Reliance to get into handsets, set-tops
Mumbai: The Reliance group is planning to enter the products segment of telecommunications, by getting into the manufacture of cellular phones and set top boxes as part of its Infocom project, straddling telecom, internet and broadband.

It plans to market 2 million cell-phones a year, first sourcing these from China or South Korea, and selling them in the Indian market at Rs 2500 to 3000 apiece..

Reliance sees making mobile phone handsets more affordable as the key to expand the market, which is in the region of 3.58 million subscribers, and growing at the rate of 1.5 lakhs per month. Reliance believes this could go to 1 million per month.

This is the first time in the world that a cellular operator is also getting into the handset selling business. Reliance plans to get into limited mobility throughout the country using CDMA technology. The issue of allowing limited mobility to fixed line operators is still doubtful in the country. Besides, even giant handset sellers like Motorola and Ericsson have not had unqualified success in the handset business, which is a low-margin commodity business, despite operating globally.

With regard to set-top boxes, which would make TV sets capable of accessing the internet, plans are yet to be spelt out, although Reliance is believed to have written its own software and is carrying out pilot projects.

Under the Reliance Infocom project, the group is building a 60,000 kilometre fibre optic link linking 115 cities across the country. Its offering in the wholesale segment would be high-speed fibre optic links, while in the retail, it plans to offer limited mobility. Its business portfolio would also include long distance, call centres, data centres, and fibre optic links.

The total investment in the project is Rs 25,000 crore, with Rs 8,000 crore equity and Rs 17,000 crore debt. Reliance Infocom will first offer telecom services in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Gujarat by the end of 2001.
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BT to divest in Japan, Spain, to Vodafone
London/Tokyo: In a massive debt restructuring move, British Telecommunications is said to be withdrawing from the markets of Japan and Spain, selling off its stake to rival Vodafone. The sell off is likely to bring down its 30 billion sterling pound debt burden by 4 billion sterling pounds (5.7 billion dollars).

In Japan, BT holds 20 per cent stake in Japan Telecom Co., and 20 per cent in J-Phones, the mobile unit of Japan Telecom. The company is likely to divest in favour of Vodafone which hods 25 per cent.

In Spain, BT holds 17.8 per cent stake in Airtel, where Vodafone holds 73 per cent.

BT is also contemplating the sale of new shares to raise an additional 5 billion sterling pounds.

Although BT did not wish to sell off its stake in Japan and Spain, which it considered as 'core investments', it is forced to do so in the wake of shareholder pressure to reduce debt and get out of holdings where it was not likely to achieve controlling stake.

These measures also reflect top level changes that have taken place at BT, where Christopher Bland has replaced Iain Vallance as chairman.

BT is also considering a rights issue, the sale of its business directory, Yell, for 3 billion sterling pounds, and de-merging its mobile business, BT Wireless.

For Vodafone, the deal would bring it closer to a controlling stake in both Japan Telecom and J Phone. This would be Vodafone's third acquisition of stake in Japan Telecom since December. Only this week, it bought 10 per cent stake from AT&T Corp for 1.35 billion dollars, making it the largest shareholder in Japan Telecom.

In J-Phone, a holding company, Vodafone now holds 26 per cent, with 54 per cent held by Japan Telecom and 20 per cent by BT.

Japan is the world’s second-largest telecom market, and is viewed as a testing ground for future wireless services offering high-speed internet access, data, video and CD-quality music.
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SET-Percept in row, cricket match cancelled
New Delhi: A bitter row between Sony Entertainment Television and Percept D'mark, the organisers of the high-profile Left Vs Right one-day international cricket matches to be held in Mumbai on May 3, 5 & 6, has led to the cancellation of the matches. SET has withdrawn from the exclusive live coverage of the matches and the principal sponsors of the event , Rexona one among them, have backed out from sponsoring this Rs 4 crore event.

SET has accused Percept of diluting the novelty of the event by holding a similar match that was aired on April 29 on Doordarshan. Besides, the poor quality of the coverage of that event further tarnished the image, according to SET. Hence, for Sony, it amounted to the loss of a marketing plank where it had planned to spend Rs 4 crores.

Percept, however, pleads innocence, since the April 29 match which was aired on DD had been publicised much before SET and Percept had signed the terms. Also, since the production of the game was handled by DD themselves, it could not be held responsible for the quality of the telecast.

Percept has already spent Rs 1.5 crores on the run up to the event, with some of the biggest names, including Sanath Jayasuriya, Arvinda D’Silva, Chaminda Vaas, Paul Reiffel, Chris Harris, Craig Mcmillan, already in Mumbai.
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Microsoft to buy NCompass labs
Redmond: Microsoft Corp. is acquiring NCompass Labs, a web content management software company.

Vancouver, British Columbia based NCompass, founded in 1996, had released Resolution software last month which will make it cheaper and faster to launch and expand e-commerce sites. Microsoft said this software would be bundled with its .NET Enterprise Servers, a unit of Microsoft developing computer systems for Web-based business transactions.

Existing customers for the NCompass Resolution software include the Associated Press news agency, Johnson & Johnson, Texaco Inc and the Royal Canadian Mint.
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Starbucks, Compaq in 'net over coffee' deal
Houston: Compaq Computer and Starbucks Coffee have entered into a 100 million dollar deal where Compaq will equip Starbucks coffee shops with Compaq iPAQ handheld computers and other equipment, that would allow Starbucks customers highspeed wireless internet access as they sip their coffee. Starbucks customers with their own wireless-enabled hand held personal computers can access the Internet through a local network picked up over the airwaves in each store.

