IdeaSpace and Quintant to merge
Bangalore: Hyderabad-based GMR Group plans to exit from all its information technology (IT) businesses having recently sold its 51 per cent stake in Quintant, the business service provisioning firm (BSP), to iGate Global Solutions for $19 million in cash.
Now there are plans to merge IdeaSpace with Quintant.

GMR holds 84.68 per cent stake in IdeaSpace, the Bangalore-based IT services company. Public and private corporates hold 7.84 and 7.48 per cent respectively. GMR is exiting the IT business to fund its growth in infrastructure space.

IdeaSpace offers IT solutions for the financial services industry. Core banking software, data centre service, IT infrastructure outsourcing, and system integration are its offerings.
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Infosys to take on IBM, Accenture & EDS
Mumbai: Infosys Technologies Ltd is gearing up to take on competition from the likes of multinational corporations like Accenture, EDS and IBM.

The company is working on repackaging its existing IT services offerings into what it calls ‘solutions’ in line with the business model of these MNCs.

Infosys is also restructuring its compensation package for employees in a significant way and adding more services to its offshore delivery model. The company’s annual target for return on capital employed (Roce), has been declared to be 35 percent. During the quarter ended June 30, the company achieved a Roce of 46 percent.
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Radio City ownership to be probed
New Delhi: The government has ordered into the ownership norms of Music Broadcasting Private Ltd (MBPL), which runs Radio City. The government wants to inquire if the company has violated foreign equity restrictions. It will also look into the company’s relationship with Digiwave, a subsidiary of Star India.

The government’s view is that Digiwave has provided almost all the funds required to run MBPL's radio station and exclusively provided all the content to Radio City, which was launched in 2001 and is on air in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Lucknow.

As per the guidelines on foreign direct investment, the licence holder, in this case MBPL, should broadcast and not assign or transfer the licence to a third party. In the case of a transfer, the licence can be revoked.

However, Digiwave is the exclusive content provider to MBPL and is a subsidiary of Star India Pvt India, which is owned by Star Group Ltd. This, the government feels, indicates the possibility of violation of the clauses and the “spirit” of foreign equity restrictions.
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Cola sales fall by 40 percent
New Delhi: A week after the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) said it found presence of pesticides in 12 top soft drink brands, the sales of these drinks have registered a sharp 30-40 per cent drop.
The sales drop has been computed by comparing the last one week’s sales as against the average weekly sales prior to the CSE report. Kolkata has been worst affected as leading clubs, restaurants and retailers have either stopped selling aerated drinks or are reluctant to sell them due to the fear of being on the wrong side of public opinion. In other cities such as Delhi, Chennai and Mumbai and others schools and colleges have stopped sale of aerated drinks in the canteen or tuck shops.

Pepsi’s spokesperson said that the baseless allegations had affected sales.

Retailers admitted that the impact on cola sales has been significant and soft drink sales were down 40 per cent. Some retailers say the silver lining was that the issue had surfaced in the monsoon months when cola sales are traditionally slack and therefore did not hit bottomline all that much.
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Pepsi chief says EU norms not relevant for all countries
New Delhi: Rajeev Bakshi Pepsi Foods managing director is of the opinion that European Union standards for products and services had been created because the EU countries could use these norms to gain a competitive advantage in other countries.

He said once trade liberalisation took place, developing countries would be prevented under GATT rules from discriminating against foreign products and service-providers, which would then act in favour of the EU.

He said. “If India adopts EU food laws, for example, 90 per cent of our groundnut crop would be inedible because of aflatoxin standards. Our liquid milk would be undrinkable and processed milk products unuseable because EU standards require that cows be machine-milked. Fruits and vegetables would not come to markets and even basic staples such as rice and wheat would need to be imported into India in order to satisfy “standards”.

He said there is indeed no ostensible reason to import standards, particularly when these may or may not be relevant to our context and carry the incremental risks of our ceding future control to an external source, Bakshi felt.
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Torrent sets ambitious expansion plans
Ahmedabad: The Rs 2,674-crore Torrent group has laid out ambitious expansions plans in its two key areas of operation — pharmaceuticals and power.

Torrent group has seen an 90 percent growth in its bottomline for the first quarter ended June 30, 2003 despite the fact that the topline grew at a marginal 3.6 percent to Rs 656 crore during the quarter ended June 30, 2003 against Rs 656 crore in the same period last year.

Now the group, through its flagship company Torrent Pharmaceuticals Limited (TPL), has scripted a major thrust on its overseas operations, including possible acquisition of companies in the highly-regulated US market, while on the power front, Torrent group is floating an SPV with 51 percent equity holding of its two group companies — Surat Electricity Company (SEC) and Ahmedabad Electricity Company (AEC) — for setting up a 1,050 MW mega power project for an estimated cost of Rs 3,500 crore.
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Taj adopting new biz model
Bangalore: Indian Hotels Company owner of the Taj group of hotels is adopting the business model of blending a luxury service apartment with a shopping zone in a starred hotel. The Taj Hotels has implemented this at the Leela Galleria in Bangalore and the Grand Hyatt in Mumbai and now proposes to do this at Taj Land’s End also.

Taj Land’s End is a 300-room property in north Mumbai. Since it has surplus space, the chain proposes to exploit its potential by introducing a service apartment block along with an independent contemporary retail area.

The Grand Hyatt works along the same lines. Located near Bandra, off the Western Express Highway, the property comprises a 555-room luxury hotel, 150 service apartments, a large convention centre and an independent 1,06,000 square feet shopping mall of international standards. The hotel has followed the Grand Hyatt models in Berlin, Jakarta, Melbourne and other shopping hot-spots.

Taj can claim some experience in the service apartment business as it is already working on a Rs 100-crore stand alone service apartment project in Mumbai called Wellington Mews.
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Hyundai begins export of cars to Europe
Chennai: Hyundai Motor India Ltd has increased its export target for this year to 30,000 cars from the earlier planned 23,000 cars though the export demand for its cars is 43,000 cars for the year.

Mr J.I. Kim, managing director, and Mr B.V.R. Subbu, president, Hyundai Motor India said that the company plans to increase its exports to 65,000 cars in 2004, going up to 80,000 cars in 2006 and will ultimately, export one-third of its total production.

Of the composition of the exports nearly 80 per cent of will be Santros; the rest Accents. More than 50 per cent of the exports would be to Europe.
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Caterpillar unveils new backhoe loader
Chennai: Caterpillar India Pvt Ltd has introduced the 424 Series 1 backhoe loader, the first such product to be launched by Caterpillar under its own brand, Cat since the company acquired Hindustan Motor's earth moving equipments division in 2001.

According to company officials the 424 Series 1, will be a major contributor to driving Caterpillar's turnover to Rs 500 crore during the current year, nearly double that of its earlier performance. The company’s manufacturing facility is located at Tiruvallur, an industrial suburb, which is emerging a major engineering design centre for all of Caterpillar's facilities.

Caterpillar India is a 100 per cent subsidiary of Caterpillar Inc of the US. Its manufacturing facility located near Chennai includes over 183 acres of testing area and 51,000 square metre of built up area.
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