerce, venture the financial institution is open to both strategic investors and multilateral funding agencies. In fact ICICI may even decide on not being the majority stakeholder in the division. "This would depend on the most appropriate structure decided for the organisation," Kochhar said. ICICI has also set about making all their portals, wireless application protocol (WAP) enabled over a period of time. This is part of their strategy of making most of their businesses e-enabled. The institution has reportedly set aside funds to the tune of Rs 100 crore for further investments in dotcoms this year.

Earlier, ICICI had mentioned that they were going to hive off all their dotcoms including those they had invested in, into a separate company and go in for a listing on one of the US bourses. As of now, ICICI has launched portals including indiahomeseek, magiccart, cafemumbai and their e-broking arm, icicidirect.