India likely candidate for Intel's chip plant
New Delhi: Intel, which is the world’s largest computer chip manufacturer, said it was evaluating India as a possible location for manufacturing chips.

The company chairman Craig Barrett said India was one of the several countries that Intel was currently evaluating from a manufacturing perspective.

The California-based Intel has a large development centre in Bangalore. The unit designs and develops software to power chips that drive computers and high-end networks for Internet-based applications.

Intel, and global firms such as Motorola Inc, have heavily outsourced high-end functions like chip design to India to benefit from the country's highly educated but low-cost software pool.

Intel's venture capital investment arm also has stakes in several Indian software firms such as Subex Systems Ltd.
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ONGC receives Asia's best Oil and Gas company award
New Delhi: PSU gas exploration major, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) has received an award for the best oil and gas company in Asia at the Seventh Annual Global Finance Award ceremony held in New York.

The survey to find out the best oil and gas company was conducted by the US-based Global Finance, which used several criteria to choose the winner including revenue and profit growth, market capitalisation and share price growth, corporate responsibility and product innovation among others.

The survey chose Exxon-Mobil as the best oil and gas company in the world.
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Reliance plans to acquire oil and gas fields in the Middle East
New Delhi: Reliance industries, India's largest private sector oil firm, is looking at acquiring oil and gas fields in the middle East and West Africa.

Reliance industries chairman Mukesh Ambani told reporters in New Delhi that there is an opportunity for India in emerging oil and gas fields in the Middle East and West Africa. He added that the company would make announcements in due course.

The Mumbai-based giant has unveiled an ambitious plan to grow aggressively overseas in the coming years by acquiring small to medium-sized oil exploration and production companies and taking part in oil and gas exploration and production projects. It is focusing on the Middle East and Africa.
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SKF opens application development centre in Bangalore
Bangalore: The Rs750 crore Industrial and automotive bearings firm SKF India has opened an application development centre here.

The centre employing eight professionals, will initially focus on two wheelers and will cater to markets in Asia as the continent accounts for over 83 per cent (20 million) of the two wheelers produced in the world.

The application development centre will support SKF two wheeler customers worldwide, besides carrying out complex simulation exercises for customer needs.

According to the company India is one of its priority markets besides China and Latin America.

The company has drawn a roadmap for the Indian operations in exports, domestic markets and in its focus segments of bearings and bearing units, seals, mechatronics, services and consulting and lubrications.

SKF India is also betting on increasing exports of bearings to US and Europe.

SKF India grew by over 25 per cent in the first nine months of the calendar year 2004-05.
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SABMiller may aquire smaller regional brewers
Bangalore: South African brewer SABMiller said it is looking at acquiring independent regional brewers in India as part of its growth strategy but will not make an outright bid for United Breweries (UB) Ltd.

SABMiller controls Shaw Wallace Breweries, the second largest domestic brewer with roughly 35 per cent market share following a $133-million transaction to buy 50 per cent stake in May 2003.

The company said it is in talks with two of the brewers and will take a decision on the acquisition if it comes at a right price and depending on synergies the brewers offer in terms of footprint and strategic fit to the brand portfolio.

The UB stock has been on an upwards spin climbing to 52-week high of Rs294 on Thursday following speculation that its chairman has entered into an understanding to sell a strategic stake to a leading global brewer, either SABMiller or the Belgium-based Interbrew.
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E.I.D. Parry gets into branded sugar
Chennai: The south based E I.D. Parry has launched Parry's Pure Refined Sugar that is sugar in a branded form. The company said it was looking at branding and value addition of sugar, which has till now been looked at as a commodity.

The company is looking at a wide range of value-added products in sugar such as refined sugar, breakfast sugar, icing sugar, castor sugar, and sugar cubes.

The company will get into many of these types. It is in technical collaboration with a clutch of market leaders internationally, and can source the technology from them.

