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Going seems tougher for Sify

NetScribes/Ganesh Ramamoorthy

The going seems to be getting only tougher for India's premier Internet and e-commerce company, Satyam Infoway.

Despite a 14 per cent q-o-q reduction in cash losses and a 166 per cent y-o-y increase in total revenues, Satyam Infoway has reported a 545 per cent rise in net loss to $53.5 million for the year ending March 31, 2000.

The loss before interest, depreciation and amortisation stands at $23.4 million for the whole year as against $4.2 million during 1999-2000.

Loss before amortisation of goodwill in acquisitions is placed at $29.4 million, up from $5.7 million in the previous year. Sales revenue for the last quarter of 2000-01 has risen to $11.9 million from $10 million in the previous quarter, while for the whole year it is up at $38.1 million, compared to $14.3 million in the previous year.

Cash loss (loss before interest, depreciation and amortisation) has come down, for the first time in the last eight quarters, to $7.3 million during the quarter ended March 31, 2001, from $8.5 million in the quarter ended December 2000.

Analysts see this reversal as an important milestone in Sify's march towards profitability.

Corporate services, comprising data/network and e-consulting services, account for 68 per cent of the total revenue.

Analysts attribute the growth in corporate services revenue -- which is now 3.1 times that in the same period last year -- mainly to some major one-time wins.

Key customer wins in Data/Network services during the year include orders from ING Insurance, Jet Airways, Zee Interactive, Aventis, Commerce One, Page Point, Balsara, Lucent, Gillette India, Usha International and Cognizant Technologies.

Crucial customer wins for the e-consulting and Web services during Q4 include orders from State Bank of India, Luxor India, Dr Reddy's Laboratories and Xerox India. Key customer wins during the year include Ford India, Doordarshan, HDFC Bank, UTI Bank, Banque Nationale de Paris, Henkel SPIC and SRF.

Sify's retail business, comprising cyber cafes and dial-access business, has contributed about 24 per cent of the revenues with the total subscriber base growing to 460,000 as on March 31, 2001.

At end of Q4, Sify had 301 operational cyber cafes in six cities in India, revenues from which have grown over 2.5 times that of the previous quarter. The average revenue per user has risen to $1.42.

Revenues from Sify's portal, Sify.com, have risen over 2.25 times from Q4 last year and 4.4 times on a whole year basis. At $3.05 million, Sify.com accounts for 8 per cent of Sify's total revenues.

Sify expects decreasing bandwidth costs and a market base above the threshold level to be the main growth drivers in the coming quarters.

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