Mumbai: Hinduja TMT''s net profit from IT activities (its core business) for the first quarter ended 30 June 2003 at Rs 15.97 crore registered an increase of 37 per cent over the corresponding quarter of the previous year. Revenues from IT activities for the period increased by 57 per cent to Rs 31.74 crore from Rs 20.23 crore.

The total income for the quarter ended 30 June 2003 rose by 42 per cent to Rs 34.94 crore and the net profit by 21 per cent to Rs 17.23 crore as compared to the corresponding quarter of the previous year. Sequentially, the total income of the company increased by 9 per cent and the net profit by 11 per cent as compared to Q4 of last financial year.

Says HTMT vice-chairman Solomon Raj: "The flawless execution of our IT strategy, which is clear and focused, has resulted in an accelerated flow of business to HTMT. The performance is in line with the guidance and is expected to gather further momentum with the ramping up for existing and new contracts."

In order to meet the requirements of customers, HTMT has decided to expand its IT infrastructure in Bangalore. Apart from the existing state-of-the-art 1,050-seat capacity, 65,000-square feet offshore development centre, the company is in the process of acquiring additional premises of 84,000 square feet with 1,400-seat capacity in Bangalore. This will more than double IT-enabled services capacity in Bangalore to 2,450 seats.

Says HTMT (IT division) president and CEO R Mohan: "Of the three new contracts, which HTMT had signed off recently, a pilot has been successfully completed in respect of the BPO [business process outsourcing] project and regular work has commenced. Training for the two call centre projects has been concluded and networking is in place. One call centre will go live from 31 July 2003 and the other from 4 August 2003.

"The existing BPO customer from the US has ramped up the current assignment and added two additional activities for processing with a result that the number of processors for the project is likely to go up from 450 to 550."

The relationship that HTMT has developed for one of its clients for offshore call centre services with a company in the Philippines has been strengthened with 100 seats now in operation. The total staff strength of HTMT''s IT division was 1,573 as on 30 June 2003, out of which 1,371 are for IT-enabled business (contact centre and BPO).

As per the notification issued by the Indian government, the conditional access system (CAS) project will be implemented in a phased manner, starting 1 September 2003. HTMT''s subsidiary, IndusInd Media and Communications (IMC), has completed integration of the CAS technology with the existing fibre-optic back bone in Mumbai and Delhi and is now fully geared for the CAS launch on 1 September 2003.

IMC has obtained solutions for the CAS project from Tandberg (digital headend), Nagra (CAS system) and Magnaquest (billing). Aided by HTMT''s IT team, it has already completed SAP implementation in record time to strengthen the IT infrastructure for the project. The company has made arrangements to deploy sufficient number of TechnoTrend and Wistron models of set-top boxes and adequate arrangements for supply thereof have been made to fully meet customer demand. Deployment of the boxes will begin from 1 August 2003.