Nehru place, one of the largest IT hubs in Asia. will soon be connected through a private network forming an intranet community of the over 800 dealers. Softalk Technologies Ltd and RN Lakhotia Group have joined together to form a joint venture company Softalk Lakhotia Infocom Ltd. (SLIL) for creating an IT hub of Nehru place, http://www.npithub.com/

Umesh Gupta, Director, SLIL said that the hub would also be connected to the outside world through Internet via radio link. He said the countrywide connectivity to potential IT markets would be provided through VSAT within one year. The initial investment on hub is estimated at about Rs. 1 crore. which is being met through internal accruals. the funds in the second phase of investment would be met through venture capital funding. the second phase of expansion would included expanding to other cities, like Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, etc. Mr.Gupta also plans to take this IT hub international within the next six months.

All the 800 dealers spread over one kilometer will be connected on in-house dedicated lines within a rare combination of B2B and B2C with protected passwords, along with the combination of clicks and bricks which is being incorporated in the e-commerce hub for the competitive advantage for business of all sizes, " Mr.Gupta said.

The Nehru Place IT Hub will provide a neutral trading platform to its members with no brokerage or commission. there will be one to one deals, without any intervention by this hub. Each dealer will be provided a virtual shop in the cyber space. The virtual shop will contain details like company name, a brief profile of the company, telephone and fax numbers, names of contact persons and all the relevant information about products, like pricing and technical specifications. An annual fee of Rs. 500 would be charged from all the dealers for maintaining their WebPages.

The other features of the hub included instant messages to trading community, broadcast of special offers, exclusive e-mail facility, stock clearance through auction facility, display of launch of new updated prices of distributors and dealers.

The company plans to earn its revenues primarily from advertisements. "When companies launch a new product in the market they need to just give an ad on the site, and they will be able to reach their message out to all the dealers in one go. Also, dealers can post on the site any special offers they have. We will charge them nominal fees for that." Gupta expects to be earning Rs. 1 lakh a day from the network within the next six months.