Alcatel-Lucent to offer five contracts to Indian IT cos

Excerpts from India Business Hour on CNBC-TV18 Watch the full show » RELATED NEWS 3G auction to start as scheduled on Jan 14 4 slots of 3G to be auctioned; allotment by Aug '10: A Raja Nifty BSE | NSE 09/02/12 Are Mutual Funds betting on Nifty? Other Stocks in this news Mphasis | Sasken Communication Technologies | Tech Mahindra |

With the rural market booming and 3G expected to take India to the next level, French telecom major Alcatel-Lucent has a lot on its plate. CNBC-TV18's Sunanda Jayaseelan reports.

The India opportunity is ringing loud and clear, and French telecom giant Alcatel-Lucent is rushing to pick up the call, without getting its lines crossed.

CNBC-TV18 learns that Alcatel-Lucent is going to hand out over five IT contracts worth between USD 50-100 million, starting next fiscal. Wipro , Mphasis , Sasken and Tech Mahindra are some of the IT giants that are expected to enter the race for these contracts.

Vivek Mohan, Managing Director of Alcatel-Lucent India, said, "Well, I can't go into any specifics but we will hand out contracts for different pieces of work and different services in India over next fiscal."

This bullishness in India is hardly surprising. Alcatel-Lucent has seen revenues from India grow at over 50% over the past couple of years. A large part of this has come from its presence in the fibre optic space. And Alcatel-Lucent says growth in this space is also set to soar.

"Fibre optic has grown by 5% last year. But globally, considering our presence in fibre optic, we think in India we will achieve 10-15%," says Mohan.

In the immediate future, it hopes to bag a substantial chunk of a USD 2 billion contract to build a 40,000 kilometre alternate communication network for the defence forces.

Government contracts, particularly in defence, are also on the rise and expected to triple to over 15% of overall revenues very soon. To meet this growth, the company anticipates it will add close to 5,000 people in India alone over the next fiscal.