Tatas holds back final decision on VSNL bid
Mumbai: The Tata group will be taking a final decision on investing in VSNL after the government spells out is policy on international long distance telephony, on the licence fees, and other parameters. However, the group will continue to go ahead with the pre-bidding process, including due diligence.

The Centre is expected to come out with a white paper on the opening up of the ILD sector within a couple of weeks. The Reliance group, the Tatas and the BPL-Sterling consortium now are the main players in the bidding process, thanks to considerable delay in framing the policy for the process, which will remove the monopoly of VSNL in this sector. The AV Birla group, the Bharti-SingTel consortium and Videocon were also earlier in the fray.

An expert committee on Internet telephony set up by the government which has recommended opening up international voice service has also said that any licensed ILD/NLD/ISP operator may be permitted to offer net telephony service as per licence conditions of the respective services.
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Hyundai to launch new model of Accent
Bangalore: Hyundai Motor India is planning to introduce a new sporty model of the Accent. Code named Tornado, the new model will be powered by a 1.6 litre 16 valve dual overhead cam (DOHC) petrol engine, and is expected to be priced 15 per cent higher than the top end GLX model of Accent, which is priced at around Rs 6.6 lakhs. It is likely that the engine for this model would be imported from Korea. The other three Accent models in India include Accent GLE-1, priced around Rs 5.5 lakhs, GVS, at around Rs 5.7 lakhs, and GLS, at around Rs 6 lakhs.

The company is also commencing second shift production at its Chennai to raise production of its super premium D segment car Sonata to about 250 cars a month from the present 120 a month, which will help reduce its waiting period to a few weeks.

Hyundai has shown a six per cent growth in sales this year, up from 35,550 vehicles during April-August last fiscal to 37,700 vehicles in the same five months this year.
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L&T to cut managerial staff
Mumbai: Larsen & Toubro (L&T) is planning to cut its management cadre by 25 per cent over the next few years.

The total employee strength of the diversified conglomerate is around 25,000, of which managerial strength accounts for around 13,000.

The company expects to do this first through a VRS, this year. There are unconfirmed reports that this would be followed by a compulsory retirement scheme for senior staff. The company has just concluded one VRS programme.
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New Mercedes models via CBUs
Pune: Mercedes Benz India will introduce the M-class sports utility vehicle in India shortly, brought into India as a completely built unit. The vehicle is likely to be priced at Rs 40 lakhs. Following this, other models such as the CLK and SLK would also be on offer in the country, also as CBU units.

The company will also change its name to DaimlerChrysler (India), once all the formalities relating to becoming a fully owned subsidiary of DaimlerChrysler is complete. The final formalities of acquiring the last 14 per cent shares of Telco is now being completed. Mercedes Benz, however, will continue as a brand name.
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Bajaj team for China
Mumbai: A top five-member Bajaj Auto team is heading to China to explore the prospects of a tie up with a Chinese manufacturer to source ungeared scooters. The team is to be headed by vice president, finance, Sanjiv Bajaj.

The company also wants to explore the possibilities of exporting three wheeler kits to China, where the three wheeler segment has been growing significantly, and promises good potential.
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Wipro to enter high end IT enabled services
Bangalore: Wipro plans to enter the high end IT enabled services such as software support, as an extension of its product offering.

Its chairman, Azim Premji, however, has clarified that this would not be in low or middle end areas like call centres , but would provide support services in specialized areas where the skill sets needed are those of software engineers. The company calls these services "complex high end software product support", rather than IT enabled services.
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UTI offloads Rs 200 crore stocks to LIC
Mumbai : Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) has picked up around Rs 200 crore worth of stocks from Unit Trust of India through off-market deals, priced at 10 per cent discount to the market. This was done in order to avoid huge fluctuations in the market, if UTI had gone in for market deals.

The biggest chunk thus sold was that of BSES, which takes LICs share in the company up by 1.09 per cent.

An eight-member LIC investment committee had earlier this month agreed to pick up select stocks worth around Rs 900 crore from the UTI portfolio in order to help UTI to meet its redemption obligations in US-64. With no pressure on this count on UTI, this will be done in phases. LIC, besides getting hold of good shares at a discount to the market, also saves on brokerage through this deal.
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Fiat to double exports after Palio launch
Mumbai : Fiat India proposes to double its export earnings to 32 million dollars by the next fiscal, also increasing its export of spares to some of the 40 countries where the Palio is being offered. The Palio is produced only in nine countries, including India.

This fiscal, exports are expected to touch 16 million dollars, which is made up of parts for the Uno, and components for the Punto, one of Fiat Auto's popular offerings in Italy.

Fiat India, which will launch the Palio shortly with around 75 per cent local content, has plans to increase the localisation to about 85 per cent within one year of its launch, which will improve its prospects for exports.

Fiat India is also likely to consider import of other cars from its stable such as the Alfa Romeo or the Lancia in the form of completely built units (CBUs), but this would be after the launch of Palio.

Sachin Tendulkar will be the brand ambassador for the Palio, which would be offered as an upper end B-segment vehicle priced around Rs 4.5 lakh.
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H-P may offer utility pricing in India
Bangalore : Hewlett Packard is said to be toying with the idea of offering utility pricing in India, as well as leverage its sophisticated billing system by selling it off as a stand alone product or become a billing service provider.

The introduction of utility pricing would allow customers to increase capacity whenever required by informing H-P, who would activate extra processors in the servers, and bill the customers accordingly. Effectively, this would work as a pay as you use product.

Since utility pricing systems work on very advance billing systems, which would need to be imported into India, its introduction would depend on the duty structure of hardware products.

Such a service would help industry segments like retail and finance which typically require more processing power during specific periods in the year.
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