Group firms get good returns from Tata Info sale
Mumbai: When Tata group sold its 49.99-per cent stake in Tata Infomedia Ltd to ICICI Venture on Monday, it brought handsome returns to group companies that had held the shares. The companies are: Tata Power, Tata Steel, Tata Motors and Tata Investment Corporation (among those listed) and Tata Consultancy Services and Tata Sons (among the unlisted). Two investment companies, Samrat Holdings and Ewart Investments, which shares in Tata Infomedia will also benefit.

The absolute amount of cash generated by these companies may not be high relative to their respective sizes. But in terms of return on investments it is indeed exceptional. Tata Power, which held 7.29 lakh shares of Tata Infomedia will generate Rs 12.84 crore from the sell-off. Its acquisition cost was just Rs 1.39 crore, which means the company pockets Rs 11.45 crore as returns for its investment in Tata Infomedia.
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Volkswagen identifies plant in Vizag SEZ
Hyderabad: German automotive major Volkswagen AG, which has been looking for a place to locate a greenfield automobile plant in India, has identified the special economic zone (SEZ) coming up near Visakhapatnam city in Andhra Pradesh.

The Volkswagen management is reportedly agreed to the state's steadfast keenness to support and facilitate their entry to the Indian shores and to possibly make this an Asian hub. The company has manufacturing base in China but sees India as having a greater potential for growth.
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Indian Rayon goes for capacity expansion
Mumbai: Indian Rayon Industries Ltd (IRIL), in its effort to drive profitability growth in its rayon division, plans for capacity expansion of its viscose filament yarn and is going down the value chain in its chlorine business. Having attained a capacity utilisation of 107 per cent in its viscose filament yarn (VFY) capacity, the company has decided to expand it by another 1,000 tonnes to 17,000 tonnes, according to K K Maheshwari, group executive president (chemicals), Aditya Birla group.

This expansion is being done at a cost of Rs 28 crore, which will be met through internal accruals. Indian Rayon is expanding capacity of its continuous spun yarn facility. According to Maheshwari, the company's efforts to launch Rayone as a brand is to increase consciousness and awareness about the product within the company as well as in the market. "We are taking steps continuously to move up the value chain. We introduced twisted yarn as well as micro-filament yarn with 40 filaments. Now we may go for a micro filament yarn with 107 filaments."
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Survey establishes NTPC as best PSU employer
New Delhi: NTPC has been rated as best employer among public sector undertakings for 2002-03 in a Best Employer survey carried out by Business Today and Hewitt Associates. Overall, in the public as well as private sector domain, NTPC ranks third.

The award was presented by Maharashtra Governor Mohammed Fazal to NTPC chairman and managing director C P Jain and K K Sinha, director (human resources), NTPC. The survey says NTPC, with a staff strength of over 23,500, provides 50 hours of average training in a year to its employees. It has a minimal rate of attrition of 1.12 per cent.
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Sahara to invest Rs 200 crore for digital newsroom
New Delhi: Sahara Samay Rashtriya, the 24-hour news channel of the Sahara India group, has invested over Rs 200 crore to set up Asia's biggest digital newsroom in India. The company has tied up with five international technology vendors including Leitch Inc, Associated Press ENPS, Omnibus Systems of United Kingdom, IBM and Shaf Broadcast for its newsroom which is located at Noida. "The Sahara group, which already has extensive media interests in India, believes the investment in newsroom technology will pay dividends in the highly competitive news and current affairs business in India," according to R S Chauhan, vice-president (engineering and operations), Sahara TV.

He added that the tie-ups with the best technology providers globally would mean: "We take stories to air faster." The company is planning to take seven news channels to air this year. While Sahara Samay Rashtriya and Sahara Samay (Uttar Pradesh and Uttaranchal) are already operational, Sahara Samay (Madhya Pradesh including Chhatisgarh) and Sahara Samay (Mumbai) are likely to operational within this month, Chauhan said.
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Bharti seeks acquisitions, plans to list abroad
New Delhi: The Bharti group is ready for new acquisitions in the telecom sector and plans to raise resources by listing in the international market. "We are ready to move once the government allows intra-circle consolidation of licenses," Sunil Mittal, chairman of the Bharti group, said. Currently, buying a company within the same circle is not allowed. Mittal said the group has been pushing for an increase in the 49 per cent FDI limit in the telecom sector.

"We want the FDI limit to be raised only because we plan to list abroad. However, a lot of people have assumed that we are selling out to Singapore Telecom. This is simply not true," Mittal clarified. Bharti expects to virtually double its subscriber base from 3 million to 6 million by the end of the current financial year. It also plans to treble the usage of minutes per month from 1 billion to 3 billion during the same period, and has projected a 50 per cent growth in revenue.
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VSNL to shift focus to new businesses
Mumbai: VSNL, a Tata group telecom company, has decided to shift its focus from ILD services to new businesses. This follows VSNL's assessment that with BSNL and MTNL no longer routing their ILD traffic through VSNL's pipelines, the residual business will not be able to support current growth; hence the search for new businesses. The company had appointed the Boston Consulting group as advisers for diversification, VSNL Chairman Ratan Tata said at the company's annual general meeting here. But he refused to spell out the new business VSNL was looking at.

"The exclusivity ended in terms of our main business, that is, ILD. With diminishing tariffs, the ratio of revenue sharing is moving more towards BSNL and MTNL, and shareholders should now bear with us. We have to build another business as the ILD business will be gone by next year," Tata said. He added that the company's main source of revenue from the ILD will no longer come from BSNL/MTNL "as they will become our competitors in this business".
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