Sartorius seeking strategic tie-ups
Bangalore: Sartorius AG is scouting for strategic alliances with biopharma companies for contractual research and manufacturing services.

The German group, recently increased its stake in Sartorius India from 51 per cent to 90 per cent through its subsidiary B Braun Biotech International, a world leader in biotech engineering.

The group is likely to pump more investments into India in view of its creative and intellectual think tank and actively participate in state biotechnology initiatives across the country.

In the last two years, the Group has invested 2.3 million euro in India.
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Ranbaxy to conduct drug trials in China
New Delhi: Ranbaxy Laboratories has shortlisted eight Chinese centers to perform clinical trials on its new drug for benign prostatic hyperplasia, a condition of the prostate occurring in aging males.

The trials on Parvosin, already on in India, will begin on the ethnic Chinese population, by end-2002.

Ranbaxy is currently in talks with companies to outlicense Parvosin for further development and marketing in countries where it does not have the infrastructure or relationships to sell a completely new drug.

Ranbaxys sales in China in 2001 were $11 million.

China already acts as a sourcing base for Ranbaxys ciprofloxacin infusion exports to markets like Brazil and Russia.
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Samsonite to make India its hub
Hyderabad: Samsonite is making India its major manufacturing centre for ABS-based products for markets worldwide. The company has emerged as the largest exporter of luggage with a turnover of Rs 125 crore last year.

The Nasik plant is being upgraded and modernised at a cost of Rs 10 crore and will be the first design and development centre for Samsonite outside Belgium, where it is headquartered.

The companys Indian development centre will design and develop new products and some of them will be featured at the world luggage fair to be held in Europe this year.

Already with around 60 per cent of market share in the premium segment in India, the company has embarked on a novel retail strategy to emerge as a total travel solutions and consultancy company with exclusive retail outlets across the country.
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Discovery, Sony tie up in India
Mumbai: The Discovery Channel and Sony Entertainment Television plan to form a programming distribution alliance.

Discovery Networks International (DNI) and Sony Entertainment Television India (SET India) said they are forming an alliance to distribute their top channels like Animal Planet, the Discovery Channel and SET Max.

The alliance brings together Discovery, which specialises in science and nature programming, with content provided by Sony, a unit of Sony Pictures Entertainment, which owns Columbia TriStar International Television.

The alliance will begin jointly distributing six channels from 1 April.
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Essar for 37% equity in merged entity
New Delhi: The Essar group will have up to 37 per cent stake in the merged entity worth $2.2 billion with Hong Kong-based Hutchison and will come out with an initial public offer early next year diluting up to 20 per cent of the equity.

Both companies, Essar Teleholdings of Ruias and Hutchison together have 10 cellular circles and in the first phase of restructuring seven circles would be merged excluding Haryana, UP and Rajasthan in which Essar has 100 per cent stake.

The consolidation of the two companies would be done in two phases. In the first phase, seven properties comprising Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Chennai would be merged while in the second and final phase three other properties of Rajasthan, UP and Haryana which are exclusively held by Essar Teleholding would be merged.
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BPCL to phase out unviable outlets
Mumbai: BPCL has decided to phase out over 400 unviable retail outlets. It is simultaneously drawing up plans to set up 150 new outlets in promising locations.

Meanwhile, the company, which has a 4,500-strong network of retail outlets across the country continues to acquire dealer-owned outlets in a bid to control maximum retail sites.

The company also plans to focus on opening outlets along the national highways and in small towns. The company has identified about 75 to 80 sites along the 10,000-odd km stretch.
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Hughes Escorts launches broadband service
New Delhi: Hughes Escorts Communications has announced the commercial launch of DirecWay, an end-to-end satellite-based Internet protocol (IP) broadband service.

With an investment of over $15 million in DirecWay, Hughes Escorts Communications plans to offer services in over 800 cities and rural areas across the country. Hughes is targeting revenues of over Rs 100 crore in the first three years of operation.

Apart from offering broadband access via satellite, the solutions would also be delivered for networking, managed network services, data centre hosting and application services such as distance education, multimedia broadcast services and tele-medicine.

DirecWay would be available to the Indian customers for a one-time hardware cost of Rs 30,000 for a one-way system and Rs 1 lakh for a two-way system and the recurring service charges ranging between Rs 1,000 and Rs 20,000 per month, depending on the service plan.
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Ashok Delhi undergoes revamp
New Delhi: The India Tourism Development Corporation's Ashok Delhi is undergoing a major revamp.

As part of this exercise the doorman of the hotel will soon don a designer uniform since he creates the first impression. While an open air theatre was inaugurated on 9 March, a discotheque and an exclusive art gallery will be functional by next month. The swimming pool is being revamped and water polo might be introduced.

