HLL to enter herbal segment
Mumbai: Hindustan Lever (HLL) is set to enter the herbal segment with the launch of its first herbal product, Fair & Lovely Ayurvedic cream soon.

The existing players present in the herbal cream segment include Godrej Consumer Products' Fairglow, CavinKare's Fairever fairness cream, the Himalaya drug company and Ayur Herbal.

To begin with, HLL will be promoting the product through mobile vans with the posters of Fair & Lovely Ayurvedic cream. Outdoor campaigns are expected to break by the end of the month.
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UTI panel to review RIL audits
Mumbai: A three-member team of Unit Trust of India will review audit reports of Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) and eight others.

The panel, consisting of trustee M R Mayya, D T Pai and newly inducted Industrial Development Bank of India nominee Narsimha Murthy, would submit its recommendations in next 15 days to the board.

The board is likely to meet in last week of this month to discuss the recommendations.
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Hinduja TMT Q4 net zooms 300%
Mumbai: Hinduja TMT has posted a 301.25% increase in net profit at Rs 16.01 crore for the fourth quarter ended 31 March 2002, when compared with Rs 3.99 crore in the corresponding quarter the previous year. Total income moved up 481% to Rs Rs 25.01 crore as against Rs 4.30 crore in the corresponding period last fiscal.

The company has reported a 10.30% increase in net profit at Rs 46.402 crore for the year ended 31 March 2002 when compared with Rs 42.07 crore. Total income increased to Rs 72.97 crore from Rs 61.73 crore.
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Canbank Factors crosses Rs 1000-cr turnover mark
Mumbai: Canbank Factors has reported an all-time high turnover of Rs 1,026 crore.

The company, a subsidiary of Canara Bank, has registered a 16% growth over the previous year.

The total income increased to Rs 25.98 crore from Rs 24.30 crore. Profit after tax stood at Rs 7.25 crore as against Rs 5.77 crore recorded the previous year - a growth of 25.65%. The net non-performing assets was nil, according to an official statement.
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Mumbai HC approves ICICI, Bank merger ratio
Mumbai: The Mumbai High Court has approved the merger ratio of ICICI with ICICI Bank.

"The court approves the merger ratio," Judge D.K. Deshmukh said while setting aside objections raised by some minority shareholders of ICICI.

ICICI will now have to await the RBI approval before the merger takes effect.
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CavinKare posts 20% rise in revenues
Chennai: CavinKare Pvt Ltd has reported a 20 per cent growth in revenue and has chalked out a 50 per cent growth strategy for the current fiscal.

The company also indicated that it was open to acquiring a detergent brand, which enjoyed a 3-5 per cent market share in the country.

CavinKare reported revenues of Rs 243 crore for the year ended 31 March 2002. CavinKare has also identified exports as a thrust area and decided to float a separate strategic business unit for exports that would focus on the south-east Asian and African markets.
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Bajoria group buys Eveready's Delhi realty
Kolkata: Arun Kumar Bajoria has acquired a Delhi property of Eveready Industries Ltd for approximately Rs 20 crore.

Bajoria acquired the 5,100 square meter realty at 23 Aurangzeb Road through Hooghly Holdings, a subsidiary of his flagship Hooghly Jute.

Since the property was mortgaged with ICICI, which has a loan exposure of Rs 400 crore to Eveready, the sale proceeds would go to the financial institution.
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Ranbaxy accused of 400 million fraud
London: Ranbaxy has been accused of suspected fraud with police raiding its London offices in one of the UKs biggest single swoops.

Ranbaxy, along with Goldshield, a London Stock Exchangelisted company owned by East African Indian Ajit Patel, are accused of working in tandem with four other generic drug manufacturers or retailers to defraud the British taxpayer of 400 million pounds.

Ranbaxy and the other companies are alleged to have been so desperate for profits in a business with low profit margins that they are accused of fixing drug prices at sometimes five times the normal level.

Britains serious fraud office described the ongoing investigation as major and said it related to prices charged for prescribed penicillin-based antibiotics and Warfarin (a blood-thinning drug) between 1 January 1996 and 31 December 2000.
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Samsung lines up new launches
New Delhi: Samsung is set to announce a slew of launches in the home appliance range in the coming months.

Samsung plans to launch seven new washing machine models by June. It is beefing up refrigerator range too by launching five new frost-free models in the next two months. While four new air-conditioner models will be launched this summer, a similar number of microwave models will be launched to jive up this slow market.

