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Infosys eyes buyouts in Europe worth $3.4 bn
Secondary steel makers in Punjab face closure
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Tata Motors Q1 profit
Rs 1,988 cr
Ravi Kant, vice-chairman, Tata Motors
Docomo launches pay per site plan
Wipro authorised to certify bluetooth products
Indian-American CEO gets 20-month jail
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Infosys eyes buyouts in Europe worth $3.4 bn
Chandigarh, August 10
The company has set aside a sum of $3.4 billion for the acquisitions. The firms of interest are likely to be in Germany and France and would be BPOs, enterprise planning and consultancies. Since establishing its footprints in these two countries needs language capability, the company is eyeing small firms. Infosys is eyeing firms in the range of $300 million to $500 million. Talking to TNS here today, S. Gopalakrishnan, CEO, Infosys, said other than new acquisitions, they are also looking at increasing their existing capacities in Europe. “Though the maximum growth for us comes from the USA, which accounts for 65 per cent of our revenues, we are looking at increasing our presence in Europe, where our revenues have been going down. Though we expect the growth to primarily come from new acquisitions, we are also hoping to get more revenues from our exiting clients there,” he said. The CEO said with the US economy recovering from the downturn, Infosys is hoping to grow by 19-21 per cent this year. “Last year, the growth had come down to just three per cent. But this year, the resilience shown by the US economy is giving us hope for a high growth. In the first quarter itself, we have grown by 4.5 per cent in revenues,” he said. He, however, refused to be drawn on the recent controversy wherein Indian IT companies were called “chop shops” by US Senator Charles Shummer. “It’s sad that most of the people in US do not understand how we work, or that how we have impacted change in a country like India. Let’s hope it’s more of a political rhetoric,” he said. The CEO also said they were expanding their campuses in India. “We are looking at setting up a third campus at Chennai and have bought additional land in Bangalore to set up a new campus there. A second campus is already underway at Hyderabad and Bhubaneswar, and will also expand in Chandigarh and Jaipur,” he added.
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Secondary steel makers in Punjab face closure
Ludhiana, August 10
The production of steel has increased from 48 million tonnes to 62 million tonnes in the past one year and is further going to increase by 120 million tonnes in next two years whereas the demand is much below. "The primary steel producers use blast furnaces and their cost of production is very low as compared to the secondary steel producers. They are having own captive power plants and power cost is below Rs 2 per unit. These producers use iron ore as raw material which cost them between Rs 3,000 and 4,000 per tonne," said Badish K. Jindal, chairman, Punjab chapter of The Federation of Associations of Small Industries of India. The secondary steel producers use hms scrap as raw material and are dependant upon imported scrap. The present price of scrap is between $350 and $360 and cost them around Rs 23,000 per tonne in Punjab. Their cost of power is also more than Rs 5 per unit and the labour cost also increased by almost 50 per cent during the past one year. "The average cost of production of steel ingot from scrap is around Rs 5,500 per tonne so the steel costs around Rs 28,500 per tonne to the secondary steel producers which is much higher than the cost of primary steel producers," said Suresh Aggarwal, another industrialist. With the increase in production, large quantity of steel is dumped by the primary steel producers in Punjab and presently the stock of steel in primary steel producers in Punjab is more then 2 lakh tonnes, which is forcing them to further reduce the prices of steel. "The secondary steel producers in Himachal are giving a tough time to Punjab as they are enjoying the excise and income tax holiday package. Under such circumstances, thousands of small secondary steel producers are left with no other option but to close their furnaces and rolling mills in Punjab,” Jindal added.
