HECL hits jackpot with Playwin lottery

Hughes Escorts Communication Ltd (HECL) pulled off a winner last year with the Playwin project with as much as 50 percent of the company's sales coming

from the lottery project. Ashish Chowdhary, VP, DirectWay, Enterprise Services, HECL stated that the company has already deployed over 2,000 VSATs

for the network and the project is well on its way to becoming the largest VSAT network in the country. 

"Speed was paramount to the roll-out of this online lottery and HECL deployed innovative logistic practices to install 30-50 VSATs per day for

the project," he said. However, there are not too many lottery projects going on in the country with HECL snapping the bid for the second lottery

project as well, which is yet to begin its roll-out. The second project is slated to use VSATs in over 100-200 sites. 

Another segment that has been driving sales has been VSAT deployment for setting up ATMs. Last year 30 percent of the industry's sales was towards

the setting up of ATMs. Of the total sale of 10,000 VSATs installed last year, industry guesstimates put the figure of VSATs used for ATMs at 3,000. 

Over 20 percent of HECL's sales have come from this sector. 

HECL is the dominant player in the industry with a 50 percent marketshare in the total number of installed VSATs. Of the total base of 24,000 VSATs,

Chowdhary estimates 12,000 VSATs to be Hughes VSATs. However in the shared hub network, the company's marketshare is estimated at 40 percent. 

Last year has been particularly good for the company with as much as 50 percent of the company's installed base set up during the period. "Last year

HECL rolled out 6,000-7,000 VSATs which is more than or equal to the total number of VSATs that the company installed over the past six years,"

Chowdhary said. 

Sale in the government sector was also significant although the nature of government contracts is peculiar in that the applications are high end. So

that, while the scale of the project may be small, the value could be substantial. Other sectors like manufacturing, Internet access made up for

rest of the company's sales. 

Overall, the industry benefited due to policy changes, which also accrued during last year. First, the government allowed the use of Ku band making a

huge difference in the cost of the end terminal as well as the quality of service offered. Over the years, the cost of end terminals has also come

down making VSAT services relatively cheaper. The government also allowed the industry to move to a revenue sharing regime, which hugely contributed

in shoring up bottomlines.

While the entire telecom industry has been weathering bad growth, the VSAT industry has been particularly impacted due to increased availability of

terrestrial capacity. VSAT players have increasingly positioned themselves as integrated service providers by aligning with basic service providers. 

HECL offers integrated services by buying leased lines from BSNL and has recently aligned with Data Access for providing cost-effective services in

the ILD space as well. 

BALAKA BARUAH AGGARWAL 



(CNS)