The company says Parry's Refined Sugar is 99.9 per cent pure, free flowing and free of impurities and sediments. It will be available in pouch packs of Rs23.50 a kg and in PET bottles at Rs29.

It will be available in cubes and stick packs also. The launch in Chennai will be followed up with its entry into major towns in the South.
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DaimlerChrysler on growth path in few years
Pune: Daimler Chrysler India will celebrate its tenth year in India next week and what is better it will record profitability for the fifth consecutive year following a turnaround in 2000.

According to Michael Huber, CEO, Daimler Chrysler, not many believed that the company could survive to do business in a market known to be highly cost-conscious and conservative in its spending habits. Henry Weingarten, chairman of the company said this would continue to remain a challenge for the company.

Weingarten said Daimler was still a fledgling company in India but is profitable, stable and healthy and the next few years would see the company on a growth path."

DaimlerChrysler India will close 2004 with sales of an estimated 1,800 units and a profit of Rs45 crore on a turnover of over Rs500 crore.

Daimler Chryslers’ Indian operation is developing into a significant sourcing base for components for the car manufacturer's global operations, with the company now having 25 joint ventures for manufacture and export of auto components to various DaimlerChrysler plants in Germany.

Component exports out of the company have risen significantly from six million euros 1998 to 80 million euros this year and is expected to touch 100 million euros in 2006.
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Biocon to acquire stake in US firm
New Delhi: Biotech firm Biocon has tied up with US firm Vaccinex Inc to discover and develop therapeutic antibody products for cancer, inflammation and autoimmune diseases.

As part of the collaboration, Biocon will make an equity investment in Vaccinex and both the companies would jointly work to identify at least four therapeutic antibody products, Biocon told the BSE today.

The partnership would provide biotechnology solutions worldwide. The collaboration combines Vaccinex's capabilities to discover antibodies using its technology and expertise in clinical research and manufacturing.
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Google launches tool for scholarly research
California: Google Inc launched a new service. http://scholar.google.com, draws upon newly developed algorithms to list the academic research that appears to be most relevant to a search request.

Google is not planning to levy any charges for the service nor use the feature to deliver text-based ads - the primary source of its profits.

The company says it has benefited a lot from scholarly research, so this is one way we are giving back to the scholarly community.

The scholarly search effort continues Google's effort to probe into content available online and offline. Last month, Google expanded a programme that invites publishers to scan books into the search engine's index, enabling people to peek at the contents online before deciding whether to buy a copy.
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Maran forecasts huge investments in telecom
New Delhi: Telecom Minister Dayanidhi Maran said he expects investments of the order of nearly 1,600 billion rupees ($35.57 billion) from telecom firms to invest on expanding networks in the next two to three years.

He said such a large investment needed to be supplemented through foreign direct investment.
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TCS awarded US$3 million contract
Mumbai: In a notice to the BSE, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), a leading global IT services organization, said it has been awarded a US$3 million contract by the Philippine Dealing System Holdings Corp. (PDS) through its subsidiary the Philippine Depository & Trust Corp. (PDTC), to implement a Depository, Registry, Clearing & Settlement System for the equities and fixed income securities market in the Philippines.

Under the terms of the contract, TCS will implement its eClearSettleTM software - a comprehensive solution for depositories, clearing organizations, transfer agents and central banks. PDS is Philippine's electronic platform for trading, clearing, depository, registry and custody of fixed income securities. Recently, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (Central Bank of Philippines) initiated a series of market reforms of which PDTC, together with the other projects under the PDS Group, will play active roles.

TCS' eClearSettleTM is a comprehensive solution for financial markets encompassing clearing and settlement for equity, debt and derivatives markets as well as depository and registrar services.

Regional director for TCS Asia Pacific Girija Pande said: "This landmark deal in the Philippines is part of our growth plan in the Asia Pacific region. The Philippine Depository & Trust Corp is a national mission-critical infrastructure. With eClearSettleTM we are confident of delivering the efficiencies needed to take the fixed income markets in the Philippines to the next level."
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