BSES may take over Enrons stake in Dabhol
Mumbai - Bombay Suburban Electrical Supply Ltd (BSES) is thinking of taking over Enrons controlling stake in the Dabhol Power Company (DPC) and it's likely that that the electrical supply company may add a string of conditions to the purchase before taking the final decision.

For starters BSES chairman and managing director RV Shahi says that the capital cost of the project has to be brought down and the fuel cost decreased and delinked from the dollar.
He says prudent investors would not touch the project unless these issues are sorted out.
At present the "excessive" capital cost of the $2.9 billion project coupled with the high cost of dollar-denominated fuel resulted in high power tariffs not affordable by consumers.

A complete financial re-engineering will have to be done before the project becomes viable, he said.

BSESs expression of interest in the project comes close on the heels of the Tata and Hinduja groups evincing interest in the project.

Enron has a 65 per cent stake in the company while the US-based General Electric and Bechtel hold 10 per cent each.

The remaining 15 per cent stake is held by MSEB. BSES as a matter of policy insists on a minimum 51 per cent stake in any joint venture.
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Mittals to launch Rs 950-cr issue
New Delhi - Bharti Televentures, the mobile telecom operator in eight circles, and which has licences for eight others, is planning to come out with a massive initial public offering estimated at $200-million or Rs 950-crore.
The last public offering of such a magnitude came from Reliance Petroleum six years ago.
The IPO will not dilute Bharti's equity base each existing investor will draw down its existing holdings by 10 per cent and place it in the market. With Bharti Televentures now valued at $2 billion, this places the IPO size at $200 million.
Though Mittal says that there is a market out there for such offerings, there are powerful compulsions that make it necessary to push through the equity issue as soon as possible.
Investors worldwide, including FIIs who're expected to be major buyers of Bharti, will be deluged under a tide of telecom stock later this year. The volume of telecom equity coming to the market through the next 18 months is reckoned at a staggering $223 billion.
The equity glut will begin around the time that Bharti Televentures plans to go to market with its issue. The tide of equity coming to the market is not expected to ease up till early 2003.

Companies like China Unicom and China Mobile, which together account for a mobile subscriber base of 130 million 20 times India's mobile user base will hit the global secondary market with stock worth $2 billion and $1 billion, respectively, in the second half of this year.
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New route for Maruti selloff
New Delhi - The heavy industry ministry proposes to permit its Partner Suzuki Motor Company to infuse further capital and hike its stake in the auto major as a consequence of which the governments stake in the company would come down.

While Suzuki holds 50 per cent equity in Maruti, the government holds about 49.5 per cent, the balance being held by the employees trust.

Minister of state for heavy industries and public enterprises Vallabhbhai Kathiria said, "Any investment for new models or expansion will come only from Suzuki or its partner. The government will not invest in Maruti anymore," he said.

The sources added that if the heavy industry ministry wanted any change in the Maruti disinvestment process, it would have to move a fresh proposal to the CCD.

The original plan for Maruti disinvestment cleared by the CCD in February this year proposed a two-stage process.

In the first stage, the financial institutions were to subscribe the government portion of the proposed 15 per cent rights issue by paying a renunciation premium.

In the second leg, Maruti was to come out with an initial public offering, whereby, the government would further offload its stake.

The heavy industry ministry's new proposal essentially means that the first stage of the process will be bypassed.

Sources also said that it would be difficult for FIs, already facing a resource crunch, to subscribe to the rights issue by paying a hefty premium.

Maruti divestment has not made much headway beyond the CCD clearance six months ago, as the government and Suzuki are yet to appoint the merchant bankers for valuation of the company. Even the financial institutions have not yet undertaken any fresh valuation of equity.

