Data Access plans ILD foray in Pak

Data Access (India) Ltd, the international long distance (ILD) service provider, is in talks with World Call, a national payphone service provider of Pakistan, for strategic alliance to offer ILD services.

Ashutosh Misra, president and CEO of Data Access Amercia Inc: "The company is in talks with World Call which is a national communication service provider in Pakistan having over 36,000 payphones booths across the country. Pakistan is likely to open up the market for international players by end of April."

"Pakistan, Mauritius and Sri Lanka have a robust voice traffic and these markets are opening up. We are looking at strategic alliances", Siddhartha Ray, managing director, Data Access (India), said at the launch of the company's IPO here today.

Pakistan's voice market is close to 3 billion minutes a year of inbound and outbound voice traffic. Data Access expects top line growth from newer markets. The settlement rate for inbound traffic in Pakistan is 18 cents a minute compared with 13 cents a minute in India, Misra said.

Meanwhile, Data Access launched its IPO with an issue of an aggregate 50 million equity shares of Rs 10 each at a price band of Rs 17-20 a share. The issue opens on March 29 and closes on April 6. The company hopes to raise up to Rs 100 crore.

The IPO proceeds will be used to expand and upgrade international long distance telephony network, meet long term working capital and for repaying borrowings.

Nearly 25 per cent of the fully diluted post-issue paid-up capital is to be offered in the IPO.

Post IPO, the stake of SPA Enterprises closely held by Ray and Purva Rakesh and other promoter associates is expected to fall to 57 per cent from 74 .86 per cent.

Pacific Convergence (Mauritius ) stake will reduce to 17.54 per cent from 23.40 per cent pre-IPO issue and Banaras House Engineering to 0.40 per cent from 0.53 per cent. The employees' stake will come down to 1.46 per cent from 1.95 per cent.

Ray said the company is concentrating on voice traffic and not on data traffic. Data Access brings in over 9 million minutes a month of the total outbound voice calls of around 80 million minutes per month.