Bartronics expands into biometrics

Srinivasa Rao Dasari / Hyderabad

Hyderabad-based Bartronics India, a provider of Automatic Identification and Data Capture (AIDC) and bar coding technology, is upping its R&D spend. To meet the finance requirements of its expansion plan, Bartronics will tap venture capital players and the capital market. Elaborating on future targets, Sudhir Rao, MD, Bartronics India said, “We want to integrate all biometrics-based reading of eye, fingerprints and facial images. We are also working on biometrics-based access control for buildings. A fingerprints-based system is on the anvil for locking and unlocking automobiles instead of a key-based mechanism. These plans are in the R&D stage and we haven’t set any timeframe to bring them to the market.”

“The domestic RFID market is likely to touch Rs 150 crore in 2005 from the existing level of Rs 20 crore. We are confident of gaining at least a 50 percent share. We are in the process coming out with an IPO and have already filed papers with SEBI. A new round of VC funding would help us access overseas markets,” says Rao.

With railways, airports and ports likely to adopt this technology, demand for identification technologies is picking up. The AIDC market in India stands at Rs 60 crore with growth rates ranging between 25 and 40 percent. Manufacturing is expected to be an early adopter.

The company has invested Rs 7 crore and will continue its R&D efforts at its Hyderabad centre. It has 110 employees across nine registered offices and five branches servicing 1,000 customers. It is appointing representatives at Delhi and Colombo, a distributor in Bangladesh and has tied up with a company in Mauritius.

It has developed a biometrics-based system to allot time slots to devotees at Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh. It is implementing another biometrics project for the Vaishno Devi temple near Jammu and the project is expected to be completed by September. The next project in the pipeline is a fingerprint and facial image recording project for the Amarnath Temple in Uttaranchal. Bartronics has agreements with several software companies such as Infosys, Wipro, CMC and Satyam Computer Services that sell software integrated with its RFID technology.

Bartronics recorded a profit of Rs 3 crore on a Rs 12.5 crore turnover in 2003-04 and expects to register good growth rates in its business volume. Riding a boom in the demand for RFID solutions, it is confident of achieving a Rs 6-7 crore profit and a Rs 50 crore turnover in fiscal 2004-05.