Indian Trading Giant Woos Telstra
The Age
Tuesday May 7, 1996
The giant British-Indian Hinduja group, having failed to lure Telstra into a cellular-phone venture in Madras, is now trying to get the national carrier to join it in developing cable telephony in Bombay.
According to Mr Ashok Hinduja, the youngest of four brothers who run Hinduja, the $US11 billion ($A13.75 billion) group involved in enterprises ranging from trading to communications would also like to draw on Mr Kerry Packer's expertise in entertainment and leisure for developments in India.
Mr Hinduja, who stepped out of the Park Hyatt's plush $3500- a-night Governor suite to sample Sydney's Intencity electronic arcade during his brief visit, wants to build electronic theme parks and multiplex cinemas in India, and introduce Australian technology to India's inefficient mining industries.
He would like to launch in Australia the Gulf Oil brand, which Hinduja owns outside the United States, Britain, Spain and Portugal, if he can find independent petrol retailers to take it on, and to sell cheaper explosives to Australian miners.
Hinduja, one of the biggest non-resident Indian companies in the world, has responded to India's deregulation and growing middle class with a $US6 billion, 10-year investment program, including $US1 billion for communications.
It has cable passing two million homes in Bombay and four other cities, has tested cable telephony using Israeli technology, and is putting more fibre-optic cable into its networks to improve the voice quality.
Mr Hinduja said Telstra was ``looking now for opportunities in cable networking". He interrupted his holiday in Australia to meet Telstra's chairman, Mr David Hoare, the managing director, Mr Frank Blount, and the corporate, government and international chief, Mr Charlie Zoi, last Friday.
He said they were particularly interested to learn that Hinduja had been testing cable telephony technology.
Telstra will face the first challenge to its monopoly on local calls from the cable TV and telephony group Optus Vision within a few months, but many of its officials are still privately dismissive of cable telephony.
Mr Hinduja said his group's In Cablenet cable network was ``a good opportunity" for Telstra to enter the Indian telephony market without having to make a big investment.
Mr Zoi described the meeting as ``exchanging pleasantries and building the relationship", but he said cable TV in India was ``very, very interesting" because it was the ``prime source of recreation for most of the people", and TVs outnumbered telephones 40 million to eight million.
Mr Hinduja said he ``very much liked" Intencity, a chain of electronic arcades owned by Village Roadshow and Mr Packer's Publishing & Broadcasting. He said he saw scope for joint ventures in India with these companies, but no approaches had yet been made.
He saw ``great opportunities" for cooperation with Mr Packer because his group also had an interest in sports, including a Sports Foundation.
© 1996 The Age
