Manana Innovations to invest Rs 500 crore in telecom business

Telecom services company Manana Innovations plans to invest Rs 500 crore to build its mobile services business in India and abroad over the next five years. "We are looking at international roaming business. In India, this market is estimated to be around Rs 18,000 crore. We are looking to capture five percent of it i.e Rs 900 crore in two years and ten percent in three years," Manana Innovations Founder and Director Chandan Ghosh told PTI. Ghosh said that the company sells SIM cards and provides mobile applications for voice calling. "We are going to apply for International Long Distance licence and internet service provider (ISP) C class licence in India. This will enable us to integrate our global network with India. We will also go for other permits, if required, for operations," Ghosh said. The company is also planning to acquire a mobile virtual network operator in Europe within couple of months.

"The permits in India, MVNO acquisition will help us launching our own SIM card. Currently, we provide country specific SIMs of operators from 20 countries. We also have a global SIM card that can work in 195 countries.

The ISP licence will help us support VoIP (internet calling) offering to our customers in India," Ghosh said. He said that the company does not intend to compete with local telecom operators instead it is looking at terminating calls in India. The company already provides services from Singapore.

He said that Manana's target customers are migrants in the South Asia and Latin America. "We are looking at providing integrated services like machine-to-machine, value-added services in our SIM. Low cost service and our own network are going to differentiate us from others.

In the US, we offer SIM cards for USD 50 which provides unlimited calls to 15 countries including India. It also offers 2.5 GB data at 4G speed and post that it offers 2G only," he added.