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Sangeeta Ahuja of Lajpat Nagar, Delhi had just got married when
her husband Naveen got transferred to Mumbai. As Sangeeta was working with a
large software company in Noida, it was not easy for her to follow Naveen
immediately to Mumbai. However, within three months of her marriage it was time
for Karva Chauth when both Sangeeta and Naveen landed in a piquant situation. As
both of them had important meetings in their offices it was not possible for
either to meet, but Sangeeta's in-laws were keen that she celebrate her first
Karva Chauth. As Sangeeta was wondering what to do, her friend suggested video
conferencing from Reliance WebWorld. Acting on her friend's advice she walked
into the large WebWorld in South Extension, where for a charge of Rs 250 she was
able to perform the entire ritual-chalni and all. Only Naveen too had to book
a slot at same time at the Juhu WebWorld in Mumbai and the Ahuja's first Karva
Chauth was complete via video conferencing.
Skip to Diptesh and Jasmine Banerjee with their one-year old kid
Saumya in Hyderabad. As Saumya was celebrating his first birthday, both his
grandparents from Kolkata were keen to attend the celebrations. Again as it was
not possible for either the Banerjees to take leave and come to Kolkata to
celebrate, what they organized was a video conferencing session between two
WebWorlds in the two cities, where the grandparents saw Saumya cutting the cake.
Digital Lifestyle Stores
Welcome to the world of Reliance WebWorld-a network of 240 stores across
105 cities throughout the country. Thanks to the abundance of bandwidth today, a
host of video conferencing applications are in popular demand. The Reliance
(Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Enterprise-ADAE) group is no doubt, betting big on the
digital future through these front-end lifestyle stores, Reliance WebWorld. Of
the 240 current WebWorlds, the bulk is currently located in Mumbai (25) and
Delhi (about 20). The company is now looking at even smaller cities for its
expansion plan, thanks to the availability of abundant bandwidth now. It already
has centers in most of the Tier II and III cities, for instance, even small
towns such as Saharanpur, Meerut, and Akola. Says Sarup Chowdhary, director and
CEO, Reliance WebWorld; "We intend to add another 80 WebWorlds in the
coming year. And we will be looking closely at small towns and cities for
growth. We are not big city boys anymore."
WebWorld was started as a point of contact for Reliance
customers a few years ago, typically selling Reliance mobile and landline
connections besides offering Internet surfing. Now, WebWorlds have evolved into
a lifestyle store with three distinct services to offer: C3 or customer
convenience center that offers Reliance products besides airline bookings for
Air Deccan and Kingfisher Airlines; Broadband center, offering services such as
video-conferencing, gaming, and Internet café; and lastly Java Green, an
exclusive gourmet services for WebWorld users in 110 out of the 240 stores.
While Chowdhary and Darayus Mehta, who heads video conferencing
operations of WebWorld, do take pride of instances such as birthday or Karva
Chauth, the fact of the matter is that WebWorld has also opened up new frontiers
in tele-medicine and e-learning by means of alliances with prestigious
institutions. It has tied up with institutes such as XLRI (Jamshedpur), Xavier
Institute of Management (Bhubhaneshwar), and IIM (Bangalore) to offer three
management and other programs in 21 cities simultaneously via video
conferencing. On the anvil, are plans to extend virtual classrooms to Knowledge
Management Institute, US, as Deepak Chopra discourses. Informs Chowdhary,
"We need at least 5 students in each town to bring it into the video
conference fold, and thanks to Reliance WebWorld, both XLRI and XIMB have
doubled their capacity for distance learning."
The company has also launched a pilot tele-medicine program in
association with Apollo Hospitals. Primarily, this is being currently used by
patients in 21 cities for either specialized or a second consultation. A
telemedicine portal has been created for Apollo where patients can upload all
their case histories and then accordingly, appropriate consultation are provided
via video conferencing. While tele-medicine is still in its early stages,
Digital Electronic News Gathering has become a big hit for WebWorld coming as
'manna' for electronic journalists covering news in locations without OB
vans. Informs Mehta, "This facility is being utilized by 47 news channels
and 23 news gathering studios across 105 WebWorlds in 86 cities."
Impressive numbers indeed!
Another aspect where WebWorlds have gathered tremendous steam,
is training for doctors and medical conferences. Recently, Nicholas Piramal
organized a training program across 192 locations via videoconferencing-this
feat by WebWorld is likely to get recognition from Guinness Book for being the
biggest video conferencing session in the world. Even complex eye surgeries have
been transmitted live through WebWorld. Chowdhary informs that besides MR
training, large organizations such as Gillette have arranged product launches as
well as MNCs have recruited personnel in India through their video conferencing
programs. The business model is simple-while Reliance has a 70:30 revenue
sharing with the WebWorld franchisees in most cities, the proportion goes to
60:40 for Delhi and Mumbai. The franchisee owners only need to pay a hefty
initial deposit ranging from Rs 18-34 lakh plus a non-refundable sign-up fee of
Rs 4 lakh-choice and ownership of location, operating expenditure are all
borne by Reliance, while they also pay 8% interest on the franchisee deposit
amount. Of the 240 stores, 120 are owned by franchisees now, a number likely to
increase by 80 in 2006, informs Chowdhary.
While games such as Counter Strike, Half Life, and Need for
Speed have been popular in the Broadband center; WebWorld has also started
offering e-ticketing services for Air Deccan and Kingfisher.
"We are in the process of identifying more airlines company
for the e-ticketing initiative," says Chowdhary.
WebWorld would also be launching personal financial services
from May 1, 2006, "There will be a separate counter at WebWorlds offering
Reliance Capital and mutual funds," he adds.
Small BPOs
However, the most unique initiative of WebWorld has been the fillip given to
budding entrepreneurs through the scheme whereby they can start operating a
small-time BPO from a WebWorld store from 10 p.m. to 8 a.m. As the WebWorlds are
already equipped with computers, headsets, etc., all the entrepreneur needs is
purchasing VoIP minutes. Chowdhary elaborated on the innovative strategy
employed by his company. "Call centers are highly successful in India and
with this venture we allow small entrepreneurs to
open up shops with limited capital. We already have world-class infrastructure
in place, all it needs to do is get the people and start operations. This
facility is best for 12-20 seater outbound call center ventures," he said.
Reliance WebWorld has already struck five deals in diverse parts
of India, from metros such as Hyderabad to smaller cities and towns such as
Meerut, Saharanpur, Agra, and Bhubhaneshwar. The company charges Rs 8000 per
seat per month, "So a person can operate a 12 seater call center for less
than a lakh of rupees per month," said Chowdhary. Since the WebWorlds are
registered under special provisions of the Shops and Establishment Act, they can
operate 24x7 and even have female workers taking nightshifts.
Chowdhary is excited about the fact that new entrepreneurs are making the best
of this business opportunity, "Of the five deals, four are new
entrepreneurs and the one in Hyderabad, is an existing operator who wants to
make use of additional capacity," he said. "We are targeting 50 deals
this year, four per circle. That should be fine with us. Obviously most of these
initiatives would not have been possible without adequate bandwidth," he
added.
-Rajneesh De
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