IT biggies eye $2 Billion projects in power sector

By siliconindia   |   Monday, 30 March 2009, 22:04 IST   |    3 Comments
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Mumbai: Domestic IT market seems to be pouring opportunities to the Indian IT vendors with many government IT projects are at the doorstep. The government of India has a budget of 50, 000 crore for the modernization of power sector, of which $2 billion (10,000 crore)will be spent on IT projects in areas such as consulting, implementation of IT systems and training, reported The Economic Times. The state electricity boards (SEBs) have invited bids from eligible vendors and almost every major Indian and multinational companies is vying for the different pieces of the project. The fund distributing body for SEBs Power Finance Corporation (PFC) has empanelled around 15-20 vendors as eligible to be consultants. The consultants will be responsible for defining the requirements for the IT systems and also for releasing the RFPs for implementation and training. "A few RFPs have already come out and the bids are underway. If things go well, we will see a lot of investment in the new year. Some of these projects will take a backseat because of the elections, but irrespective of which government comes to power these projects will go on," said Anand Sankaran, CEO, Wipro Infotech. The consulting projects are estimated to be anywhere between 50 lakh for small SEBs and 2 crore for some of the larger SEBs. Each SEB will select the successful bidder from among the consultants empanelled by the PFC. Tenders for the implementation of new systems will be called after the initial consulting phase. The implementation phase is estimated to be between Rs 50 crore and Rs 200 crore.