Samsung is targeting a turnover of Rs 668 crore from its home appliances business, which would account for approximately 44 per cent of its targeted turnover of Rs 1,520 crore this year.
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Reva launched in Delhi
New Delhi: India's first zero polluting, battery-driven car, the Reva was launched in Delhi.

Manufactured by Bangalore-based Reva Electric Car Company (RECC), the car has been priced at Rs 2.54 lakh (ex-showroom Delhi).

The company has requested the Delhi government to provide concessions on road tax and sales tax waiver to Reva owners. This has already been extended by the Karnataka and Rajasthan governments.

The Reva is a two-door hatchback which can seat two adults and two children comfortably. Besides being eco-friendly, the vehicle offers easy driving as it has no clutch or gears.
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Indica achieves break-even
Mumbai: Tata Engineering has achieved a cash break-even for its Indica in the fiscal ended March 2002 with cumulative sales of 64,035 units.

The company had invested Rs 1,700 crore in the project and has managed to achieve cash profit situation in the third year.

In March, the company witnessed a 67 per cent rise in Indica sales at 8,769 units, the highest ever by any model in the B segment.

Tata Engineering's total exports in FY-02 were 4,800 cars while for Indica it was close to 2,200-2,300 units.
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Som Datt bags Rs 956 cr highway project
New Delhi: Som Datt Builders has bagged three contracts worth over Rs 956 crore for four-laning of highways under the national highway development programme.

All the three projects are part of the Golden Quadrilateral component of the NHDP that connects the four corners of the country with four/six lane express-highways.

The project involves construction of cement concrete pavement as well as bituminous pavement.

It is also executing a project of four-laning and strengthening of 30-km stretch on NH-II near Sasaram in Bihar. The contract is valued at Rs 197.95 crore.
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Gail net up 2.2% to Rs 1151 cr
New Delhi: Gas Authority of India has reported Rs 1151 crore net profit for the year 2001-02, a 2.2 per cent increase over Rs 1126 crore profit earned in the previous fiscal.

Sales increased 4.91 per cent to Rs 10,553 crore over Rs 10,059 crore of 2000-01.

Total gas sales during 2001-02 were about 62 million cubic metres per day while total liquid hydrocarbon sales were 1.13 million tonnes.
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Fiat to launch two more Palio models
Chennai: Fiat India will launch two more variants of Palio by May.

The new variants - Palio Adventure and Palio Weekend- are expected to establish 'Palio' as a front-runner in the highly competitive Indian passenger car market.

The new models, fitted with 100 BHP 1.6 litre petrol engines, would have various features like increased ground clearance, long range lamps and large storage areas.

'Palio Adventure, a "cross" between a sports utility vehicle and multi utility vehicle would be introduced to create a new segment in the car market.

Besides Fiat would also launch a 1.9 litre diesel engine for the Palio and Sienna range by early 2003.
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CalTiger to offer Net telephony
Mumbai: CalTiger plans to offer Net telephony in collaboration with U.S.-based Internet telephony services company Net2Phone.

CalTiger's chairman and chief executive Joe Silva told a news conference that his company will sell Net2Phone's pre-paid calling cards, which will charge as low as three rupees per minute for a call to the United States.

CalTiger, which had revenue of 150 million rupees last year, abandoned its free ISP model and started charging customers for Internet access from January 2002. It now has 20,000 paid-subscribers compared with the over 700,000 it had registered as free users.

CalTiger expects to rake in 1.2 billion rupees from its Internet telephony business in the first year of operations, Silva said.

CalTiger, which has a revenue sharing arrangement with Net2Phone, hopes to make money selling pre-paid calling cards, targeted at customers of all ISPs and also special devices that remove the need for an expensive personal computer to make Internet calls.
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TCS bags $100-m GE contract
Mumbai: Tata Consultancy Services has bagged a contract worth more than $100-million for the US-based GE Medical Systems, a unit of the General Electric Company.

The project involves a roll out in more than 30 countries where GE Medical has its presence.

The contract will spread over the next two years and is larger than Wipros order from the Lattice project, which was worth $70-million spread over three years.

The GE Medical project is an e- business project spread over several countries and involves business consulting also.

GE Medical is expected to carry out a phased roll out of the project over the next two years. TCS has already committed 200 people for the project.
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Jaipuria arm picks up 14% stake in BoR
Mumbai: Devyani Foods, a Noida-based company owned by the Jaipurias, has picked up 14 per cent equity in Bank of Rajasthan.

