Airtel may market Lost Mobile Tracking System: MicroTech

Micro Technologies has approved the draft business pact for partnership with Airtel forLost Mobile Tracking System.

P Sekhar, Chairman and Managing Director, Micro Tech India says that they don't have any agreement for joint working but Airtel has shown keen interest in marketing their Lost Mobile Tracking System product.

Excerpts from CNBC-TV18's exclusive interview with P Sekhar:

Q: Could you walk us through the nature of this business agreement that you’ve signed with Airtel and what sort of investments does it entail?

A: We do not have any agreement for joint working. One of our premier product called Lost Mobile Tracking System is hitting international headlines.

In fact, we are having negotiations and talk with about 10 large ISPs in mobile sector. Majority of them are the South Asian countries. Airtel has shown a very keen interest in marketing it along with us and that particular agreement is in the final stages.

Q: ‘Micro Mobile Shoppe’ that you are launching is an independent retail venture. This has nothing to do with Airtel, right?

A: This has nothing to do with Airtel.

Q: Can you walk us through that side of the business as well as to what the retail outlay is and what sort of investments that part of the business will require?

A: We have got two types of retail outlets.

One is Micro Shoppe, which we already has about 70 Micro Shoppe’s in place throughout India. This we are expanding it to about 350 by the end of this year whereas 'Mobile Micro Shoppe’ is for a moving vehicle. It will have this feature of offering our product.

Security and messaging is one of the basic requirements in today’s technological world with security being a very big concern for many of us. We are trying to propagate it and make the world feel safe and secure. We’ve got products for home security and mobile securit. We’ve also got product for vehicle security and we’ve got dramatic results coming from this product.

We have come to know in many places where a person has lost his vehicle at night 3 o’clock and by 4 o’clock he has recovered it back. These type of historic things are happening and because of this, this is touching a lot of international chord and there we are proceeding in a large expansion way.

Q: How much of a financial benefit do you expect to come in from the agreement with Airtel and agreements of this nature that you’re planning overseas? Secondly you’re looking at raising about Rs 35 crores via preferential issue. Have you decided on who you’ll be making this placement with and how much would you be putting on the block in terms of the stake sale?

A: . From the Lost Mobile Tracking System, with all this international flavour happening, this year, we should get at least about 20% of our revenues from Lost Mobile Tracking System.

And from the funds which we are raising now, we are trying to expand our US and Middle East operation. In fact in Middle East, we are trying to put our own infotech park, which will be our own you know support center and in US, this will be much bigger.

About 30% of this investment may go in US and about 15% in the Middle East segment.