Tulip gets Rs 102 cr IT project in Haryana

Tulip IT Services Ltd has been awarded the Rs 102 crore SWAN (State Wide Area Network) Project of Haryana.

Tulip was the lowest bidder among the five participants (HCL, TCS, Tulip, UTL and IBM) in the final bidding process. The project has been awarded on the build-operate-own-transfer basis. The firm will own the project for five years and transfer it to the state government thereafter.

A senior official in the Haryana government told Business Standard that the agreement between the state government and the corporate player would be signed very shortly and work would start early next year. The state government will pay the corporate player in quarterly installments for five years.

"Tulip would do the procurement of equipment, installation, operation and network management," he said.

Talking to Business Standard, Tulip IT Services Managing Director HS Bedi said Tulip had a network in 550 cities in the country and planned to extend it to 800 towns by the end of this financial year.

He said the company intended to complete the project before the stipulated time in the RFP (request for proposal).

The firm would endeavour to set up the network and start functioning in four months against the time frame of one year, he added. The company might also contribute in setting up the Network Management Centre at the Haryana Civil Secretariat in Chandigarh.

According to Bedi, three tier data centres, in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore are in the process of coming up and the company aims to become the largest data company in the country.

He said the money raised from the IPO was used in covering 130 locations. "The company has opted for bank funding for further expansion and did not have any plans to resort to capital market for more funding," Bedi added.

The project after completion will provide government-to-government, government-to-business and government-to-citizen service. Other than Haryana, Jharkhand is the only state to make a beginning on the SWAN project.

Tulip carried out the wireless area networking for district Mallapuram in Kerala and networking of rest of the state has been deferred due to technical reasons.