Prepaid Solutions

India has witnessed huge power leakages (T and D losses) on an unprecedented scale. This was as high as Rs 33,000 crore (Rs 330 billion) till a couple of years back.

Power companies have been since trifurcated in India and most states have separate companies for Distribution, Transmission & Generation. Distribution companies are both Government owned and private. Key success factors for Distribution companies are to cut distribution losses of any kind, and to ensure positive cash flow as they buy power from generation companies, sometimes even by paying in advance.

Distribution companies have started early trials for implementation of prepaid power in India. FTL’s prepaid power solutions work just as a cellphone works in a prepaid manner. When the customer pays for his prepaid power an e-wallet is created, a black-box attached to his meter transmits usage data on an hourly basis to the e-wallet server that reduces the amount of balance in his account. As the balance is about to run out, the consumer pays an additional amount that is added to his e-wallet to prevent disconnection and continue usage of power. This in cell phone parlance is called e-top up.

Forbes Technosys has strong capabilities in prepaid in the Telecom space including e-top up via kiosks, PCs & POSterminals. FTL also installs and operates bill payment kiosks for more that 10 power distribution companies in India for post-paid payments. These kiosks are connected to backend systems, so that information regarding bill payments is updated on a continuous basis.

The business models include installing prepaid systems in discoms both as a solution provider (including meters), as well as providing an end to end solution on a transaction fee model that can cover metering, connection, disconnection, maintenance of e-wallet and 24 x7 recharge services through payment kiosks.