Computimes, Thursday, August 30th, 2001

Value-i-Store in services push

By Anuja Ravendran
anuja@nstp.com.my

E-commerce and systems solutions provider Value-i-Store Sdn Bhd hopes to record RM7 million in turnover by yearend. Its chief executive officer Leng Kean Meng said the company is banking on its web-hosting service under the iRepublics.com internet property to help meet the target growth.

To boost market acceptance, the company is offering free web hosting for clients. "The client will get a domain name and an email-hosting service in which the web site will be given 20 megabytes of disk space," Leng said.

The email-hosting service offers up to 300MB for web-based email which makes up 30 accounts. Each account is allocated 10MB of disk space and every subsequent 300MB will cost RM100.

Leng said the clients need not pay set-up or renewal fees. The web-hosting service contributes about 20 per cent of the overall revenue.

Leng expressed confidence that its target market, the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), will react positively towards the service.

"There are more than 100,000 SMEs in Malaysia and of these, only 20 percent have a web presence. This represents a huge market potential for us to tap into," he said.