 |
| Wednesday, July 5, 2000, Chandigarh, India   
|
Foreign investment in print media not yet LONDON, July 4 — India will not allow foreign investments in the print media in the next one and a half years, the Secretary to Prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, Mr N.K. Singh, has said. “I do not think it (permitting foreign investment in print media) will be a priority area in the next 18 months”, said Mr Singh, who answered queries after speaking at a conference on “India: New Investment Opportunities”. As e-commerce goes out,
m-commerce comes in E-cards on cell phones Indians are media sweethearts in USA Rupee
steady |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
Foreign investment in print media not yet LONDON, July 4 (PTI) – India will not allow foreign investments in the print media in the next one and a half years, the Secretary to Prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, Mr N.K. Singh, has said. “I do not think it (permitting foreign investment in print media) will be a priority area in the next 18 months”, said Mr Singh, who answered queries after speaking at a conference on “India: New Investment Opportunities”. “That is an area I don’t believe public debate has reached a consensus. That does not belong high on my radar screen,” he said. Outlining opportunities for investment in infrastructure, he said India has to ensure that it does not miss the “knowledge revolution”. To facilitate it, he said “new covergence law replacing the Indian Telegraph Act, 1888, is on the anvil and it will be introduced in Parliament in the next session, before Mr Vajpayee undertook his US visit in September. The conference came at the start of a four-day visit to the UK by a 15-member business delegation led by CII President Arun Bharat Ram. Addressing the gathering, including representatives of over 50 British companies, Indian High Commissioner Nareshwar Dayal referred to the recent visits here by Defence Minister George Fernandes, Home Minister L K Advani, Power Minister P R Kumaramangalam and Telecommunications Minister Ramvilas Paswan. He said the flurry of activities indicated that the “bilateral relationship is ready to take off”. Dayal said there might be a feeling in certain quarters that the pace of reforms in India was not fast enough. “It is like the stride of an elephant which is deceptive”, he said and noted that the reforms were on and they were irreversible. Mr Singh cited opportunities in the power sector, where “depoliticising” the power carriers would enable investors to get a reasonable return on equity, and road, where an ambitious programme offered large investment opportunities. He said in civil aviation, where the government cleared the way for private investment and telecommunications, the policy was aimed at ensuring that India would not miss out on the “knowledge revolution.” Outlining the economic background to investment opportunities, Mr Singh said there was a growth of 5.9 per cent last year and a challenge to achieve 8 to 9 per cent over the next two years. He said inflation had risen a bit but should be kept down to a single digit and the rupee, which had been stable, is expected to continue to behave in the same manner. David Jefferies, Co-Chairman, Indo-British partnership, said the trade turnover between India and the UK touched £ 4.2 billion and the UK has emerged as the second largest trading partner of India. Digby Jones, Director General, Confederation of British Industry said India is the 11th largest economy of the world and it would register a further growth because of its strong performance in the information technology sector.
|
|
As e-commerce goes out,
m-commerce comes in FOR THOSE still fixated with e-commerce, forget it — you’re woefully out of date. The latest thing is m-commerce, as in mobile phone. The arrival of wireless Internet access has led not only to a new breed of jargon but to a second wave of web portals — this time designed to exploit the mobile. Just as the land grab which occurred a number of years ago and left the likes of Yahoo!, America Online and, in this country, Freeserve on top in PC Internet access, so the battle has begun anew in wireless. In a recent note, Merrill Lynch forecast that the European mobile portal market would be worth $21 bn by 2005 and $95.5 bn by 2010. The model is similar to existing PC-based portals which act as an entry point and guide to the web, relying on a mix of advertising and, in this case, m-commerce. The existing mobile portals tend to provide news, sports and share price information, TV listings and weather presented for the smaller screens of a mobile. The growing ubiquity of mobile phones has led analysts to predict that wireless will become the main means of accessing the Internet within a few years. Certainly the value awarded to mobile portals was apparent when Vodafone used its alliance with Vivendi of France for the impending launch of Vizzavi as the trump card in its hostile takeover of Mannesmann. The potential prize has prompted a rapid fire series of entrants into the market. BT Cellnet, the British mobile phone network, has been an innovator and launched the mobile version of its Genie web portal in January. Malcolm Appleby, head of new applications at Genie, says the model for the company is to build the mobile web portal in parallel to the company’s PC-based service launched in 1997. Elsewhere, ITouch, which is 70 per cent owned by Irish media magnate Tony O’Reilly’s Independent News & Media last week announced plans for a $ 456 m stock market flotation. The Carphone Warehouse is getting in on the act to add some sparkle to its forthcoming float with its