Tulip to launch Rs 60-cr IPO in December

Rs 25-crore expansion planned for Punjab, Haryana and Himachal

Tulip IT services, India's fourth-largest network integrator with a turnover of Rs 342 crore, has decided to launch its initial public offering in December.

The company will come out with 9 million shares worth Rs 60 crore. It has a target of putting up a network three times larger than the network of existing players.

The company has a Rs 135-crore expansion plan, of which Rs 25 crore has been earmarked for Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. Tulip is present in 303 locations in the country, of which 84 are in North India.

Chandigarh is expected to be a major hub in North India hub to provide the critical last-mile connectivity (final leg of delivering communications connectivity to a resident or customer).

The managing director of Tulip, H S Bedi, told Business Standard the expansion would include upgrading the present infrastructure besides adding new towers. "We are working on upgrading the basic network that is already operational. Under this, bandwidth and redundancy would be improved."

Tulip has about 70 towers in Punjab and 30 in Haryana and aims to increase the number three to four times by January 2006.

Bedi said wireless network connectivity in the country was slated to be a business worth Rs 4,200 crore.

The Centre has allocated around Rs 3,000 crore for rural connectivity. An analysis of IP VPN services by International Data Corporation has projected it to grow to Rs 1,200 crore by 2008.

Bedi said Tulip would be targeting industrial and corporate clients in Chandigarh who face a major bottleneck in connectivity, which affects their business productivity.

Tulip is targeting customers including banks for branch/ATM connectivity, companies for connectivity with branches and dealers, service providers, government agencies, lottery operators, stock brokers, airlines and travel agents.

The major customers of Tulip in the region are Spice, Bharti, Nahar Group, Goetze India, Ind Swift and HDFC Bank.

Tulip's network provides high uptime and bandwidth on-demand, and can be deployed in four to five days' time for customers. According to Bedi, Tulip provides a bandwidth range of 2-8 mega byte. The network provides both inter-city and intra-city connectivity using a wireless based last mile access. The company was started in 1992 by Bedi in New Delhi with four engineers and today employs 600 engineers across 100 locations in India.

Bedi launched a software company that graduated into hardware, then networking and finally into wireless network connectivity.