Speaking at the Intelligent Enterprise '99 seminar, Kumar said leased line charges in India were one of the lowest in the world. "But we are still open to reviewing them," he added. Emphasising the importance of having e-infrastructure, he said the country needed large data centres like what other Asian countries Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and China had.

VSNL was also setting up an ATM backbone connecting different nodes in the country. "This is only one project. We need more of this. Any overseas company which wants to set up base will look at the communication infrastructure," he added.

Charles Wang of Computer Associates, the second largestsoftware company after Microsoft, used videoconferencing to speak at the seminar. He said India would have 37 million internet users in two to three years and the country would emerge as global hub for IT content. "Developing IT is only limited by imagination," he added. In 1998-99, of the 25 top Indian e-biz companies, 18 were profitable, he said.

Tata Consultancy Services deputy chairman F C Kohli who delivered the keynote address at the seminar said domestic market would overtake exports as the biggest market in five years time at TCS. Criticising the lack of focus on the hardware industry he said, "Everybody talks of software because it is the soft option."

Elaborating on a model to improve the literacy rate to 90 per cent in three months, he said it needed high technology. It would need powerful servers, high bandwidth and software capability to translate audio-visual content into different languages. "If every adult can learn to read 300 to 400 words in his native language that will make himliterate," he said.

Technology could also be deployed in agriculture management to get better yield by making optimal use of resources. In goverment, it would help to bring greater transparancy by reducing response time, Kohli added, applauding Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu's efforts. ICICI managing director K V Kamath said the ISP policy would go down in history as one of the biggest developments. India was in the growth phase of the technology cycle and corporates could leapfrog to new technologies. On ICICI's experience with IT and changing strategies, he said the company had maintained its staff strength at 1200 for the last 10 years while business had grown 10-fold.

At the exhibition, ERP vendor J D Edwards launched its ActivEra product in India. The product is part of its OneWorld solution. "The solution provides a flexible ERP system which allows business processes to be changed quickly," said Neil Dibbs, director business development. The company plans to open a liaison office inIndia and upgrade it to a subsidiary as soon as business reaches critical mass. J D Edwards is the third largest ERP vendor in the world.

The `Intelligent Enterprise' event is being brought to India for the first time by Miller Freeman in association with The Indian Express group of publications.