HCL Infosystems bids for BSNL at 890 Crore

Mumbai: HCL Infosystems, the domestic business subsidiary of the $5-billion IT group controlled by billionaire Shiv Nadar, has emerged as the lowest bidder for providing computer hardware and software solutions to Bharat Sanchar Nigam's (BSNL) Western operations. HCL emerged as L1 or the lowest bidder at 890 crore, ahead of rivals Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Mahindra Satyam, for managing BSNL's phone lines in the Western region.

As reported by the Economic Times, "Financial bid submitted by HCL will be evaluated and the entire process could take another month after negotiations," said a person familiar with the transaction, who requested for anonymity. BSNL opened the bids submitted by HCL, Spanco (partnered with Mahindra Satyam) and TCS on Monday. However, a single company cannot execute the IT contract in more than two zones according to BSNL's contract terms and this could emerge as a potential bottleneck for HCL.

"HCL will have a choice to decide which two zones it wishes to implement the operations support systems (OSS) and business support system (BSS) and the third zone in which it has emerged the lowest bidder will be awarded to the second lowest bidder," said a source from BSNL on conditions of anonymity.

Earlier, HCL won BSNL's IT outsourcing contracts worth almost 1,800 crore for Southern and Eastern zones. According to executives who requested anonymity, TCS' bid of 906 crore was the second lowest bidder followed by a 1,042 crore bid by Spanco, which partnered with Mahindra Satyam for the West Zone. Infosys was the fourth lowest bidder with a price bid of 1,897 crore, he added. HCL had won 230 crore enterprise resource planning (ERP) contract from BSNL in March this year.

These IT outsourcing contracts are part of BSNL's 93-million lines GSM project worth over $1 billion, for procuring network equipment, tower infrastructure and technology solutions and services. The project was further broken down in four zones for allowing companies to bid separately for each of these regions. The financial bid for the North Zone is expected to be opened next week.