Wipro directs resources in R&D and offshore business
New Delhi: Software major, Wipro, in times of a major slowdown is directing resources to offshore development and increasing share of R&D work.

The company believes that it has all the required skill sets in product development of hardware, software and networking equipment. Its R&D expertise is more pronounced in areas like hardware design and development, telecom and inter-networking, software design and development, embedded software and emerging technologies like Bluetooth.

The company also firmly believes that it can leverage its offshore development centres for delivering high-quality work to international companies. These centres work with 24-hour schedules to take care of time zone differences.

The company has also stated that while its salary bill, as compared with the US or UK is still very competitive, in the Indian context it may have to substantially raise the salary levels in order to stay competitive. This, it feels, may reduce the company’s profit margins in future, if such hikes are not matched with productivity increases.
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Tata Consultancy Services ties up with Israeli firm
Bangalore: The country’s largest software exporter, Tata Consultancy Services, announced that it was entering into an agreement with Israel-based software major,

Trivnet, which provides online payment solutions, to offer services in e-commerce and mobile commerce.

This, the company believes, will allow subscribers of internet service providers and wireless carriers to shop online and charge purchases to mobile phone bills or credit cards. The subscribers will also be able to charge purchases to their regular phone bills or those charged by internet providers.
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Reckitt Piramal dissolved
Mumbai: The FMCG joint venture, Reckitt Piramal, between Nicholas Piramal India and British consumer goods and healthcare multinational Reckitt Benckiser, has been called off.

Both companies announced that the partnership will continue as a "strategic alliance" on a "project-specific" basis, but without any equity participation.

The venture was set up to market products of the two companies like Dettol, Dispirin, Saridon, Polycrol Forte, Lacto Calamine and Aspro. With the dissolution of the venture, the brands will go back to the original owners. Reckitt Benckiser India will temporarily market and distribute Burnol, the brand that was jointly acquired, until a decision is taken on its future.

NPIL will also continue marketing two prescription brands Gaviscon and Fybogel of Reckitt Benckiser Plc which were not in the joint venture.
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GP Goenka Group exits from stake in Herdillia
Mumbai: The Calcutta-based GP Goenka Group has exited from Herdillia Chemicals through the sale of its 50.08 per cent holding in the company to multinational, Schenectady International for an undisclosed amount.

Schenectady India, the wholly-owned Indian arm of the multinational, will shortly make an open offer in line with the Securities and Exchange Board of India’s takeover code regulations.

Under the proposed deal, certain assets and liabilities unrelated to Herdillia’s core chemical business will be transferred to a separate company by way of demerger.

Schenectady India, which mainly manufactures industrial polymers and chemicals, can now produce raw material for phenol using Herdillia’s facilities. The company’s major presence in India is through its chemical joint venture Schenectady Beck. The company had earlier brought out the stake of German multinational BASF and Mahindra & Mahindra in the JV.
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BSES said to be investing in Hirma power project
Mumbai: The $5-billion, 3,960-mw Hirma power project in Orissa, promoted by Reliance and US-based Mirant Corporation may see a new partner. Reliance, the single largest shareholder in the Mumbai-based power distribution major, BSES, has offered the latter a stake in the power project.

It is understood that BSES is actively evaluating the project and is likely to take up the stake in the Orissa project. However, officials of the company refused to comment pending the completion of the evaluation process.

Both Reliance and Mirant hold an equal 50 per cent stake in this project, which is world’s largest independent power project.

It is understood that the Power Trading Corporation, which is to buy the entire produce from the Orissa project, is yet to sort out issues regarding fuel supply and a payment security mechanism. Since the power project has been designed as a pithead station, any coal procured from alternative sites in Orissa will have a direct bearing on the tariffs.

The power station is designed to operate at 68.5 per cent PLF. When operational, the project would sell power to five states in the central/northern belt — Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Gujarat.
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Nicholas Piramal to shut Rhone’s Mumbai unit
Mumbai: After having taken over the Rhone Poulenc India and deciding to merge the operations of this company with itself, Nicholas Piramal has decided to close down the Bhandup manufacturing facility of the former.

The company proposes to introduce a voluntary retirement scheme this year for the 300 employees of the factory and hopes to close down this facility by end of this financial year.

The closure would free about 10 to 12 acres of land at the Mumbai suburb, about which Nicholas Piramal is yet to take a decision.

Interestingly, the Bhandup facility, had been recently refurbished by Rhone Poulenc at a cost of Rs. 10 crore to bring it in compliance with the World Health Organisation’s good manufacturing practices standards.

