A three- to four-hour wait in serpentine queues to get to worship Lord Balaji at Tirupati may soon be a thing of the past if Reliance Infocomm chief Mukesh Ambani has his way.
Instead, you can just log on to Reliance Infocomm's Web site, register yourself, and you could get a pager/mobile message at your hotel, informing you what your number is and what time your darshanam is. "We're partnering with Ramco to provide this service ... the attempt is to create connectivity solutions to eliminate long queues," says Ambani.
Though much of the hype around Reliance Infocomm's December 27 launch is around its wireless-in-local-loop limited mobile phone launch (Reliance India Mobile), Ambani says it is 'solutions' like the Balaji one that will contribute over 60 per cent of his company's income.
Currently, Reliance Infocomm is working with around 70 firms, including the likes of Wipro and IBM, to provide software solutions.
Imagine a person in Bhavnagar, says Ambani, who wants to transfer money from Mumbai to Bhavnagar.
Deposit a cheque, and it can take anywhere between four and five days for the funds to get transferred.
"Obviously, someone is earning interest on this for this period. We're aiming to help entrepreneurs transfer their money in a few seconds using our broadband network."
Ultimately, says Ambani who has already laid 67,000 kilometres of fibre to connect 580 cities (and will connect all of India's 2,400 cities by 2004), the aim is to get all manner of software solution providers to host their applications on the Ambani network.
Reliance Consultants, or consultants the company is partnering with, will identify small businesses and offer substantial value addition if they switch to Reliance Infocomm.
So, for instance, keeping track of inventory, or keeping track of bill payments, would be different types of services that Reliance Infocomm would offer small businesses.
Ambani says, "These are the guys who've never used computing before, and that's where the biggest bang for the buck is." Each of the 580 cities to be connected by January 8 will have Reliance Webworlds.
Each will be around 700-1,500 sq feet in size and will have a broadband centre, a customer convenience area (for buying WLL connections) and a food & beverages area (most often, run by Qwiky's Coffee, Reliance's latest acquisition).
The company's plan to sell its vision to all these small businesses is to put together a temporary workforce of around 200,000 people.
A total of over Rs 100 crore (Rs 10 billion) is to be spent each year on training them.
Potential entrepreneurs have also been identified within the Reliance employee base, to supervise these 200,000 direct sales agents.
