Pantaloon plans space for IT products

After making your bills to shrink on everything, from clothes to eggs through bulk-buying, the Pantaloon group now wants to work the same magic on your monthly phone and Internet bills.

The company's board has approved a year-end roll out of a new division dedicated to retailing "communication products and services".

"In countries like the UK, companies engaged in bulk-buying of communication bandwidths and products have become multi-billion entities," says Neeran Chhiber, who is leading the charge to "commodify" the communications industry.

The company plans to set up 50 such outlets in the first year, including those in its 25 "Big Bazaars" and central malls at a cost of around Rs 25 crore to Rs 30 crore.

The company, which had a turnover of Rs 1,100 crore last year, expects to do at least Rs 150 crore worth of "communications" business next year and raise it to Rs 400 crore mark by 2007.

With its focus on any "family or business" with a monthly communication expense of more than Rs 10,000, these outlets will offer ready-to-use packages of "airtime" and data bandwidth "" similar to the popular recharge coupons, except that it promises to sell them "at least 15 per cent cheaper" than what is being sold by other retailers.

The company, however, has not decided whether to re-brand the communications capsules or just sell branded coupons such as those of Hutch and Airtel at discounted rates. It may also go in for a mix of the two ideas, with branded bandwidth competing with the "commoditised" bandwidth sourced from cheaper vendors.

"We are still in the process of fine-tuning our strategy," said Pantaloon Retail (India) Managing Director Kishore Biyani.