NEW DELHI: Spice Ltd, a recent entrant into the mobile handset market, is eyeing the pan-Indian market with the expansion of its 'Spice' mobile phones in western and southern India.

"Spice Mobile will be launched all over India. The company is now planning to tap southern and western parts of the country. With the increasing tele-density, Spice Ltd plans to focus on building its brand nation-wide and expanding their reach along with the expansion of telecom operators to smaller & mid-sized towns in India," Kunal Ahooja, CEO Spice Ltd, said.

The company has two models, including a GPRS Phone, with MP3 Player - S500 and S600. While S500 is priced at Rs 2499, S600 is Rs 5799.

The company has already launched mobile phones in Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, HP, J&K & Kolkata and in the eastern states of West Bengal, Assam and Orissa.

Spice Ltd is part of BK Modi's MCorp Global.

The Spice black and white phones are imported from China or Taiwan and later assembled in the company's Himachal Pradesh plant.

The Rs 10,000 crore mobile handset market in India has seen many low-cost entry level models in recent months with Motorola being the latest, launching a below USD40 phone.

Motorola is also working on another new phone below USD30.

CDMA operators in India are already offering phones at below 30 dollar in bundles. Tata Teleservices, for instance, recently threw in with connection a Motorola CDMA phone for Rs 1,499.

In the GSM camp, Nokia (whose cheapest model currently is priced at Rs 2,500) has tied up with Texas Instruments to develop a chip set that will incorporate most of the mobile electronics components necessary for a phone in a single panel.

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Spice Telecom, Karnataka's oldest cellular service provider, announced the re-structuring of brand Spice and unveiled the new brand logo of Spice Telecom at a press conference held in Bangalore. According to the company, new brand values will be fun, innovation, vibrancy, empathy, trust and speed of response.

The company is the oldest of the four cellular service providers in Karnataka, covering over 100 villages and 70 towns and has a customer base of more than 3,00,000 active subscribers in Karnataka. Spice Telecom has tied up with over 235 partners across the globe, to provide international roaming facilities in 123 countries.

Unveiling the logo, Prakash Nanani, the new CEO for Spice Punjab & Karnataka, said, "MCorp Global, the holding company of Spice, is focusing on the ICE sector and in this direction has been building on the strength of its subsidiaries like Spice Telecom & Spice Mobile Phones. The group has also made recent forays into certain specific market segments of the ICE sector, like Spice Malls & Multiplexes."

The new Spice identity shall be shared by a group of companies like, Spice Telecom (GSM service provider), Spice Mobile Phone (Mobile Handset), and Spice Mega Malls & Multiplexes (Commercial Property (Development & Management), Spice Films (Film Production), Spice Onshore Telecom BPO and Spice IT Peripherals (Printers & Computer Hardware).

Navin Kaul, chief operating officer, Spice Karnataka, said, "We accept that the last three years had not been good, but now we are confident to regain our position in the Karnataka market. We have also signed up Priyanka Chopra as our brand ambassador, who is a youth icon and perfectly fits our image. Spice Telecom is also in the process of consolidating and investing in various disciplines, like network and technology enhancement, increase in infrastructure and resources, apart from the brand building."

"We have a Rs 100 crore investment plan towards network infrastructure, which will be strengthened by adding 150 more cell sites across the state by June 2006. The actual target is to double the towers presently available. These network initiatives are expected to help Spice subscribers to enjoy superior voice clarity, coverage and excellent connectivity across Karnataka", Kaul said.

Spice seems to have got all spiced up for the new re-vamped business, and it is also expected to come up with a lot of attractive schemes for its customers in the near future.

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Bangalore: Spice Telecom plans to expand its operations in six more circles across Jammu and Kashmir, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan and eastern and western regions of Uttar Pradesh from next year.

Spice Telecom CEO Prakash Nanani told reporters here Thursday that the company, one of the first cellular operators in the country with a presence in Karnataka and Punjab, will invest about Rs.18 billion in information, communication and entertainment (ICE) sector expansion over the next two years.

"The expansion plans include major investment in the GSM mobile space in the six circles for which we have licences to operate. We are waiting for the government's new spectrum policy to roll out our services.

"Once the spectrum allocation is made with the revised guidelines, we will start operating from each of the six circles in a phased manner from 2006 onwards. We also plan to apply for licences to operate from three more states," Nanani said.

The company is in the process of launching its own mobile handsets under the Spice brand, outsourcing them from a Taiwanese vendor.

In Karnataka, where Spice has been operating since April 1997, the company has decided to expand its presence across the state with an additional investment of Rs.1 billion in the next two-three months.

Though Spice lost out to three leading operators - Airtel, Hutch and BSNL - in increasing its market-share due to lack of investment during the growth phase, it has restructured its operations under the new management of MCorp Global for a turnaround.

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