own portal Mviva which will be loaded on to handsets sold through its stores. Mviva is being launched with America Online which has suddenly found itself facing the same kind of problems vexing Microsoft. Until now AOL has primarily been linked to the PC and needs to adapt to the so called Martini-approach — any time, any place, any where. Yahoo! has a 50-50 joint venture with Telecom Italia Mobile and is unlikely to stop there. For now, though, the independents will have a difficult time breaking into the market. In marked contrast to the development of the Internet on fixed wires, the mobile phone networks are alive to the opportunity of the Internet. They will be keen to extend their reach from collecting call revenues to shares of commerce and advertising. In the short term most users will lack the wherewithal to switch to a different portal and will use the network’s own by default. The networks, however, will only have a brief time in which to establish their brands before the market is blown open. It has already been established that the networks will not get away with any attempts to shield users from portals or websites other than their own. France Telecom recently lost a court case brought by an independent portal and was forced to publish details of a code which unlocks the handset. British Telecom has also been rebuked by the British telecommunications regulator Oftel for making it difficult to remove Genie as a handset’s home page. Mobile Internet portals will begin to realise their potential with technologies due to arrive in the next few years. GPRS will introduce an “always on” function which means access to data and websites will be far faster. The real step change will be in 2002-3 when the third generation mobile phone services will introduce high bandwidth services and make the experience of surfing on a handset virtually the same as a PC. At that point it will be far easier to navigate the wider web and far more content will be reconfigured for mobile devices. — By arrangement with The Guardian. |
|
E-cards on cell phones NEW DELHI, July 4 — Greeting cards are an expression of human emotions and are implusive. Sending and receiving cards at an appropriate time has an immense effect which words cannot explain. While greeting cards on paper continue to exist, the e-cards with their stunning graphics and animation have caught the imagination of many. But to send or receive e-cards one has to access the net. Using a mobile phone to send e-card is something many would dream of. So do the solution provider in this Internet age. “Greetings are an impulsive means of communication. Here you have an anytime, anywhere greetings service that allows you to send out greetings for someone while on the move,” said the founder CEO of Clubgreetings, Mr Jay Zaveri. He said “through our WAP site, we provide the consumers the convenience of sending high-resolution graphical greetings and messages through their cell phones anytime and anywhere.” The greetings can be sent WAP to WAP, WAP to Web and web to WAP. Ms Kavita, a software professional, who heard about the service said “it would really be fun to send or receive a greeting card from a mobile. When I am depressed or happy I can share my thoughts with someone who cares about me.” “When a deal is clinched, I can send the information in e-card form to my boss. I am sure it would have a different impact than merely calling up and informing him,” said a senior company official. Mr Amit Kumar, a marketing executive who tours frequently, said “I can send my wife e-cards even from places where there are no cybercafes. Greeting cards say more than one can express through words.” However, Mr Rakesh Verma, father of a teenaged girl, was a worried person. “Are the cellphone operators planning to reduce their rates as e-cards on mobile phones would burn holes in my pockets,” he asked. Mr Zaveri said the WAP service globally has a huge potential. Western Europe on its own accounts for a user base of 7,055,000 people and this number is expected to touch 30,457,000 in the next three years. According to a survey mobile phones are expected to outpace the PC for web access with about one billion mobile subscribers by the year 2003, of which 230 million will be from Europe, 400 million from Asia Pacific and 190 million in North America.
|
|
Indians are media sweethearts in USA NEW YORK, July 4 — Indian Americans seem to have become media sweethearts in the USA and a politician’s byword for the ideal immigrant. Yesterday, it was First Lady Hillary Clinton who lauded their achievements. Today, in line with other well-known publications, the prestigious U.S. News & World Report features an Indian American as the wunderkind immigrant. In its July 10 issue, US News features a lengthy report on Vivek Wadhwa, founder and CEO of Relativity Technologies, the North Carolina-based company that transforms legacy systems to meet the rapidly changing Internet information technology environment. Entitled “Give us your wired elite!” the report talks of how being an Indian CEO has now become a plus point with venture capitalists and others. Wadhwa, sometimes referred to as an “Einstein” of legacy systems, is extraordinary in more than one way. His team of programmers is made up of former Russian KGB employees. He found them on a head-hunting trip to Russia after losing faith in US companies that, he notes in an article, were only out to secure a contract rather than delivering solutions. He almost gave up his hunt for money and joined Microsoft which lured him with attractive offers, but dug deeper, finally getting another Indian American, Vinod Khosla, with Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, to