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Bharti
applies for 6 new licences UK backs
outsourcing Godrej
buys call centre in USA Govt
clears 23 FDI proposals
HPCL,
ICICI Bank unveil scheme for truck owners |
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A-I
office in Shanghai
Apple
launches latest notebooks
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Bharti applies for 6 new licences
New Delhi, November 18 With this, the company will virtually have an all-India footprint in the telecom sector except for North-East, and becomes the first private telecom company to apply for licence in Jammu and Kashmir. The Bharti group said it would offer GSM-based cellular mobile services in all these circles. According to officials, Bharti Tele-Ventures, the service arm of the Bharti group, has sought Letter of Intent (LoI) from the DoT to start services in these circles. It has expressed desire to offer cellular mobile services in the new circles at 900 MHz and where it was not available, it would offer services at 1800 MHz. According to sources, the company would shell out between Rs 60 crore and Rs 100 crore for all circles combined, depending upon the position of the fourth cellular licensee. Escotel, the fourth cellular licensee in Rajasthan had paid about Rs 34 crore but has not yet started the services, sources said adding that it would depend on DoT whether the fees paid by Escotel would be considered as the benchmark for the new unified licence. Besides Bharti, the Tatas have also applied for seven new circles, but DoT has not issued LoIs as the government was waiting for the TRAI guidelines with regard to issuance of new licences under the unified regime. The Bharti group said it was eligible for offering basic telecom services under its cellular licence, but emphasised its focus would continue to be GSM-based cellular mobile services. Bharti becomes the largest integrated player in the telecom sector.
— PTI
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London, November 18 Her comments infuriated union and business leaders calling them “devastating” and accused her of giving the green light to jobs shift while tens of thousands of workers have been sacked in the UK. While addressing the Confederation of British Industry’s annual conference yesterday, Ms Hewitt hit out at calls for tough policies to protect home industries such as call centres, textiles and IT operations from the threat of India. She said: “I know that often it is much easier to see the short-term benefits of protectionism than it is to see the long-term costs to consumers.” “I also know there is no future for Britain in low-cost, low-margin production, certainly not trying to make cheap, white cotton T-shirts. Our response is not to put up tariff barriers. What we have to do is help companies into areas of the economy where we can compete. Workers Union leader Kevin Curran, however, said, “To congratulate British companies for going for cheap labour, over highly skilled, highly motivated workers in Britain does not seem to be in the best interests of the British economy.” British Chamber of Commerce policy adviser Matthew Knowles also said it was very worrying that a British minister was saying, “it is a good thing jobs are being lost in this country”. He added, “It should not be about what benefits India, it should be about what is best for Britain.” “All we are asking for is a level-playing field,” he said.
— UNI |
Godrej buys call centre in USA New Delhi, November 18 The deal was routed through Lawkim Upstream Contact Management, a wholly owned subsidiary of Lawkim Ltd, a Godrej company since 1977. With this acquisition Godrej becomes the first Indian company to acquire and operate a major call centre in the US market, a statement by Godrej claimed. The company did not reveal the size of the deal. Announcing the deal Mr Adi Godrej, Chairman, the Godrej group said, “The deal will help us consolidate our activities and investments in the BPO space. Though we have for long been active through our companies in various parts of the world, this acquisition is stepping stone in creating a global services organisation. We except to be a strong player in this industry over the coming years.” Lawkim has set a target of being a $ 100 million BPO company over the next three to five years. Upstream LLC, a leading provider of call centre and customer care service, operates three call centres in the US. With over 600 employees in the US, Upstream has positioned itself as the largest outsourced customer care company in the travel vertical. Upstream has considerable expertise in providing travel-related support, including air, hotel and car reservations.
— UNI |
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Govt clears 23 FDI proposals
New Delhi, November 18 Among the main FDI proposals cleared are Pitney Bowes to set up an arm in India for wholesale trading of hi-tech mail and document management systems, involving a investment of Rs 23 crore. Another US company Healthscribe Inc got the go-ahead to acquire shares from resident shareholders in its Indian arm for Rs 10.82 crore.
