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Vishwanath Kulkarni

BANGALORE, Jan. 20

PROTOCOL Telecom Solutions (India) Private Ltd, a contact centre solutions provider, expects to complete the acquisition of a US-based boutique development lab by mid-February.

"The acquisition process is nearly complete and we are awaiting approvals from the Federal regulatory agencies and the Foreign Investment Promotion Board," said Mr Suresh Gundappa, CEO, Protocol.

The four-month-old Bangalore-based start-up initially picked up a 60-per cent stake in the boutique development lab, which provides services to a CRM major in the US. Protocol is also keeping its options open on offering the rest of the equity in favour of the CRM solutions provider, from whom development work could be outsourced to India, Mr Suresh said. The acquired entity would be renamed as Protocol Inc.

The company expects to meet the acquisition cost from the $4-million funds it raised from a group of private investors in October last year by offloading some 60 per cent of its equity.

Once the acquisition is complete, Protocol intends to relocate the entire development operations from US to Bangalore, which would have a team of some 15 engineers, while the entity in US would primarily take care of marketing and servicing the clients. "This is being done to take advantage of the low costs here," Mr Suresh said.

Protocol expects to sell the productised computer telephony integration and IBR components of the boutique development lab in India and South-East Asia. The company is focussed on developing contact centre solutions and provides consultancy services in network infrastructure and security services.

The company expected to achieve the targeted revenues of $15 million in its first year of operations, he said. "We expect nearly 70 per cent of our revenues to come from the Asian market and the rest from America," he said. Protocol has bagged two multi-million orders from an ISP in Indonesia and a major company in Malaysia.

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