The development closely follows Sebi pulling up the existing promoters Tayals, who took over the bank from the Calcutta-based Kesav Bangur family, for breaching the Sebi takeover code.

BoR, which changed hands from Bangur to Tayals, was at one point controlled by the Jaipurias.

The Tayals currently hold 38.5 per cent in BoR, a listed bank with a paid up capital of little over Rs100 crore.
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QAD shuts India operations
Mumbai: QAD, a Nasdaq listed ERP company, is in the process of shutting down its operations in India.

The company has also restructured its Asia-Pacific operations and reduced its head count in the region by 10 per cent. The country manager for India, Arjun Erry, has been asked to quit.

Along with him several other senior people from the Asia Pacific operations have left QAD.

QAD is the second largest ERP vendor in the country after SAP, the market leader. The company had a customer base of more than 100 corporate customers in the country.
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BPL Mobile posts Rs 992-cr turnover
Mumbai: BPL Mobile has reported a turnover of Rs 992 crore and an operating profit of Rs 274 crore for the financial year 2001-02.

The results include the operations of two companies BPL Mobile Communications and BPL Mobile Cellular.

The company also exceeded its targeted subscriber base when it touched 8,98,576 customers in March.
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CSE charges RIL arm with badla dealings
New Delhi: The Calcutta Stock Exchange has informed joint parliamentary committee that Reliance Share and Stock Brokers had done a huge amount of badla financing on the exchange and then totally withdrew from the system.

CSE has given a clean chit to the Reliance entity saying it did not indulge in any short selling during the crash period last year.

JPC has shot off numerous queries on the badla financing transactions of the Reliance group and whether its withdrawal was a reason for the crash last year.

The Reliance group has all along maintained that its investments and subsequent withdrawal from the badla system were part of its normal investment decisions.

In fact, Reliance Share and Stock Brokers did the maximum amount of badla financing during the said period as per CSE records. The total badla financing done by Reliance was to the tune of Rs 1165 crore.
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Ford to roll out petrol Ikons next year
Chennai: The first batch of Ford Ikon passenger cars fitted with petrol engines is expected to roll out by the beginning of 2003.

Consequently, the indigenisation level of Ford Ikons petrol version is expected to cross over 90 per cent. Ford India had recently entered into a collaborative partnership with Hindustan Motors for making petrol engines for Ikon.
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Cincom to take 90% in Flex Foods
Ahmedabad: Cincom Systems Mauritius is reportedly taking over a 90 per cent stake in the paid up capital of Flex Foods. CSM is a subsidiary of the $250 million US-based software development and marketing company.

Flex Foods a part of the $150 million packaging major Flex group would purchase the 100 per cent equity in CSI from its parent company CSM, and in turn Flex would offer its own 112.5 million shares to CSM. The final holding of CSM in the paid up capital of Flex Foods would be in the region of 90 per cent.

Cincom Systems develops and markets strategic business software in the field of IT enabled services and financial products and has its operations spread over 24 countries across the globe.
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Aban Loyd, Qatar Shipping bid for SCI
Mumbai: The Chennai-based Aban Loyd has joined hands with Qatar Shipping to bid for the government stake in the Shipping Corpration of India.

One of the largest oil drilling companies in India, Aban Loyd had recently taken over Tata group company Hitech Drilling for Rs 170 crore, making itself the largest in the oil exploration sector.

The other foreign qualified interested parties in the SCI bidding are Malaysia International Shipping Corporation, the French CMA-CGM and the Hong Kong-based OOCL.

The Indian parties include Videocon International, Sterlite Industries, BPL, Great Eastern Shipping Company (GE Shipping), Essar Shipping, Shreyas Shipping, Finolex Group and Iffco-Kribhco.
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Piaggio to double three-wheeler capacity
Mumbai: Piaggio Spa has has decided to double the three-wheeler capacity of Piaggio Vehicles with a capital outlay of Rs 70 crore.

With the setting up of a new assembly line, which will be also configured to roll out 4-wheeler cargo carriers, Piaggio Vehicles would augment its capacity to 70,000 units annually to cater to both the domestic and overseas markets.

While the company produces the Ape range of three-wheelers, both for the passenger and cargo segments, the cargo carriers seems to be the most sought-after, accounting for 65 per cent of its total volumes.
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Pidilite to acquire Steelgrip
Mumbai: Pidilite has finalised a deal to acquire Mumbai-based Bhor Industries electrical insulation tape brand Steelgrip for a consideration of close to Rs 10 crore.

