NEW DELHI, India -- NCR's Indian unit expects its revenues to grow 50 percent to 60 percent over the next three to four years on the back of spending by the nation's banking system on ATMs, according to a Reuters report.
Loney Antony, NCR's country manager, told Reuters in an interview on that India, with its population of more than a billion people and less than 6,000 ATMs, offered enormous potential for his company.
"Compared to the international average of about 400 ATMs per million population, India has only six per million. If I extend the logic of international average to India, it should have about 400,000 machines," Antony said.
Even a fourth of that would be about 100,000 machines, he added, which would keep NCR's manufacturing facilities in the UK, Canada and China busy for at least a decade.
According to Antony, nearly 3,400 ATMs out of India's total of around 5,800 are NCR machines, giving it a 60 percent market share. Its primary competitor in India is HMA Diebold, a division of North Canton, Ohio-based Diebold Inc.
NCR, which reported worldwide sales of $6 billion in 2001, is hoping to end the year to March 2002 with revenues of over 2.5 billion rupees ($51 million) for its Indian operations, Antony said.
Crucial to NCR's strategy in India is cornering a chunk of the spending by the state-run banking sector which accounts for nearly three-fourths of the nation's banking industry.
Unlike foreign and private banks, many of which have large ATM networks around the country, state-run banks are just beginning to invest in technology.
"A lot of banks haven't even started. It's happening in phases. Initially, it was the multinational banks. Then private banks. Nationalized banks have (only) started," Antony said.
NCR has won large orders from two state-run banks, notably the State Bank of India, the country's largest commercial bank with over 9,000 branches, for which it has installed 600 ATMs in three months.
NCR has installed about 120 machines in the past six months for state-run Corporation Bank.
