President of India unveils bio-suite
Hyderabad: The President, Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, unveiled the `Bio-Suite', a comprehensive bioinformatics product developed by a consortium headed by Tata Consultancy Services under the New Millennium Indian Technology Leadership Initiative of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). Complimenting the Indian technology firms, Dr Kalam said IT, bio-sciences and nano-technologies would play a significant role in our lives. With the emergence of nano-technologies, Indian experts can play a big role in health care and medicine. The Chief Executive Officer of TCS, Ramadorai, said Bio-Suite is a software package that caters to all aspects of computational biology from genomics to drug design and incorporates the latest publicly known algorithm. The suite was developed by the TCS team using the best software engineering practices.

Eighteen academic partners who were identified and directly funded by the CSIR provided the domain knowledge for the Bio-Suite. Bio-Suite is ideally suited for small and medium biotechnology companies, academic institutions and pharmaceutical companies. The Vice-President of TCS, Dr. M.Vidyasagar, said TCS plans to market Bio-Suite worldwide, and foray into the broad area of computational biology and post-genomic drug discovery. The Director-General of CSIR, Dr R.A. Mashelkar, said while the TCS owns the commercial rights to Bio-Suite, it would pay a 5 per cent royalty to CSIR on all sales. The other partners have received research grants in return for their participation.
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An RFID enabled store from Wipro Technolgies
Bangalore: Wipro Technologies, the global IT services division of Wipro, announced the launch of its RFID-enabled (radio frequency identification) concept store at its campus here. The store demonstrates automation of retail transactions through the implementation of RFID technologies. The store showcases RFID technology and demonstrates how item-level RFID-tagging enables automatic check-out, intelligent shrinkage avoidance, smart stock maintenance and tracing and tracking of apparel by the store manager.
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Tanishq launches '19k=22k' exchange offer
New Delhi: Tanishq has announced a new '19k = 22k' offer, under which customers can bring their jewellery and exchange it for 22k jewellery even if it is of a lower karatage. The offer is being made to commemorate the Tata Group's 'Century of Trust' celebrations Tanishq will value its jewellery as 22k pure jewellery as long as it is 19 karats or more. Valid at all 67 Tanishq boutiques across India, the 19k=22k offer will be available on all jewellery exchanged between July 17 and August 8 this year.
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Dell products cheaper by six per cent
Bangalore: Dell PCs and notebooks will now be cheaper by six per cent with the company passing on the benefit of the recent exemption of excise duties on PCs to the consumers. These savings are available to Dell's Indian customers because of Dell's build-to-order, direct model. Because the company Dell only builds a system once it is ordered and sells directly to customers with no middleman, there is no inventory or backlog to sell through before offering the savings delivered by the new tax codes, the release said. Dell imports all its products from Penang, Malaysia. Dell will be offering a six per cent reduction in list price on its entire range of desktop systems, notebooks and workstations with immediate effect.
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Progeon posts higher revenues
Bangalore: Progeon, the BPO subsidiary of Infosys Technologies, clocked revenues of $7.2 million for the quarter ended June 30, 2004, a growth of 161 per cent over corresponding previous year. However, Progeon posted an operating loss of $9,00,000 during the quarter. This was mainly due to the one-time charges and foreign exchange mark to market. Progeon had also faced a loss of $0.7 million during the last quarter of the previous fiscal. Progeon added two new clients during the quarter taking its overall client base to 16. Of the 16 clients, twelve are also customers of Infosys.
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New orders worth 204 crore for Nagarjuna Construction
Hyderabad: Nagarjuna Construction Company Ltd (NCCL) has secured new orders aggregating Rs 240 crore, including a contract of Rs 110 crore from the Department of Drinking Water & Sanitation, Jharkand Government for the construction of drinking water project at Ranchi on a turnkey basis. In the current year, the company has already secured Rs 504 crore worth of orders.
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Pfizer and Pharmacia boards approve amalgamation
Mumbai: The boards of Pfizer Ltd and Pharmacia Healthcare Ltd (PHL) have approved the scheme of amalgamation of the two companies and fixed an exchange ratio of five shares of PHL to one Pfizer share. The scheme of amalgamation is, however, subject to approval from shareholders and the Bombay High Court, the company said. The parent company, Pfizer Inc, holds 75 per cent equity in Pharmacia Healthcare and 40 per cent in Pfizer Ltd. The operational integration of PHL with Pfizer Ltd was done in 2003.
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Mastek Q4 net up
Mumbai: Mastek Ltd has reported a marginal increase in net profit at Rs 6.87 crore for the fourth quarter ended June 30, 2004, over the net profit of Rs. 6.73 crore reported during the corresponding quarter of the previous year. Total income rose to Rs 37.96 crore up from Rs 31.54 crore.

But better results could not annul the poor performance during the first two quarters, so that for the year ended June 30, Mastek has reported a 66.5 per cent drop in net profit to Rs 12. 74 crore from Rs 38.08 crore. Total income also fell to Rs 123.8 crore from Rs 135.8 crore. The Mastek group (including wholly owned subsidiaries overseas and income from its joint ventures) has also reported a fall in net profit by 41.2 per cent to Rs 29.57 crore for the year, from Rs 50.31 crore the previous year. The company currently has contracts worth Rs 272 crore in its books.
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iGATE posts small Q1 net
Bangalore: iGATE Global Solutions Ltd, has posted, on consolidated basis, a net profit of Rs 11 lakh (after minority interest) for the quarter ended June. As a standalone entity, iGATE has posted a net loss of Rs 3.54 crore for the quarter ended June 30, 2004 compared to a net profit of Rs 6.34 crore during the corresponding previous period.

Total income was down at Rs 93.96 crore (Rs 103.12 crore).
iGATE increased operating profits by 16.4 per cent to Rs 4.4 crore. With a change in its onsite-offshore ratio in favour of offshore, the company saw an 8.1 per cent increase in offshore volumes, a key contributor to the increase in operating profits. The company's onsite-offshore ratio stood at 46:54 compared to 48:52 in the last quarter. iGATE added six new clients, of which four are Fortune 1000 companies. GE, the largest client, accounted for 42 per cent of iGATE's revenue during the quarter under review.
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