Tata DoCoMo betting big on SME business

Chennai:

Although the Small and medium entreprises may be struggling due to global recession and depreciating Indian rupee but Tata Docomo is betting big on SME business.

Having a customer base of 25,000 SMEs in Kerala and Tamil Nadu, Tata Teleservies president Prateek Pashine feels SME telecom market in India is estimated to grow at a compound annual growth rate of around 10 per cent financial year 2013 to 2018.

He says that there are one million SMEs in India of which 13 per cent are based out of Kerala and Tamil Nadu. He said that within the SME segment, the product category where Tata Docomo is dominant is Wireline Data (internet leased lines (ILL), multi protocol label switching etc.) with a 17 per cent market share.

Pashine said that the overall SME Market is estimated at Rs 10,500 Crore and forecasted to grow at 8.1 per cent to Rs16,800 Cr by the financial year 2018.

He said during the financial year 2012-13, Tata Docomo Limited’s SME business achieved a year-on-year growth of about 20 per cent (as against industry growth of 8 per cent).

"We are targeting a 20pc revenue growth and a revenue market share in excess of 10pc. The company has a base of over 7.5 lakh customers with 3,500 resources and over 1,200 channel partners nationally," said Pashine.

He said Tata Docomo has a strong position in the region for the fixed data services. The focus is now on ILL and MPLS. The company is also increasing its focus on the managed services for the region as that’s a market with highest growth potential. The key growth areas within managed services are cloud services, managed hosting and collocation. Interestingly, Tata Docomo is targeting a a 22 pc growth in managed services in the next five years.

He also said cities like Chennai has emerged as electronic manufacturing services hub of India. Companies like Nokia, Flextronics, Motorola, Sony-Ericsson, Foxconn, Samsung, Cisco, and Dell have chosen Chennai as their South Asian manufacturing hub.

He said the wireless data is expected to grow at a rate of 15 per cent compounded annual growth rate in the next five years in the Kerala Tamil Nadu region due to concentration of IT and related companies in the region.