A Rajasthan court had earlier asked the company to get listed in order to protect the interest of the minority shareholders. It was asked to consider listing in 18 months starting August 2008.
Sistema Shyam TeleServices Ltd (SSTL), a joint venture between Russia’s Sistema and India’s Shyam group, is gearing up to get listed on the Indian bourses. The company would be ready for listing in the next 6-9 months.
A Rajasthan court had earlier asked the company to get listed in order to protect the interest of the minority shareholders. It was asked to consider listing in 18 months starting August 2008.
“We will be ready for listing in the next 6 to 9 months. The offer to public would be definitely less than 50% of the equity,” Vsevolod Rozanov, the company’s president and CEO, said. However, the company is yet to finalise the quantum of funds that would be raised from the market.
SSTL through its brand MTS has been offering CDMA telephony services in 11 circles including Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Kolkata, Delhi/ NCR and Karnataka. The company is planning to launch its services in Andhra Pradesh in three months. It has so far invested about $1.5 billion in India and is planning to pump in $2.5-2.7 billion more in the next 4-5 years.
“We are looking at a pan-India rollout of our services by the end of this calendar year. Though the average revenue per user (Arpu) is definitely lower than those being registered by the other GSM players, we are following a differential pricing in each of the circles. For instance, in Karnataka we are charging one paisa per two seconds,” he said.
Interestingly, the company is planning to focus more on data services for expanding its footprint in the market. It has started piloting the rollout of data services in November 2009.
“Though voice services continue to be the key area for us as a telephony company, the differentiator would be high-speed data services. We will start aggressively marketing the data services in India since the CDMA technology best suits data services in addition to voice,” he said. The company is planning to book at least 25% of its revenues through data services in the next three years.
As part of a strategy to use the advantages in the CDMA technology for better user satisfaction, the company is also working on introducing smartphones through bundled offers.
Currently, it is marketing smartphones in some of its circles on a pilot basis and full-fledged offerings would be rolled out by April this year.
“We have been talking to Qualcomm and other vendors for smartphones. We will bundle these phones with our services shortly. However, the services are available for open market handsets as well,” he said.
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