RailTel Looks to Double Revenue to Rs. 1,000 Crores in Next 2 Years

The telecom arm of Indian Railways, RailTel Corporation, is looking to double its turnover to Rs. 1,000 crores in two years as the company expands into retail broadband and telepresence services.

"We are targeting Rs. 1,000 crores revenue over the next two years from around Rs. 550 crores in financial year 2014-15," RailTel chairman and managing director R K Bahuguna said here last evening.

Bahuguna was in the city to showcase their latest product Telepresence - full HD video-conferencing services available to corporates and government departments on a rental basis.

On the services, RailTel director A Seshagiri Rao said: "We are targeting Rs. 50 crores fees in the first year itself from Telepresence services."

Bahuguna said enterprise business, projects and retail broadband would be the future growth drivers for the company.

On company's main revenue contributors Bahuguna said, about 25 percent of its revenue comes from enterprise connectivity fees from telecom companies, another 25 percent from government including educational institutes, 15 percent from cable multi-system operators (MSOs).

Indian railways share, however, is just 10 percent, while project execution business is also gaining momentum, he said.

Over the years, as telecom companies are building their own optical fibre cable (OFC) network, the state enterprise is trying to foray into new avenues such retail broadband and telepresence services.

Railtel, which has about 45,000km of OFC network across the country, will scale it up to 50,000km by this fiscal.

Bahuguna further said: "Retail broadband will be another focus, we have already launched 'Rail Wire' brand broadband in south and now we are looking for partners to launch it in eastern region."