Besides, with Maruti unlikely to post net profits in the first half of the current fiscal, the heavy industry ministry decided to postpone the disinvestment to the next fiscal to realise a better value.
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HCL PCs to be sold through post offices
New Delhi - Now you can buy a PC at your neighbourhood post office.
The Department of Posts (DoP) and HCL Infosystems are reported to be in an advanced stage of talks to sell computers through the extensive network of post offices.
With this, the HCL group company could hook on to what might be the largest sales channel in the industry 1.56 lakh post offices across India.
DoP officials say talks with HCL are in an advanced stage and the agreement should be signed soon, says John Samuel, additional general manager, DoP.
However, it is not yet clear whether all HCL products sold through its retailing division Frontline would be available through post offices.
HCL Infosystems products include computers, Toshiba Notebooks, printers, scanners, cameras, cartridges, and Nokia cell phones. The company has also launched an economical range of home PCs and a low-priced Internet device this year.
Of 1.56 lakh post offices in India, 17,250 are in urban areas. Of these 840 are head post offices. Even if HCL decides to restrict its retail chain to head post offices, the network available would be huge by industry standards.
At present, HCL Infosytems has about 75 distributors and 1,000 sales outlets. At the same time, HCL Infosystems has been banking on the services business from corporates to get large hardware contracts.
Sales through post offices might be a new concept in India, but it is a well accepted practice in many developed markets. And if the concept takes off, DoP is hopeful of adding more vendors and products to the list.
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Zuari Cements may buyout cement plants in AP
Chennai - Zuari Cements, the 50:50 per cent joint venture between K K Birlas Zuari Chambal group and Italcementi Spa of Italy, has begun talks with cement units located at Nalgonda in Andhra Pradesh for possible acquisitions or marketing alliance - for foraying into coastal Andhra and southern Orissa markets.

If the company decides to go in for acquisitions, it will be for units with capacity not less than one million tonne per annum.
For marketing alliance, the decision will be based on the scalability of the unit and its limestone reserves.

Zuari's own plant situated at Yerraguntla in Andhra Pradesh has a production capacity of 2 million tonne.

For leveraging its existing distribution network, Zuari has entered into marketing alliance with Southern India Cement, Ratna Cements and Cement Corporation of India (CCI).

The joint venture partner Italcementi is likely to take active interest in the management of the company by November and the company has decided to shift its base from Hyderabad to Bangalore to herald this change.

