SK C&C boosts biz in Southeast Asia

SK C&C China President Lee Nam-bang, right, signs a contract with Ming Pi-an, a Chinese government official, left, after the Korean company agreed to invest in a China-based tech firm to boost its e-commerce business in China in October. / Courtesy of SK C&C

By Kim Yoo-chul

SK C&C, the information and technology arm of SK Group, aims to increase the portion of its overseas revenue to 20 percent by 2015 from the current 7 percent.

``We’ve lost some business chances in the Middle East and North Africa region due to the eurozone crisis and a slow economic recovery in the United States. But SK C&C doesn’t worry too much as we have made profits in countries that we previously invested in heavily,’’ said Park Tae-jin, who leads the company’s overseas business, in a meeting with local reporters, Wednesday.

SK C&C’s current key markets are Bangladesh, Turkey, China and Turkmenistan. It provides technology infrastructure, mobile commerce platforms and system solutions to governments.

``SK C&C plans to establish various joint ventures with companies in Southeast Asia and in the Middle East in an attempt to increase its chances of winning government funded big projects. From next year, we will be much more aggressive for our overseas businesses,’’ said Park.

The executive also confirmed that the firm plans to increase the number of its overseas subsidiaries to 16 from the current 8. The United Kingdom, Turkmenistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bangladesh, Russia, Indonesia and Vietnam are the countries that will see the firm’s new affiliates.

In Southeast Asia, SK plans to advance projects by forming consortiums. In the Middle East and South America, it will partner with SK Group to find business opportunities related to the information and communication technology (ITC) sector.

In the system integration business, it identified e-learning, security, SOC and plant ITC as its targets and Park said the company will increase its investments in those businesses, as well.

``We will invest more in businesses in China and the United States,’’ he stressed. In 2005, SK C&C had 600 million won in revenue from overseas, but raised this to 92 billion won in 2011.

The executive said the company is expected to post at least $50 million in revenue in its mobile commerce business by 2017.

``By 2015, we plan to increase the number of our clients using our mobile commerce system to 30 in 15 countries from the current seven in five countries,’’ he said.

Forrester Research estimates that mobile payments globally will hit $31 billion by 2016, up from $6 billion last year.

As a result of this anticipated growth, merchants are becoming increasingly serious about such commerce and continue to scrutinize the various offerings from banks, carriers, technology giants and their fellow merchants.

U.K.-based top-tier carrier Vodafone recently said it will launch what could be the world’s largest mobile wallet in 2013 by partnering with provider CorFire, the mobile commerce unit of SK C&C USA, which will provide its CorPay mobile wallet.

In a call with Mobile Payments Today, Pascal Caillon, vice president for business development and strategy for Corfire, said the Vodafone mobile wallet will be the first to be deployed across Europe as well as the first through such a large mobile network operator.

``We successfully provided solutions for Google Wallet and we are positive about winning more deals,’’ Park said.