|
Lifetree charts out expansion through acquisition
Shipra Arora / New Delhi
Lifetree Convergence, a Delhi-based software products
and services company operating in the billing and messaging solutions space
has expressed an interest in acquiring a company providing solutions in the
billing space. As part of its expansion drive, the company is now foraying into
the BPO market.
Nalini Gupta, head of Sales and Marketing at Lifetree
Convergence said, “We are aiming to be the billing supplier of choice in
the Tier 2 and Tier 3 carrier market globally, which accounts for the largest
percentage of telcos, particularly in high-growth markets like Africa and the
Middle East. After having established our base in South Africa, Lifetree is
evaluating the strategic acquisition of a market leader in this space. The acquisition
will make us a prominent player globally in the billing space.” In addition
to this, the company is also planning a local presence in the Middle East, both
directly and via partners, within the current financial year. The firm is actively
targeting banks and other financial institutions there for its electronic statement
presentment and payment application as well as its on-the-fly bill/statement
formatter. Lifetree is also targeting telcos in the region for its convergent
billing and operations support system (OSS) system.
On the R&D front, Lifetree is doing extensive work
on churn management, a major area of concern for telcos. Lifetree is currently
into testing this solution with a leading Indian GSM player. “We expect
this tool to be commercially available before the end of this year,” Gupta
added. The tool will help service providers to understand their customers better
as well as identify customers who are likely to switch from a network, thereby
giving the player a competitive edge vis-à-vis other players in the market.
Lifetree is also planning new features and functionalities
for its ZipBill solution, an electronic bill presentment and payment product,
to be released over the course of the year 2003-2004. Some of the key features
slated to debut this year are enhanced bill analysis features, customer profiling
and ZipFormatter Ver1.1.
The company has two software development centres—in
New Delhi and Bangalore. |
