The Hindu Business Line : Konkan Rly engages PwC to hawk SkyBus technology

UNDETERRED by an accident that claimed the life of one of its employees, Konkan Railway Corporation is offering to licence the technology to operators who want to implement metro rail transport projects.

"We do not envisage for ourselves a role of contractors for such projects. We have engaged PricewaterhouseCoopers to find project implementation partners for SkyBus. We have already demonstrated the technology at the test track at Goa. It is now for private operators to take up projects anywhere in the world and pay us royalty," the Konkan Railway Managing Director, Mr B. Rajaram, told Business Line.

According to the offer, a private operator interested in bidding for an urban transport system has to submit an expression of interest to Konkan Railway by Friday. The interested bidders should have a net worth of Rs 150 crore and be authorised to carry out business in India.

The interested bidders would be shortlisted on October 8 and then invited to visit the test site at Madgaon in Goa to assess the technical and financial aspects of the SkyBus system. Subsequently, Konkan Railway will invite detailed bids for specific routes identified by the contractors for being selected to enter into technology licensing agreements, Mr Rajaram said.

PwC has already made presentations and has elicited good response from construction companies. How many of these actually come forward to bid would be known only next week. After a company is selected as a technology partner, it will be required to go thorough the bidding process for the selected section and bag the project.

Konkan Railway will get a fixed royalty for transferring the technology to the selected partner and later, a success fee if the same contractor bags a project and constructs a SkyBus system, Mr Rajaram said.

The SkyBus metro system has been developed by Konkan Railway as an answer to the traffic problem of congested cities. The principle is rather simple - it puts a conventional railway system upside down. So, instead of a coach being mounted on a bogie, the SkyBus has a coach suspended from a bogie that travels on an elevated structure. Konkan Railway claims that the cost of putting up the SkyBus was Rs 50 crore per km as against Rs 130-150 crore for a metro system like the one coming up in Delhi.