— PTI |
| HPCL, ICICI Bank unveil scheme for truck owners Chandigarh, November 18 HPCL and ICICI Bank have entered an agreement to enable the truck drivers to get truck tanks filled from any of the company's outlets by using pre-paid cards— Drive Track Card. These cards will be launched by the end of this month in the country. A senior official of HPCL said here today that under the scheme, the truck owners would have to enroll themselves with a company outlet by paying Rs 100 for up to five vehicles. For the next vehicles, they would have to pay Rs 50 per vehicle extra. After registering with the outlet, the truck operators would be given the card to enable them to deposit money with ICICI Bank, that could be used by their drivers at any of the company outlet for getting their truck tanks filled. The daily limit for the truck drivers would be Rs 25,000. The networking between HPCL and ICICI Bank will update the data every four hours to offer information about the movement of trucks and transaction. Through Internet, the truck operators would be able to know at what time and at which station and how much diesel had been filled by their drivers. The movement he uses the card, the information would be flashed through the Internet to his owner. Enquiries with the bank revealed that it would revolutionise the operation of trucks. At present, there are over 30 lakh trucks across the country and about 1lakh trucks in Punjab alone. A senior official, dealing with the scheme, said,"Any truck operator can get the form from any company outlet. They would have to keep a minimum balance of Rs 1 lakh in the account to avail themselves of the scheme."During the price revision, he said,"the dealers will have to upload the data before starting the operation of the card." |
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A-I office in Shanghai
Shanghai, November 18 Consul General of India in Shanghai Sujan Chinoy, who was the chief guest, commended the efforts of both Air-India and the Chinese authorities leading to the opening of the first Air-India office in China. “The timing of the establishment of the Air-India office is most opportune, in view of burgeoning trade and economic exchanges between the two neighbouring countries,” he said. Bilateral ties had received considerable fillip following Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s visit to China in June, 2003.“Air-India’s presence in Shanghai will promote trade as well as tourism,” he said.
— PTI |
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Apple launches latest notebooks
New Delhi, November 18 The new operating system has over 150 features, including a new “Finder”, that provides one click access to a user’s favourite files and folders; Expose, to see all open windows at once; and iChat AV, a complete desktop video conferencing solution for business, education and consumers. Panther Server includes a Server Admin tool that makes it easy for administrators to set up and manage the open source software built in to Mac OS X. Apart from that it has open Directory 2 for hosting scalable LADP directory and Kerberos authentication services, Samba 3 for providing login and home directory support for Windows clients and the JBoss application server for running powerful J2EE applications. Apple also launched two notebooks with 12-inch and 14-inch display. Priced Rs 76,800 and Rs 91,500, the new generation G4 iBooks offers advanced connectivity with AirPort Extreme and Blue Tooth. — TNS Honda City, Accord ranked top cars
NEW DELHI: Honda City and Honda Accord have bagged the top position in C and D segments in the total customer survey (TCS) conducted by NFO Automotive recently. Both cars from Honda Siel Cars India stables scored higher than the industry average. Honda City got 95 points against industry average of 89 and Honda Accord received 104 points against 97. The survey was conducted with a total sample of 7,014 new car buyers having up to three years of vehicle ownership.
— UNI
Travel insurance for senior citizens
MUMBAI: ICICI Lombard General Insurance has introduced a unique overseas travel cover for senior citizens aged between 71 and 85 years under its Globetrotter Overseas Travel Insurance umbrella, a press note issued here said. Claimed to be the first travel insurance cover in the private sector, ICICI Lombard informed that the policy would meet the needs of approximately one lakh senior citizens per year that mainly travelled to the USA, Europe and Middle East.
— UNI
Hitachi Data to set
up subsidiary
NEW DELHI: Global storage solutions provider Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) today announced it would set up a fully-owned subsidiary in India in the next four months and said it expected revenues from the country to almost treble to $ 40 million by 2006. India country manager PP Subramanian told reporters here that the parent company would be investing close to half a million dollars to set up the new subsidiary. Currently, it operates in the country through a liaison office. The HDS also announced its extended strategy for the Indian market. The company said it had devised new plans, specially designed for the Indian market.
— UNI
Reliance mobile to promote movies
MUMBAI: Reliance IndiaMobile has joined hands with leading Bollywood producers Yash Johar and Karan Johar for promotion of their latest movie “Kal Ho Naa Ho” starring Shah Rukh Khan, Preity Zinta , Saif Ali Khan and Jaya Bachchan, according to a company press note. “Besides the conventional channels of the Press, outdoors, collaterals and SMS, we will employ R World, the data application suite of Reliance IndiaMobile, for a real broad-band
experience and bring 70 mm excitement through Reliance Web World stores in 11 cities,” said Amit Khanna of Reliance Infocomm Ltd.
— UNI
Fastest university supercomputer
HOUSTON: A supercomputer put together from 1,100 off-the-shelf Apple Macs at the Blacksburg school in one month at the cost of $ 5.2 million is now officially ranked number three in the world and the fastest university supercomputer. Participants at the Supercomputing 2003 conference (SC2003) held in Phoenix, Arizona, on last Sunday declared that Virginia Tech’s X is ranked number three in the world and the fastest university supercomputer. Named by its developers for its design goal of 10 teraflops, X ranks below Japan’s Earth Simulator and ASCI Q, the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s dedicated weapons computer.
— PTI |
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Four Soft IPO Sify Net service SBP function Amartex MD Farmers’ club Animation Data Access Erol awarded LML bike sales |
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