Special packages have also been designed to attract the school children during the holidays.
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Oyzterbay plans 50 more exclusive stores
Chennai: The branded jewellery retailer Oyzterbay is planning to set up 50 exclusive stores by March next year.

The new outlets will include both stand-alone stores and shop-in-shop counters.

Oyzterbay currently has 26 exclusive outlets, including the counters at retailers such as Ebony and LifeStyle.

The company is in the process of finalising arrangements to have similar counters at other lifestyle retailers such as Shoppers' Stop.
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Unichem plans to double exports
Mumbai: Unichem Laboratories is planning to double its exports to over Rs 30 crore by the end of 2001-02. The company hopes to achieve this by concentrating more on formulations as part of the new product mix.

Formulations are expected to contribute around Rs 16 crore to the company's turnover.

The company is looking at exporting generics for therapeutic areas including cardiovascular, pain management, anti-infectives and psychiatry.

The company is primarily into anti-infectives, pain management and gastro intestinal. Along with these areas, Unichem is also planning to enter lifestyle segments such as cardiovascular, neurology, psychiatry, diabetology, hormones and nutrition.
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Panel okays delinking of GIC arms
Mumbai: The standing committee on finance has approved the amendment of the bill to delink General Insurance Corporation (GIC) from its subsidiaries and covert it into a national reinsurer.

The committee, however, was critical on the government's haste in opening up the sector without considering the fate of GIC arms -- New India Assurance, National Insurance, Oriental Insurance and United India Insurance -- after getting delinked from the parent.

The committee also okayed the Insurance (Amendment) Bill 2001, which paves the entry of brokers and cooperatives in the sector and permitting payment of premium through credit cards and the Internet.
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LIC to launch plan on the lines of ULIP
Kolkata: Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) will be launching a product similar to the unit-linked insurance policy of the Unit Trust of India (UTI) - ULIP.

LIC has already launched an equity-linked policy christened Bima Plus, but it did not have any unit-linked policy of its own although it had a tax saving mutual fund -- Dhanraksha.

LIC has been selling Dhanaraksha for quite sometime now, but market survey conducted on mutual funds reflected that ULIP has outperformed the former.

ULIP is a tax saving scheme from UTI, that was converted into an open-ended tax saving-cum-insurance plan based on net asset value a few months back. The tenure of the scheme is either 10 years or 15 years with the minimum target amount at Rs 15,000 or Rs 75,000.
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Gartner names Wipro a niche player in web security
Bangalore: Leading market researcher Gartner, in its recently-released Magic Quadrant report, has named Wipro as a niche player in the extranet access management market for its Web security product, WiproWebSecure.

WiproWebSecure was adopted by several large enterprises and has the potential to become a solid product, the Gartner report said. The other vendors in the niche players' category include Entegrity, Baltimore Technologies, while IBM and Netegrity are leaders in the Gartner study.
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Sun, Mindtree set up competency centre
Bangalore: Sun Microsystems and MindTree Consulting have set up a competency centre to jointly work on the Sun Open Network Environment and to develop solutions for Web services.

This will be the first such competency centre of Sun in South Asia.

The solutions are expected to help Indian companies move onto the next level of computing through a services-driven network architecture.
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Nalcos 10% equity to be sold in domestic market
New Delhi: The government will sell 10 per cent of its equity in National Aluminium Company Ltd (Nalco) in the domestic market, followed by a 20 per cent American depository receipt (ADR) offering through a two-stage disinvestment plan.

The domestic issue and ADR offering will be followed by a third stage involving strategic sale of about 29.15 per cent of the government's equity in Nalco. The government also plans to offer up to 2 per cent of Nalco's shares to its employees at the time of the strategic sale.

The government's holding in Nalco would be reduced to 26 per cent after the third stage of the disinvestments. The government currently holds 87.15 per cent stake.
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Bajaj Auto cancels interim dividend
Pune: Bajaj Auto has revoked the interim dividend it had announced on 5 March.

The board of directors of the company decided in the larger interests of the company and its shareholders, to revoke the decision to pay interim dividend.

The board had decided to pay an interim dividend of Rs 14 per share (140 per cent), inclusive of a special one-time dividend of Rs 2 per share (20 per cent) for the year 2001-02.
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Hertz India plans national roll-out
Kolkata: Hertz India, which currently operates car rental services in New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune and Kolkata, has outlined plans for a national roll-out covering a total of 32 cities across the country within the next 18 months.

The company plans to invest a total of Rs 20 crore in the car rental business within the next three years. The idea is to have a fleet of 600 cars of various makes for providing rental services. At present, Hertz India operates a fleet of around 170 cars.

At present, Hertz and Avis are the only two global brands in the business in India.

Hertz India, which commenced operations in India in September 2001, has billings of around Rs 1 crore every month. The company is hopeful of touching the Rs 100-crore turnover mark within the next three years.
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