The Hindu Business Line : Polycom bullish, targets education sector

POLYCOM India, the Indian subsidiary of Polycom Inc, the global video communications infrastructure provider, is aggressively pursuing a series of ambitious projects.

The company has already enabled several IITs, including IIT Mumbai and Chennai, to provide distance education through interactive video communications.

Polycom plans to target Government, educational institutions, healthcare providers, and professional consumers such as doctors and travel agencies, to increase its business in the Indian market.

Polycom, which set up office in India last year, currently has a 60 per cent share of the estimated $30-40 million Indian videoconferencing market, which is growing annually at a rate of 30 per cent.

"Given the expertise India has in healthcare and education, the country can become the next sourcing hub for distance education and healthcare if video conferencing systems are widely used," Mr Yugal Sharma, Country Manager, Polycom India, told Business Line.

Other applications include Web-on-demand and interactive video on mobile phones.

Polycom has already conducted trial runs for interactive video on mobile phones in countries such as Singapore, Korea and Japan, where mobile phone consumers have been quick to embrace new technologies.

"The commercial launch has not been finalised since the cellular service providers are getting a fix as to how much the consumer is willing to pay for this service," Mr Sharma said.

While this technology will take a while to reach India, Polycom expects to piggyback on service providers so that Indian fixed line telecom consumers could benefit from cheaper ISD calls.

Besides this, the company would also target the 80 million households owning colour televisions to promote its Web-on-demand facility.

The cost factor is likely to be tackled when the (videoconferencing) service would be offered by the service provider either as a value addition or a bundled package.