To launch new billing revenue assurance and audit solution for telcos soon
Intense Technologies Limited, a Hyderabad based enterprise agility software products company, projects revenues for the current financial year to be at over Rs 30 crore and an uptick of about 40 per cent in net profit in the current financial year. This will primarily be driven by repeat demand from existing customers in the telecom space and incoming demand from new customers from newer geographies that it intends to tap into through strategic partners.
Making a turnaround, the 12-year-old company reported a net profit of Rs 38.48 lakh for the fiscal ended March 31, 2009, as against a net loss of Rs 9.22 crore in the previous year. Revenues grew 51.12 per cent to Rs 17.41 crore, as compared to Rs 11.52 crore a year ago. The scrip of the company, which hit a 52-week high of Rs 38.65 in June 2008, is currently hovering around Rs 14.
“We had taken a large team to grow our external business (Asia-Pacific) and opened an office in Singapore, which resulted in heavy losses. However, we had scaled down our employee costs in the fourth quarter of FY09 to Rs 2.07 crore, from Rs 3.60 crore in the corresponding period last year, besides reducing the top heaviness,” CK Shastri, managing director of Intense, told Business Standard.
Shastri said the company was reorganising more and more in telecom that currently contributes 70 per cent to its revenues, and AMC (account maintenance contracts) business.
“We had launched our communications solution – iECCM (intelligent Enterprise Customer Communication Management) – and had partnered systems integration providers like IBM and Wipro for its implementation last year. We are now talking to two US-based billing vendors which will give us a global footprint. Discussions with one of these firms are in advanced stage and we expect to close the deal this quarter,” he said.
The company is looking at breaking into the banking sector with iECCM this year, which at present is going through a cost-cutting phase. It is aiming at achieving about five clients in banking and an equal number in the telecom space in FY10, he added.
Meanwhile, the promoter and promoter group, which currently holds 9.03 per cent in Intense Technologies, has increased its shareholding to 11.4 per cent, while director Tikam Sujan increased his stake from 9.12 per cent to 12.05 per cent through purchase of 800,000 warrants each at Rs 12.
Shastri said the company was planning to launch BRAAS (billing revenue assurance and audit system) – which increases accuracy in billing while adhering to regulatory compliance – for prepaid customers globally next month. “At present, we are piloting BRAAS with a large telecom operator in India and are planning to cross-sell the product to our existing customers besides offering it to new clients. Broadly, we expect our products division to see about 50 per cent increase in margins this year,” he said.