Last year, Italcementi, a US$3 billion company with 57 cement plants, picked up 50 per cent stake in the company for Rs 370 crore and it was then decided by both partners to increase the capacity to 8 million tpa by 2006.
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Intel's chipset to drive down P-4 price
New Delhi - Intel, which recently launched a microprocessor at 2 gigahertz speed, is not planning to cut the price of earlier versions of Pentium 4 yet.
However, surely by September, prices of Pentium-4 based personal computers will drop substantially.
Intel is all set to introduce a new Intel 845 chipset and motherboard compatible with SD-RAM (synchronous dynamic random access memory) which ismanufactured by a number of companies worldwide and has seen a crash in prices in recent months.
After drawing much criticism from the computer industry for its endorsement of costly Rambus-manufactured Rambus Direct RAM as the memory of choice for future PCs two years ago, Intel now wants to push the Pentium-4 chips in the home and small office segment by launching products that will support SD-RAM.
The price of ealier Intel processors like Pentium-4 with 1.4 ghz and 1.6 ghz, particularly that of P-3 with 1 ghz speed, are expected to go down soon with Intel launching P-4 processors with 1.9 ghz and 2 ghz speeds on Tuesday. The two new processors carry an international price tag of $375 and $562 respectively.
According to an authorised Intel Dealer the 850 chipset and motherboard, which supports P-4 processors at all speeds, is compatible only with RD-RAM. A P-4 processor of 1.4 ghz speed with 850 chipset and 128 MB RD-RAM is bundled and sold at approximately Rs 22,000.
But there are other associated costs involved, which increase prices of a P-4 machine with 850 chipset further. It requires a special cabinet that costs around Rs 4,500 as against a normal ATX cabinet that costs Rs 1,000 and supports earlier generations of Pentium processors. One also has to add the display and sound cards that cost another Rs 3,000.
A machine with a P-3 chip of 1 ghz speed, with Intel 815 chipset and motherboard, 128 MB SD-RAM, the two cards, and a ATX cabinet, costs around Rs 18,000.
Just 128 MB SD-RAM today costs no more than Rs 1,000 and is available in abundant quantity as Taiwanese manufacturers have pumped big volumes in the market, sending its prices crashing worldwide in recent months.
The launch of P-4 at 1.9 ghz and 2 ghz and a SD-RAM supported chipset on the anvil will mean a major cascading effect on P-3 prices. Though Intel executives refused to say when the company planned to phase out the earlier generation chip, unconfirmed reports indicate that Intel could stop manufacturing P-3 processors as early as first half of next year.
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Volvo gives attractive lease offers
Bangalore - Volvo, the $15-billion truck company, proposes to accelerate its internationally popular operative lease initiative in India through tie-ups with four leading finance companies, GE, Citi-Associates, Escorts Finance and Shreya.
Ravi Uppal, the outgoing managing director of the company, said that the company is firming up attractive packages with established financiers to focus largely on the unorganised players in the construction and other infrastructure business.
The operative lease exercise works at three levels. It can either be a simple vanilla lease or rental deal, or the customer can look for dry lease or wet lease where along with maintenance of the machinery/truck a driver/operator is also provided.
He said the lease scheme is a little expensive since the lessor is taking all the risk associated with renting out the asset to the customer lessee.
Uppal said Volvo with its countrywide network of sales and service stations, complete product solutions is best suited to offer the operative lease programme to customers.
Even though the finance company acquires the vehicle and gives it on operating lease to the customer, Volvo offers back to back support for the deal by taking care of its maintenance, spares etc.
Uppal said with its extended family of products and new business regions, Volvo continues to target revenues of at least Rs 300 crore in 2001.
It generated Rs 200 crore from all its streams of activity trucks, construction equipment and Penta genset and marine engines in 2000 (January to December), up 60 per cent over the 1999 results
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Ranbaxy, Cipla to co-market ciprofloxacin
New Delhi - Two of the country's leading pharma companies, Ranbaxy Laboratories and Cipla, today announced an alliance to co-market the former's once-a-day formulation of ciprofloxacin.
The formulation had received Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) approval for local marketing recently.

The companies would be marketing the product under their brand names -- Cifran OD (Ranbaxy) and Ciplox OD (Cipla). Ranbaxy would manufacture both the products.

This dosage form of the broad-spectrum anti-bacterial, is from Ranbaxy's novel drug delivery systems (NDDS) research pipeline.

Company sources said the alliance will be enable both companies to leverage their combined marketing prowess and extensive distribution network.
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Mahindras to price the Scorpio model in Rs 5-9 lakh range
Mumbai - Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) is likely to price all the three models on the new platform in the Rs 5.5-9 lakh bracket.
The company, which will be launching a top-end, a mid-end and a low-end model on the Scorpio platform, is likely to introduce both diesel and petrol variants of the top-end model by the end of this year.

The pricing strategy, seems to ensure that the top-end version is priced lower than the 4X4 LE version of Tata Safari (priced at Rs 10.13 lakhs ex-Mumbai).

Also, the lower-end model on the Scorpio platform is likely to be priced slightly above the companys other model, the Bolero GLX (Rs 5.39 lakh ex-Mumbai), in order to distinguish the two products in pricing terms.

The company will be offering a 2.8-litre engine sourced from Renault petrol version of the Scorpio, in addition to a modified 2.5-litre turbo-charged engine for the diesel version.

M&M, which has spent over Rs 600 crore on the Scorpio project, has created an additional capacity of 80,000 units at its Nashik plant, in addition to a new paint shop with a capacity to cater to 1.05 lakh units.

The company to spruce up its dealership network, is offering all services related to vehicle purchase at its dealership and, through the move, is hoping to establish its image as a manufacturer of contemporary vehicles for urban vehicles.

