|
MRO-TEK has announced its strategic focus on five major areas. Which are these?
We are heavily concentrating on increasing channel partners, providing enhanced broadband management, R&D, application specific products and solutions and to increase customer penetration. Through channels, we will reach tier-II and tier-III cities in the country. Right now, we have 15 channel partners and our aim is to increase it to 50 by end of this year.
As a market leader in modems and access networking, what are the company's plans for delivering broadband?
Our objective is to reach every home through the system integrators, delivering broadband. We are looking to cash in on the boom in broadband, mobile telephony and metro network and have set our R&D objectives around these. We foresee the telecom service providers who are among our clients, going after huge expansion plans. For instance, Bharti Airtel, one of our key clients, is targeting capex of around $2 bn this fiscal, up from $1.4 bn last year. So the roll out of broadband services nationally by them would lead to a surge in demand for our products. We have seven fairly new broadband products for both global and domestic market.
 |
| -S Narayanan, chairman and MD, MRO-TEK |
What innovative products can we expect from MRO-TEK's R&D labs?
We are committed to developing global products for last mile access and have invested over Rs 6 crore on R&D initiatives in the last two yeras. Lately, our R&D focus has been centered around broadband and Power over Ethernet (PoE). We developed recently a PoE switch technology product called Daisy. This is ideal for broadband service provider to enable last mile connectivity, especially suiting Indian conditions. A leading broadband service provider is already deploying 2000 of these PoE technology switches. We are ready with many products addressing broadband needs of service providers, for both global and domestic market. In the coming years, we hope to earn at least 50% of its revenue from its own products.
As the competition is getting stiffer, how do you prepare yourself for this?
We are witnessing a new type of war in the broadband sector with the international players trying to offer sophisticated equipment bundled with different schemes for different speeds. Though the competition is stiff, we have superior product technology, established good service network and long standing client relationships, which would enable us to win more clients and keep our flag flying high. Currently we are extending our portfolio by five new products this year. We hope to target a market of Rs 250 crore this year.
Malovika Rao
|
