With the voice-dominated telecom world moving towards data, home-grown telecom equipment maker Tejas Networks has its hands full.

The company is into R&D, hardware and software writing, chip design, and manufacturing optic fibre transmission equipment.

The company's CEO and Managing Director, Mr Sanjay Nayak, told Business Line in a recent interview that “the best times for the company are going to be the next few years.”

Edited excerpts:

With 4G coming in, what are the opportunities for companies such as Tejas? How do you see the market for telecom equipment in India?

4G will generate a lot of bandwidth and data and there has to be high speed bandwidth backhaul. A voice-centric network doesn't need high bandwidth but the growth of the Internet requires it. Operators say that the percentage of their capex for wireless to 2G backhaul is going up. Everything today is about broadband because that is the only way user experience will be different. 3G has not taken off partly because the backend is not strong and speed difference is not tangible. That is where Tejas comes in. We are betting on the explosion of bandwidth.

How do you plan to cash in on the opportunity?

We will expand our product portfolio. To go global, Tejas is partnering with companies who it used to compete with. Basically, we do the R&D, build the products and sell it to them. It saves them costs and gives Tejas access to global markets. We used to address about 10 per cent of the capex of an operator, but we expect this to go up to about 40 per cent by the end of the year with more products.

What kind of products would these be?

It could move from optical transmission to provide more services such as switching and routing and metro Ethernet switch. The company could also work in wireless which it doesn't do now. The next inflection point could potentially be wireless.

What is the next big opportunity in the sector for India?

The next big thing in the company is how technology products require innovation. Earlier western companies came to India once they made enough money with products there. But those markets are not growing very fast anymore and these markets are, and prices are a tenth of what they are there. Also, India has talent and there is a big domestic market and innovation costs are lower. If we leverage this, technology inflection points will come and there will be opportunities.

Are there many start-ups in this sector to work on such developments? How is the ecosystem today?

We don't have many companies such as Tejas in India across the whole ICT sector and this has to change because there is a lot of talent and too large a user base. We don't have the right policies. There is also a problem of R&D investment and venture funding is difficult.

Tejas had spoken about coming out with an IPO in 2010. Would it happen this year?

IPO looks like another year because it is dependent more on the environment and I don't see anything changing dramatically.

When we were about to go public, Lehman Brothers collapsed and after that there has been choppiness in the sector.

> sushma.un@thehindu.co.in

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