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BlackBerry users on tenterhooks as tangle continues
New Delhi, August 10 While the Home Ministry has convened a meeting of all telecom operators offering BlackBerry services on Thursday to address security concerns associated with encrypted data sent on such devices, officials said buoyed with the similar bans being suggested by the other countries, the security agencies are unlikely to give any space for uncensored services to continue this time. The latest to join the chorus of ban on BlackBerry is Germany after the number of cyber attacks in the country increased. Recently, the UAE and Saudi Arabia barred the BlackBerry services due to security risks. If the security agencies are not satisfied with the solutions put on offer by RIM, a ban on services which they cannot monitor will come through, an official on the condition of anonymity said. This, has, however, left the smart phone users high and dry as they feel that not only their investment in the phone would be wasted, but their day-to-day work would also be affected. They feel that security agencies should look for vulnerable points rather than imposing a complete ban on some services being offered on the BlackBerry. They were of the opinion that the security agencies should upgrade their monitoring system rather than troubling the over one million users of the smart phone in the country. Incidentally, in a related move the Intelligence Bureau (IB) has asked mobile phone companies to demonstrate that third generation (3G) services can be monitored, intercepted and blocked before they begin offering high-end service on this platform. Security agencies have warned that they currently cannot monitor services such as Internet telephony offered by companies such as Skype, chat offered by Google Talk and even video calls, if customers avail these on their handsets after the launch of 3G services. Late last week, in an effort to resolve the logjam over the BlackBerry services in India , RIM had made an offer to provide "metadata" and relevant information to security agencies which will enable them in lawful interception but has failed to enthuse them. The government has also said the onus of giving access to security agencies to monitor the information on these smart phones lies with the service providers. The BlackBerry maker also said it would work with mobile phone firms to open up access to all consumer emails within 15 days, adding that it would be developing tools in six to eight months to allow monitoring of its popular Blackberry Messenger chat service. But the security agencies see this as only partly addressing their concerns as key services like business email would still remain indecipherable due to strong encryption. |
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Tata Motors Q1 profit
Rs 1,988 cr
Mumbai, August 10 The company said its consolidated net sales stood at Rs 26,876.08 crore during the quarter against Rs 16,365.57 crore in the year-ago period. In the domestic market, passenger vehicles, including Fiat and Jaguar and Land Rover, sales grew by 56 per cent to 77,858 units. It was driven by Indigo Manza, Indica Vista and Nano, the company said, adding its market share in passenger vehicles for the period stood at 13.3 per cent compared to 11.2 per cent in the same period last fiscal. During the quarter, Jaguar Land Rover business continued to show strong profitability, with increase in volumes coupled with significantly favourable currency movement in Q1 FY2010- 11, reporting a profit before tax of 233.82 million pounds (Rs 1,590.25 crore), the company said in a statement. To assemble Land Rover in India Tata Motors today said it plans to assemble Land Rover SUV in India from next year, besides it is also exploring opportunities to produce JLR brands in China. "We have seen a good response in India for our Land Rover vehicles. We will start assembling them in India from next year," JLR CEO Ralph Speth told reporters here today.
— PTI
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Wipro authorised to certify bluetooth products
Bangalore, August 10 Obama repeated his warning to the Americans about the rise of Bangalore and Beijing once again today at an event at the University of Texas at Austin. Shortly afterwards, Obama’s worst fear materialised in Bangalore in the shape of the opening of India’s first Bluetooth Qualification Test Facility by the software giant Wipro here. The facility - entitled to certify bluetooth products from any part of the world - is expected to wean away business from the developed countries due to its low cost and high skill level. Recognition was accorded today to the Wipro facility as “Bluetooth Qualification Test Facility (BQTF)” by the bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), the trade association responsible for publishing the Bluetooth specifications, administering the qualification program and licensing the Bluetooth trademarks. A BQTF is recognised by the Bluetooth SIG as competent to perform those bluetooth qualification conformance tests identified as “Category A” within the Test Case Reference List and Test Plan Generator. Wipro has launched a state-of-the-art test lab on the premises of its testing facilities at the Wipro campus here. It will independently test submitted products from bluetooth SIG members around the world. The testing lab was inaugurated by Andy Glass, chief technology officer of the bluetooth SIG and Gangadharaiah CP, senior vice-president & worldwide head of testing services, Wipro Technologies. The certification is required for any product using bluetooth wireless technology and is a necessary pre-condition of the intellectual property license for bluetooth technology.
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Indian-American CEO gets 20-month jail
Boston, August 10 Sushil Bansal, 43, President and CEO of Advanced Integrated Technology Corporation, will also serve a three-year period of supervised release following release from his two concurrent 20-month imprisonment terms. During his guilty plea, Bansal admitted that between September 2005 and March 2009, he and his company paid more than $700,000 in bribes to Yusuf Acar and Farrukh Awan, then employees of the District of Columbia Office of the Chief Technology Officer. — PTI |
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With profit margins recovering well and the recession-hit Europe offering great buys, Infosys Technologies is ready to go shopping. The second largest software exporter from India is eyeing small firms for acquisition in Europe so as to broaden its footprint there.
Driven by strong sales in the domestic market and good show by JLR, Tata Motors today reported a consolidated net profit of Rs 1,988.73 crore for the quarter ended June 30. The automaker had reported a loss of Rs 328.78 crore in the same period last fiscal.
The secondary steel producing industry of Punjab is passing through the worst conditions and if the situation continues, the steel furnaces and rolling mills will close down in the next two years.