Wipro Infos Csd Unveils Wipro Efax

The Wipro Infotech group's newly formed Communication Services Division (CSD), an off-shoot of the Wipro-BT (British Telecom) split, has launched Wipro Efax -- a fax store and forward service -- targeted at cutting down STD charges for inter-city faxes to large volume users.

Wipro has tied up with the $60-million Graphnet Inc of the US, a leading facsimile solution and service provider, for providing the service to the domestic market.

This is the first business launch from the CSD which intends to focus on large multi-location corporates with heavy intra-company and value chain traffic.

The Efax services will be provided in Wipro CSD's eight-city network. Later more cities will be covered.

 

According to Anand Talwai, chief executive, Wipro CSD, the new service will be carried over the company's fault tolerant network eliminating the need for STD calls. "This will be in addition to the communication services Wipro CSD is at present offering," he said.

According to Talwai, the company plans to follow up this launch by introducing value-added services like fax mailbox, application fax and fax on demand for corporates.

Ashok Soota, group president, said, the Wipro Efax services will boost the company's position as an end-to-end IT supplier of solutions and services.

The group will invest an additional Rs 4 crore into the new division besides the Rs 19 crore it had put in as part of the Wipro-BT joint venture. The new company expects to do Rs 14 crore business during 1998-99.

Soota said India had a four lakh installed fax machine base which was growing at 15 to 20 per cent per year. Of this, corporates own 25 per cent. This means there is good market for such a service, he added.

Wipro will install a network access dialer (NAD) between the customer's existing fax machine and telephone line for availing point-to-point and fax broadcast services.