The deal is seen to be a win-win for both Compaq and Starbucks, with Compaq gaining on the sale of its equipment and access, and Starbucks on increasing its customer base and customer loyalty through its offering of more value added service.

It also gives Compaq an edge with Starbucks as a preferred provider of computers, for Starbucks' 4,100 worldwide stores or its Seattle headquarters.

Compaq, in partnership with Microsoft, already has equipped 100 Starbucks stores in Dallas, San Francisco, New York and Seattle and expects to have fitted 500 by midsummer.
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Kodak buys Ofoto, offers services
New York: Eastman Kodak announced the buying out of online photography service Ofoto Inc., in a bid to offer a better range of distribution services. Ofoto will operate as a wholly-owned unit of Kodak.

Ofoto processes films or digital images sent over the internet, sends them back either as paper prints, posted to the Web, or stored online for sharing with others.Kodak plans to combine all such services, including that of PrintAtKodak, with Ofoto.

Kodak has recently been affected by the economic slowdown which has seen a lowering in offtake in cameras and films. Hence, focussing on services -- such as printing out digital images at kiosks in malls, and having pictures instantly transferred to PC screens -- is expected to shore up its revenues.
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Work on RIL's Jamnagar power plant to begin soon
New Delhi: The 500-mw Jamnagar thermal power project of Reliance will start construction work soon. The Rs 3,150-crore-plus project is expected to achieve financial closure shortly, as the Crisis Resolution Group of the power ministry had succeeded in arriving at a formula for revenue sharing with the lenders.

As per the formula, lenders would be given a charge on revenues of the power project, which they would draw upon from the working capital bank (here the State Bank of India), on a concurrent basis.

The plant is based on the circulating fluidised bed combustion technology and would use petroleum coke (a refinery residue) as fuel. Petroleum coke would be sourced from Reliance's 27-million-tonne refinery at Jamnagar.

The project, to be commissioned within in 42 months from the date of financial closure, would have a debt-equity ratio of 70:30. Reliance is likely to hold 51 per cent of the equity, the rest to be offered to lending banks and financial institutions.
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Cadila facility approved by South African council
Ahmedabad: The Dholka manufacturing facility of pharma major Cadila Pharmaceuticals Limited (CPL) has obtained total approval from the Medicine Control Council of South Africa.
The Medicine Control Council approval comes after a stringent inspection of manufacturing, quality control, quality assurance, R&D and documentation sections of the plant. The approval gives the company a green signal for registering its products in the one billion dollar South African market.

Cadila is now gearing up to fulfil other stringent regulatory requirements such as the MCA of Europe, or USDFA of the US.
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Ranbaxy to set up research centre for herbals
New Delhi: Pharmaceuticals major Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd, in a move to extend its market beyond anti- infectives, which is its forte, is setting up a research & development (R&D) centre for herbal medicine at Gurgaon near Delhi.

This follows the company's decision to get into the over-the-counter products with herbal products. The laboratory will be ready in four to six months time.

Ranbaxy already has an R&D centre at Gurgaon which focuses on new drug discovery and novel drug delivery systems.

The herbal products developed in this centre will cater to the world market, estimated to be about 70 to 80 billion dollars. .

The herbal products developed here would address diseases like: cancer, Alzheimer's, osteoporosis, diabetes and anti-inflammatory (mainly arthritis).

The company could also go in for the acquisitions route, for brand or product.

In the non-herbal category, Ranbaxy is focusing on areas of respiratory, urology, cardiovascular, anti-cancer and anti-infective.
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Kinetic plans six new bikes
Ahmedabad: Kinetic Engineering (KEL) plans to launch six new bikes in the economy, performance and combination segments in the next 15 months. These would be placed in the Rs 40,000 to Rs 55,000 price bands.

These would include the two high-technology 150 cc models from the GF series designed and developed in collaboration with Hyosung of Korea, where one would be the power version and the other a street version.

The others include one 100 cc deluxe model for city use, one purely functional and economic 100 cc version for the rural markets, and another 125 cc performance bike.

The sixth, the company claims, would be a 'surprise' bike, and no details were given.

Kinetic launched the Challenger, a 100 cc four stroke bike in Gujarat, claiming the that the bike had crossed the one lakh mark during the very first year of launching.

KEL would be appointing 600 new sub-dealers, thus increasing it to 1,600 from the current 1,000.
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Gillette selling off stake in Luxor
New Delhi: Gillette Company is divesting its stake in Luxor Writing Instruments in favour of US based Newell Rubbermaid.

This is part of Rubbermaid's total takeover of the stationery products group of Gillette Company.

The shares are currently held by Gillette subsidiaries in India, Gillette Group India Ltd, Gillette Products Ltd and Gillette Diversified Operations Ltd. The rest of the 50 per cent stake in Luxor is held by D K Jain and family.

Newell Rubbermaid is also said to be buying out Gillette's equity shareholding in two smaller outfits, L P Pens Pvt Ltd and Hi-Line Pens Ltd that make writing instruments.

The company is now awaiting the necessary regulatory approvals. Accordingly, its stake in the two small scale outfits may not exceed 24 per cent, and it would need to meet 50 per cent export obligations at Luxor, as per industry regulations.
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