fund his company, and soon secured big-name clients like Charles Schwab, Paine Webber and the US Air Force to name a few. Compared to other successful Indian American CEOs, a few of whom have made it to the Forbes Billionaires list, Wadhwa’s company’s revenues are meager — $10 million this year, up from $5.6 million last year. But he has seemingly become a high visibility sign for the growing Information Technology (IT) reputation of North Carolina, and a symbol of sorts of what immigrants to this country can achieve. Today’s run for IT gold is reminiscent of the Wild West’s gold rush to California. Notably, some 33% of the Silicon Valley’s scientists and engineers were foreign-born in 1990 and the proportion has grown since then. And like Wadhwa, many Indian and Chinese born immigrants have become CEOs, and, something US News does not mention, venture capitalists. US News quotes figures put out by the consulting firm of Dun & Bradstreet that show 9 per cent of the CEOs of some 4,063 high-tech start-ups launched in Silicon Valley between 1995 and 1998 were Indian and 20 per cent of them were Chinese. Indians began coming to this country only in the late 1960s in significant numbers, compared to the Chinese who had a head start from the 1950s. Today, so many high-tech Indians are here that “in the cybercafes of Bombay, women in saris can be found dictating e-mails to their children and grandchildren in places like Tysons Corner, Virginia, and Dallas,” US News contends. “Although the USA has always attracted more than its share of foreign talent and brainpower, no country has ever pillaged the world’s intellectual resources the way America has in recent years,” US News says. —
IANS |
|
Rupee
steady
BOMBAY, July 4 (Reuters) — The Indian rupee changed little from the previous closing levels in early deals on Tuesday amid expectation of dull ranges on account of the U.S. markets holiday, dealers said. The rupee was quoted at 44.67/6775 per dollar at 9.10 a.m. It ended Monday at 44.67/675. “Nothing much will happen today. And imports will not be there...the cash market is closed on account of the U.S. holiday,” a dealer with a private bank said. U.S. markets are shut for the Independence Day holiday on Tuesday. Dealers said the forward market should also be relatively more active. There should be receiving as the market draws comfort from
prospects of easier money market rates following the government’s decision to privately place bonds with the RBI.
|
rc
Mobile telephony is here MUMBAI, July 4 (UNI) — Mobile telephony in India is all set to be the ultimate point of convergence with leading service provider BPL Mobile taking the lead in becoming data centric apart from being voice centric. It launched “powermessaging’’ , a basket of over 25 information based services. These power-packed, value- added services ranging from news updates, stock quotes, taxi and auto fares to emergency services like the police, hospital location, ambulance inquiry, fire brigade etc are broadly grouped under entertainment, business,
utility and emergency services. With powermessaging, BPL Mobile has introduced for the first time in India, the concept of “intelligent help’’, an in-built help directory to manage and facilitate easy access to any information required by the subscriber. Powermessaging is based on the small message service (SMS) platform which is universally available across all types of mobile phones. NEW DELHI: The government on yesterday made it mandatory for all retail packages, manufactured or packaged on or after September 1 to display “Best before” labels. “Best before” signifies the date which marks the end of the period, under any stated storage conditions, during which the product will remain fully marketable and will retain the specific qualities for which tacit or express claims have been made about it. It is the date up to which the product will retain its specific qualities optimally. The products manufactured or packaged prior to September 1 and already in the market or sold to trade prior to this date have however been exempted.— UNI NEW DELHl: Firebrand animal lover Maneka Gandhi’s movement for rescuing and rehabilitating sick and stray animals has got a new boost with renowned designer Rohit Bal launching special “animal shirts” to create awareness and collect funds. Often known as the funkiest designer in the country, Rohit has designed 29 different animal motifs for T-shirts to help popularise the aims of the People for Animals (PFA), which got a push with the launch of the website www.pfadelhi.org earlier this month. The T-shirts, Sophistikats, will be released at a special function on July 7 and 6000 shirts will then be put to exhibition-cum-sale for the next two days, each shirt selling for Rs 200. The entire proceeds from their sale will go to the PFA. — UNI |
cr
Kinetic Motor pays 25 pc NIIT okays raising FII limit to 40 pc Nalco, Hindalco raise prices Essar Oil net profit up by 32 pc IFC invests in infrastructure park GAIL to buy 33 pc stake in Tata Power
|
bb
SEZ scheme MTNL strike Rediff.com Centre Tata Indica |
 |
| Punjab | Haryana | Jammu & Kashmir | Himachal Pradesh | Regional Briefs | Nation | Editorial | | Business | Sport | World | Mailbag | In Spotlight | Chandigarh Tribune | Ludhiana Tribune 50 years of Independence | Tercentenary Celebrations | | 120 Years of Trust | Calendar | Weather | Archive | Subscribe | Suggestion | E-mail | |
The kitchen barge of the floating Jumbo Palace restaurant, owned by Macau tycoon Stanley Ho, sinks at Manila Bay
on July 4. Two typhoons battered the capital Manila and outlying provinces on Tuesday.
— Reuters photo
