IT firm HCL Infosystems today posted an increase of 3.44 per cent in consolidated net profit at Rs 60 crore for the quarter ended March 31, 2010.

However, its net sales declined by 5.88 per cent to Rs 2,814.50 crore for the quarter ended March 31, 2010 from Rs 2,990.63 crore in the same period last year.

"The drop in sales has been on account of our telecom business. The quarter saw a lot of launches in the low-cost and dual-SIM handsets segment, where Nokia did not have a lot of inventory," HCL Infosystems Chairman and CEO Ajai Chowdhry told reporters here.

HCL Infosystems distributes the mobile handsets of the Finnish firm Nokia in India.

The board has proposed a third interim dividend at Rs two per share on the face value of Rs 2 each for the year 2009-2010.

The company is also bullish on the UID project (now called Aadhar). It will bid for providing end-to-end solutions for the UID cards, Chowdhry said.

"We are already providing similar solutions in Chandigarh for PDS and can leverage it to Unique Identification (UID) as well which would be awarded at state-level," Chowdhry said.

This would include engaging in data collection through registration devices, back-end management and issuing cards.

The company would also bid for training enrolling agents under the UID project, which aims at training over one lakh enrolling agents, throwing up opportunities for large training companies like NIIT, Aptech and HCL Infosystems.

Talking about the future roadmap, Chowdhry said, "We have continuously been expanding towards building more expertise, introducing various services, products and new practice areas and will continue to focus on that."

Such initiatives include addition of system integration applications, application services and enterprise solutions to strengthen and consolidate service offerings, he added.

"With a focus on new product development, we have worked on IP creation for over 30 products," he said, adding that "HCL is also looking at augmenting services, exports and inorganic growth through possible mergers and acquisitions."

The company, which already has a presence in the African region, is now eyeing the Middle East and South East Asia as growth opportunities.

Its employee strength stood at over 6,500 people as on March 31, 2010. Its revenues from computer systems business stood at Rs 932.43 crore for the quarter ended March 2010.

Revenues from telecommunications and office automation stood at Rs 1,884.67 crore, while Internet and related services contributed Rs 17.68 crore in the reporting quarter.