The company, which makes the Fevicol brand, had earlier acquired brands like Ranipal and M-Seal as part of a rebranding exercise.

The acquisition of Steelgrip will enable the company to enter the electrical goods segment.
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ZILS ties up with EDS
Chennai: Zee Interactive Learning Systems Ltd (ZILS) has tied up with the US-based Electronic Data Systems for joint e-learning initiatives.

As per the tie-up, EDS would provide the education and training software content, while ZILS would do the necessary customisation, value-addition including animation, and develop the e-learning software for international markets.

The contract was for five years, and on a conservative estimate, the company expected to earn around Rs 5 crore revenue this year from the tie-up.

EDS offers services including those for all product lifecycle management products, instructor-led training classes in one of the company's many worldwide facilities, on-site training at client locations and self-paced product training.
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Hyundai to make India hub for small cars
New Delhi: Hyundai Motor Company plans to make India the global manufacturing hub for small cars.

The global launch of the 1.1 litre Epsilon engine from India in March 2002 was a first and significant step in this direction.

The companys current expansion is funded entirely from internal resources but in the second phase, when the capacity would be taken to 200,000 a year, the company may look at infusion a small amount of equity with tagged on debt and internal accruals for funding.
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Lucent bags Tata Tele order
New Delhi: Lucent has bagged orders from Tata Teleservices for providing and installing equipment for fixed wireline services.

Lucent will provide switching and broadband equipment to Tata Teleservices for its basic telecom service projects in Karnataka and Gujarat. This should amount to an initial order for around Rs 100 crore.

Tata Teleservices is operating basic telecom services in Andhra Pradesh and has licence for providing services in four more states - Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Gujarat and Karnataka. It will soon acquire licence for providing basic telecom services in Maharashtra.
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Thakral Group to distribute Dunhill line
Geneva: The Singapore-based Thakral Group has been appointed by Alfred Dunhill to distribute its Dunhill brand of fashion accessories ranging from watches to pens and lighters in India.

The Dunhill products will be distributed in India by Thakral Computers Pvt Ltd, a Thakral Group company. The company is also the distribtor of Rado, Switzerland, products in India.

The Thakral Group has interests in India ranging from manufacturing, trading, distribution, real estate and software development.

It has invested around Rs 250 crore in the country. Apart from Thakral Computers, the other companies of the Thakral Group in India include Givo Ltd and Raffles Software Pvt Ltd.
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Videocon bags Rs 500 cr TV order from Russia
New Delhi: Videcon International has received $100 million worth orders for television from companies based in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States.

The deal will involve the manufacture and exports of around 7 million television sets to these countries over a three-month period.

The export order will result in Videocons exports turnover nearly doubling from Rs 500 crore in the fiscal 2001-02 to Rs 1,000 crore in 2002-03.
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Amitabh to promote Raymond Weil
Geneva: Raymond Weil, the Swiss watchmaker, is in advanced stages of negotiations with superstar Amitabh Bachchan to endorse its brand in India.

Bachchan is the latest filmstar to endorse a Swiss watch brand, the others being Shahrukh Khan, Aishwarya Rai and Twinkle Khanna who endorse Omega and Longines and Movado, respectively.

Former Indian cricket captain Mohammed Azharuddin earlier endorsed the Tissot brand.
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Jessop divestment stayed
Kolkata: The Calcutta high court has restrained the government of India from implementing any decision on disinvestment of Jessop till 20 May.

Justice Kalyanjyoti Sengupta hearing the case on disinvestment of Jessop between Jessop Staff Association and Board of Industrial Financial and Reconstruction (BIFR) extended the restraint order given in April this year.

The next date of hearing of the case is fixed on 6 May. The government-owned Bharat Bhari Udyog Ltd holds 97 per cent in the company, of which it plans to sell 72 per cent.
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HFCL plans to raise $100 million abroad
Mumbai: Himachal Futristic Communications (HFCL) is planning an international equity offering to raise up to $100 million, the company said in a notice to the Bombay Stock Exchange.

The company is also looking at a private placement of 3 crore equity shares and preferential allotment of 2 crore warrants, convertible into equity shares to the promoters.

HFCL said the board has already approved all these decisions.
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Court upholds Rs 118-cr award claim against Reliance
New Delhi: The Mumbai high court has upheld an arbitration award in which Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) has been asked to pay around Rs 118 crore, including interest, to Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL). Reliance has filed an appeal before a division bench of the same court.
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