NEW DELHI, August 24: Hindustan
Futuristic Communications Ltd. (HFCL), the telecom and equipment
manufacturing company, is planning to launch a software for hospital
management, Medisoft, by the end of this month and a software for the call
center by October at ITU in Geneva. In addition to this, the company is
also looking at other products targeted basically at the telecom industry
and e-commerce. The informatics division, with an investment of Rs 10
crore, also is into project development, another area where the focus will
be increased. "Our clear focus is to create IPR. Though traditionally
a telecom company, we decided to go slow on that front due to the problems
faced by the sector right now. And, we selected software since hardware
has its limitations but software can be used to enhance its
capacity," says HFCL Advisor S.C. Jain.
Started in 1997-98, the company has moved out of being a systems
integrator to focus on products and projects. Medisoft, developed on
Oracle with NT GUI, took 20 man years and is a result of the experience
gained from a project done for a Ludhiana hospital. The company is already
negotiating with three hospitals in Delhi and is targeting a sale of 4-5
packages before the end of this calendar year. The package will be priced
on the basis of licenses, tentatively at Rs 8-10 lakh, and there will be
two versions. The standard version will be for hospitals with 100 beds and
the other version, still to be named, is for those with less than 100
beds. The smaller version will be based on Access though the rest of the
functionalities will remain the same. The company is adopting the
distributor channel for marketing the product and negotiations are on.
Exports are also on the cards, though this will be after the product
has been established in the country. By 2001, the company is confident of
seeking the exports market, with potential markets being Latin America,
Africa and the Indian subcontinent. The other plan is to make it
Internet-enabled. "For both of these, an understanding of the markets
is essential, as is customization," says HFCL Manager-Business
Development Vikas Nahata.
The product for the call centers is still under development and will be
ready by October. The product will enable call distribution without the
need for an EPABX and will work on Dialogic card. It has implemented an
MIS project for a medical council and IVRS system for telecom service
providers, railway and passport offices. It will now step up focus on
exports mainly to the US in the areas of embedded software and device
drivers. The company also plans to increase its software manpower size
from 200 to 150 by next year.