NPIL, which already has a formulations facility in Pithampur, considers Bhandup a high-cost centre and hence the decision to close it down.
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Apollo backs out of Mafatlal deal
Mumbai: The Apollo Group, controlled by Omkar Kanwar, is all set to pull out of a deal with the Arvind Mafatlal for the purchase of the latter’s 42 per cent stake in a rubber chemicals company to be formed through the demerger of National Organic Chemicals.

This decision is apparently a fallout of multinational Basell International’s decision to back out of a joint venture petrochemical project with Nocil ending a three-year old collaboration.

Since successful implementation of the petrochemical project was one of the pre-conditions for forming the new company, Apollo Group is well within its rights to back out of the deal.

Apollo group was planning to form a rubber chemicals company mainly for catering to its raw material requirements. It uses rubber chemicals for the manufacture of tryres sold under the brand name Apollo Tyres.
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BNP Paribas launches VRS
Mumbai: With a view to improving its Indian operations, BNP Paribas, has launched a voluntary retirement scheme (VRS) for its clerical and subordinate staff in Mumbai and Kolkata.

The bank, which has a staff strength of about 500 in the country, has stated that the scheme is only for those clerical and subordinate staff who have completed ten years of service with the bank. This makes about 52 people eligible for the scheme.

Under the scheme, each member of the clerical staff will receive Rs 25 lakh on an average and each member of the subordinate staff will receive Rs 14 lakh on an average. Both these are gross amounts.

The bank recently went through a restructuring exercise, which resulted in large-scale centralisation of its operations. In India, BNP Paribas is active in the areas of working capital financing, trade finance, treasury and foreign exchange related services, commodity financing, cash management services and private banking activities. The bank is now looking to enter retail banking in a major way in India.
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Dr Reddy's to make debut in bio-tech
Hyderabad: Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories has got approval from the Drug Controller of India to market its maiden bio-technology product, Grastim, in the Indian market. This will be the first product from the company’s bio-technology group which was set up in 1998.

Grastim (generic name filgrastim), the human granulocyte colony stimulating factor (hG-CSF), is a recombinant protein used in chemotherapy-induced neutropenia and bone marrow transplants. This product is also useful in the treatment of leukopenia associated with myelosuppressive therapies and in patients with AIDS-related cytomegalovirus retinites.

The launch, according to the company, will make Dr Reddy's the first company in India to develop this molecule all the way from the molecular biology stage to production and also obtain approval to launch in India.

Grastim will cater to the needs and requirements of Indian consumers who are dependent on imported products, the release said adding that the biotech product pipeline has several recombinant products for treatment of cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases in various phases of development.
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Tata Tea and Tetley merger soon
Kolkata: According to Homi Khusrokhan, managing director of Tata Tea, the company is all set to merge the operations of Tetley with itself, thus allowing the two companies to operate as a single entity. The merger would involve both the domestic markets as well as overseas markets.

As a result of this Tata Tea would be able to draw on Tetley's expertise in blending, tasting and packaging. Management of supply chain cost would benefit both the companies.

Tetley has five production centres--one in UK, two in the US, one in Australia and one in India and all these centres have latest technologies and facilities for tea packaging and Tetley's history of innovations include the original tea bag and the draw string bag.
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Aptech relocates operations at Mhape centre
Mumbai: In line with its restructuring plans that is being put in action to make it achieve global standards in software, Aptech Limited is consolidating its operations at its newly developed facility at Mhape near Mumbai.

With this consolidation, all Aptech employees at its Seepz facility in Mumbai and Bangalore facility are being relocated at the Mhape centre. The company is also planning to build a brand new campus at Chennai.

The Mhape facility, established at a cost of Rs 35 crore with a global network and communication infrastructure, will now seat all the 350 employees of the company, currently spread between its Seepz and Bangalore facilities.

With the company’s focus on building a stronger offshore infrastructure based on SEI CMM level 5 of quality and project execution processes, the company is planning a brand new campus at Chennai to come up later this year.

The state-of-the-art facility at Mhape has been built with sophisticated systems comprising Sun servers and Cisco routers with Internet access to all the software developers. The network facility has 2MBPS, 1MBPS and 64KBPS leased channel and ISDN for mail servers and new servers. It can accommodate more than 700 software professionals and the entire facility is TCP/IP enabled.
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GE-Honeywell deal break up claims Honeywell CEO
New York: Following the company’s failure to bring about a merger with General Electric, Michael Bonsignore, the chief executive of Honeywell, resigned on Tuesday after 31 years of service.

His position has been taken over by Lawrence Bossidy, who had served as chairman of Honeywell for the past two years.

Mr .Bossidy stated that the company would move quickly and aggressively to improve performance, strengthen the management team and rebuild investor confidence.
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