Infosys clinches with TCS to grab the modern ICT contract for rural India

By Sai Krishna D.
June 18, 2011

Infosys, India’s second largest software manufacturer, has reportedly pipped its biggest rival Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), to clinch India Post’s ‘rural information and communications technology’ contract.

According to the terms of the contract, Infosys will be responsible for enabling the Gramin Dak Sewak post office to perform e-transactions. India Post is embarking on a massive IT modernisation programme under the ‘India Post 2011’ plan. As part of this, the department has split the programme into eight projects.

The Indian Postal department, which has the largest postal network in the world, with 155,669 post offices, has reportedly issued requests for proposals for six contracts. As per its website, 89 per cent of these offices are in the rural areas. Reports reveal that by now only 12,604 head post offices and sub-post offices have been automated.

India Posts’ IT modernization initiative is expected to create over Rs 5,000-crore opportunities for IT services and hardware companies.

Meanwhile, the bidding process for India Post’s Rs 1,000-crore ‘core system integrator’ contract is on.

This is touted as the largest of the eight contracts. Capgemini, Accenture, IBM, HP, TCS, Infosys, HCL and Wipro are some companies believed to be participating in the contract, expected to be finalised in two months.

The project recently bagged the Gold award in “excellence in government process re-engineering” at the 14th National e-Governance Conference. India contributes about two per cent to Infosys’ total revenue.

Infosys has been aggressively participating and winning government contracts since it made up its mind to establish an individual business unit focusing on the domestic IT outsourcing market. It has been facilitating the income tax department in managing all electronically-filed returns and a part of the paper filings.