M&M today opened its first company-owned dealership network at Chowpatty in Mumbai, which will set the benchmark for all its 150 existing showrooms across India in the future.
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ORG-MARG to connect branches and gather data online
Ahmedabad - ORG-MARG, the largest market research company in India, is connecting its 15 branch offices across India through the virtual private network of Global Tele-System Ltd (GTL).
The network will be used for transferring research data collected by various branches.

ORG will use GTL's VPN to bring its c-commerce strategy to reality. In the first phase, connectivity would be established between three offices and in the second phase the remaining 12 offices will be inter-connected through GTL's network.

Release said that transferring data through conventional means such as mail attachments, CD's or floppies from their head office at Baroda to their various offices is costly and time consuming.

While using GTL's VPN will improve ORG-MARG's access to the branches, its will eliminate the costs involved in setting up its own wide-area networking.

With GTL's services, ORG-MARG will get 24X7 network monitoring, guaranteed levels of performance, end-to-end security, flexibility and scalability along with the proper combination of speed and cost available for every network connection.

ORG MARG's head office at Baroda in Gujarat would connect locally to GTL's node at Baroda using a lease line of 2 Mbps from BSNL. An ISDN back up will provide redundancy and connectivity in case of a local line break-up.
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Microsoft, IBM deny Cyberspace claims
Mumbai - Microsoft and IBM have denied Cyberspace Infosys claims to its merchant bankers about the exact nature of their relationship.
Earlier Cyberspace had told SBI Capital Markets, one of its merchant bankers, that it was a Microsoft Centre of Excellence in E-commerce in India. The company claimed it would target large customers with Microsoft-enabled solutions, working jointly with Microsoft over an 18-month period.
Microsoft officials, however, claim their association with Cyberspace Infosys was restricted to imparting skills related to developing software solutions on a project-to-project basis.
Microsoft officials said that the Cyberspace officials who underwent the Centre of Excellence programme did not complete the course.
The company also told SBI Capital Markets that it was managing the CoE in India for system integration and network management for Tivoli, a systems management software from IBM. The company told UTI-SEL that it was the only company to receive this status from Tivoli in India.
According to IBM, it organised a 21-day entry-level programme for Tivoli security solutions, where it was mandatory for Cyberspace Infosys officials to undergo two levels of training but denied having entered into an arrangement with Cyberspace Infosys that would allow them to bid for software projects in South-East Asia.
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Godrej & Boyce plans to be number one player in office automation
Kolkata - Godrej & Boyce has drawn up ambitious plans to capture the leading place in the digital office automation market in the country by introducing specialised software solutions for different key sectors.
The company has entered into an exclusive arrangement with Hyderabad-based Fortune Informatics to develop dedicated e-business solutions for a wide range of activities ranging from exporter house to law farms and from insurance companies to educational institutions.

The software, being developed by Hyderabad-based Fortune Informatics Ltd for Godrej & Boyce, would complement the hardware marketed by the company.

The company has set up a timeframe of two years to introduce them in the Indian market.

Sunil K Manwati, general manager, marketing and operation, Prima division, Godrej & Boyce Manufacturing Company Ltd, said the first product of the new range would hit the market within six months and will be a billing software. It is expected to find a good market with telecom companies. Godrej will supplement it with high-speed digital copier with 200 cpm (copies per minute) speed. Telecom companies would be able to carry out billing much faster than it actually currently do. It will be web savvy; as soon as the bill is done, it will be sent automatically to customer's e-mail, Manwati said.

