Kiosks to make their presence felt in India

Gone are the days where you are assisted by a beautiful airline staff with a smiling face. Or a front office employee of bank assisting you in getting your passbook updated. Days are not too far when an illiterate farmer in a rural village withdraws money from a biometric ATM with the help of voice-animated screens.

With India catching the fancy of retail boom, a clutch of Indian companies are planning to sell over 25,000 kiosk terminals by the end of financial year. The majors eyeing at Rs 2 billion Indian market include niche players such as AGS Infotech, NCR and other global players like IBM, HCL, Tata Infotech, CMC, CMS and Intellivision.

The niche players are not restricting kiosks into only ATMs. They plan to foray into industries such as airline, hospitality, music, photo, banking, petroleum, lottery and retail. They are also tapping business opportunities in education, postal department and other government organisations.

Kiosk, which means booth, has transformed from just "PC (personal computer) in a box" to customer interface information dispensing box with high end technology coupled with variety of applications, said industry analysts.

"The Indian market size for kiosk is anywhere between Rs 1.5 billion to Rs 2 billion. The kiosk terminal business is expected to grow at 10 per cent every year, " they said.

AGS Infotech President and Chief Executive Officer Sunil Udupa said: "We are planning to sell over Rs 10,000 terminals by the end of the financial year. We are developing enclosed application with security installed with industrial computer, not PC."

Udupa pointed out that kiosk terminals would be the key word when India moves to low cost solutions to cut down the unnecessary cost. "Budget hotels, budget airlines, government organisations and departments will install terminals to rationalise the cost of operations," Udupa said.

AGS Infotech has supplied kiosks to beauty clinic company VLCC and bank clients such as ING Vysya and Yes Bank.

US-based NCR's Indian retail product sales head Rahul Sonak said the company is in talks with public and private petroleum majors apart from its existing clients like Citibank and ICICI Bank.

"As a part of diversification, we are providing kiosk technology for handling admission at Kolhapur Engineering College and are in talks with Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh government for providing hospital solutions," he said.

AGS Infotech is planning develop Kisan ATMs for farmers of rural village with the facility of finger print verification, with no complex menu navigation.

"Banks are awaiting green signal from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for the roll out of Kisan ATMs," said a source.

NCR's Sonak said India would see revolution in the kiosk technology with boom in banking and retail. "Though the kiosk terminal reduces the human intervention, India is reluctant towards terminals as labour is cheap. But the scene will change with retail and banking boom," Sonak added.