The billing software and hardware industry combined is pegged at Rs 300 crore in the country and was set to double within three years. Manwati was in Kolkata to launch a office software called 'e-doc'.
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NIIT in global tieup with Alcatel for big accounts
New Delhi - NIIT has tied up with Alcatel to address large enteprise accounts in India and global markets in banking, financial and insurance sectors. NIIT thus, becomes the first Indian company to join the 12 premium partners of the $31-billion European telecom major worldwide for the three verticals.
NIIT will also partner Alcatel in domestic projects like the Rs 550-crore Delhi Metro Rail and VSNL project. The two are also jointly pursuing various projects globally, specially in Asia Pacific.
Interestingly, NIIT had a similar arrangement with Newbridge, a Canadian company recently acquired by Alcatel.
Newbridge was involved in ATM and frame relay telecom switches in the same verticals.
While NIIT hopes to capitalise on Alcatels strengths and significant base in the Government and other verticals, Alcatel will now have access to NIITs capabilities as a ``complete solutions provider for large enterprise users.
Both the companies are quite hopeful that these niche markets will invest large sums in building the networking infrastructure.
The two partners will not only jointly implement projects from concept to commissioning.
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Reuters looking at tech, content acquisitions
Mumbai - The Reuters Group Plc, the global information, news and technology group, is planning to make acquisitions in the Indian financial technology and content segment and is also open to infusion of equity in partnerships.

Our investments will be in line with the financial reforms," said Philip N Green, chief operating officer of Reuters, said.

He said while he could not quantify the companys proposed investment in the two sectors, except that it would be based on requirements. India is a key market for Reuters and the company is keen to invest heavily to acquire and retain more customers,

Reuters does not intend to scale down its investments in key markets including India.
Its manpower of 170 in India is also expected to grow over a period of time. Its media workforce has a strength of 50 personnel in India.

Green, however, ruled out possibilities of acquiring domestic media firms since its main focus will be in financial sector.
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Unveils Dealing 3000 Direct
Reuters has launched a new multi-functional workstation - Dealing 3000 Direct - to meet the needs of the foreign exchange and money market traders in the country. The launch coincided with Reuters' 150th year anniversary celebrations.

The Dealing 3000 allows for flexible and customisable user interface, navigations and functionality that mirrors the Microsoft Windows software making it easier to learn and operate.

The business strategy for India is similar to the strategy that is applied worldover. Green said India is almost in the forefront of all their businesses, despite the stringent regulatory framework here.

With regard to expanding its business on the financial services front, Reuters in India sees great opportunities in three business such as treasury, investment banking and asset management, Green said.

As regards Reuters' media business, it is a very small part of their entire business, and globally this contributes less than 10 per cent to their total turnover. For the year ended December 2000, the group turnover was pounds 3,592 million.
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Samsung launches new range of refrigerators
New Delhi - Samsung India Electronics has announced the launch of a new 'bio cool' series of refrigerators and addition of two new models in its existing top-end 'bio fresh' range.
The 'bio cool' refrigerators would be priced at Rs 11,200 and Rs 10,250 for 175 litres and 200 litres capacity respectively, a company statement said here.
Samsung India also introduced a 570 litres and 610 litres refrigerators in its frost-free 'bio fresh' range. While the 570 litres model has been priced at Rs 92,000 and Rs 76,000 for two versions, the 610 litres model would cost Rs 68,000.
The 'bio cool' refrigerators would have a 'bio' vegetable box, which has n antibacterial and antifungal function to prevent the loss of vitamins in the fruits and vegetables stored in it.
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RPG Life to receive Rs 89cr from sale of agrochem biz
Mumbai - RPG Life Sciences will receive about Rs 89 crore from the sale of its agrochemicals business to Italian firm Isagro.
The company also expects to earn a royalty of up to Rs 22 crore over five years starting April 1,2002 from $200-million Isagro for exclusive use of its trademarks.
The deal is expected to be closed by end-October. Last month, RPG Life announced it had signed an agreement with Isagro for the sale of its Rs 110 crore agrochem business for an amount which was not disclosed at the time.
The move is in line with its decision to focus on the pharmaceuticals business.
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New edition Qualis launched
Bangalore - Toyota Kirloskar Motor is launching a limited series special edition of its popular MUV Qualis at about Rs 30,000 more than its present model.
The vehicle is available in the price band of Rs 5.25 lakh to Rs 8.9 lakh on road in Bangalore.
Qualis has sold over 19,300 units between January and August, up 45% overs the corresponding eight month period last year.
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