ONGC to develop block SB-11
Mumbai: ONGC is taking up the development of Block SB-11, north-west of the giant Vasai (Bassein) gas field, according to a company release. Success of recent exploratory well SB-11 led to determination of in-place oil potential of about 30 million barrels.

The development scheme envisages a well platform with drilling of three wells for a peak production of about 3,000 barrels of oil per day from the first quarter of 2007.

The ONGC board has already approved fast track development of SB-11 gas, which calls for an estimated investment of Rs219.77 crore.
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TCS package for clinical trials management
Mumbai: The Tata Consultancy Services has two new offerings in store for the pharma and clinical trials market. The clinical trials management system is a package that provides automated IT support for companies undertaking clinical trials.

The other package is for clinical data management or to handle the data that is generated from a trial.

While a bulk of this activity is from overseas, officials said, the segment contributes about four per cent to TCS's total sales.
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Videocon to raise Rs2,000 crore towards oil exploration
Mumbai: The board of Videocon Industries Ltd has decided to raise funds of up to Rs2,000 crore to part-finance the company's interest in oil exploration and production, wherein investment of Rs4,000 crore is planned over the next one year. This was stated by V.N. Dhoot, Chairman, Videocon Group.

The funds could be raised through issue of GDRs, equity shares or private placement, including a combination of these avenues. The Videocon consortium working on the Rawa oil field was already the largest oil producer in the private sector.

The said investment of Rs4,000 crore would be for oil exploration and production in both domestic and international markets. "We would be signing MoUs with some companies from the Middle East and former USSR," Dhoot said.

In India, the company intends to bid for all blocks tendered under the new exploration and licensing policy.
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Air Sahara to launch services for Singapore and Kuala Lumpur
New Delhi: Initiating a major fare war in the international sector, private carrier Air Sahara has announced the launch of its flights to Kuala Lumpur and Singapore from May.

The introductory round-trip fare of only Rs10,000 is even lower than domestic fares on major trunk routes.

"While the first Singapore-Delhi flight would start on May 11, the Chennai-Kuala Lumpur service would be launched on May 14. Both return services would be daylight flights," Air Sahara CEO Rono J Dutta said here. The flights to Singapore and the Malaysian capital would be operated by Boeing 737-800s and Boeing 737-700s respectively.

The lowest available market fares on both these destinations is Rs16,000.

Sahara would be getting six new aircraft between April and June, which will take its total fleet strength to 19 Boeings and seven Canadian Regional Jets. Air Sahara officials said that the airline was looking at launching two flights to London Heathrow before this July.

The carrier has also applied for services to Hong Kong and Bangkok, for which they are awaiting permission.
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BSNL strike: Cellular operators seek TRAI intervention
New Delhi: The ongoing strike by the employees of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) has affected cellular services across the country. The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) has shot off an SOS to the telecom regulator, seeking its intervention in restoring interconnection with the State-owned company.

In a letter written to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), cellular operators said: "We wish to inform the authority in this regard that this indefinite work-to-rule strike called by the BSNL has started disrupting the cellular mobile services, as calls at various point of interconnection (POI) have started failing. While in some cases BSNL has restored the failures after a couple of hours, most of the other POI failures still remain unrestored."

Operators including BPL, Hutch, Bharti, Aircel and Idea have listed out specific instances of disrupted POIs in the letter.

Point of interconnection is the physical place where the mobile network gets connected to BSNL's telecom network. If POI is disrupted, then cellular subscribers would not be able to call BSNL's fixed-line users in that region. The operators said the network failure was adversely impacting the quality of service.

BSNL employees have been on a work-to-rule strike for the past few weeks over issues relating to pay scale and promotion. The employee unions are planning a major demonstration at BSNL's headquarters in New Delhi on Saturday.
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Su-Raj picks up 49 per cent stake in Forever Precious
Bangalore: Su-Raj Diamonds and Jewellery Ltd, a leading manufacturer and exporter of Indian gem and jewellery, has announced that it has picked up 49 per cent stake in Forever Precious Jewellery & Diamonds Ltd to focus on the domestic market.

The company did not disclose the price. Su-Raj officials said that Forever, which has an equity base of Rs7 crore, would be setting up a manufacturing unit in Ahmedabad at a cost of Rs7 crore to Rs8 crore.

Forever has emerged as a strong player in the B2B segment with its suite of jewellery being purchased by leading retailers and had a turnover of Rs45 crore last year. It has so far been sourcing the products from Su-Raj.

Su-Raj, which has nine manufacturing facilities in the country, would be expanding its facilities in Goa with an additional Rs25 crore investment to meet the growing export demand. Forever officials said that the tie-up with Su-Raj would help the company emerge as a one stop shop for the B2B segment for their requirements for diamond, gold, gem, platinum and silver jewellery.
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Biological E in alliance with Intercell for encephalitis vaccine
Hyderabad: Biological E. Ltd (BE), the Hyderabad-based leading vaccines manufacturer, has entered into a strategic alliance with the US-based pharmaceutical major Intercell AG for the development, manufacture and sale of the latter's Japanese Encephalitis vaccine in Asia. Under the terms of the agreement, Biological E. would manufacture the product in India for the Asian endemic market.

The Chief Operating Officer of Intercell AG, Gerd Zettlmeissl, said, "This agreement with a leading Asian vaccine manufacturer leverages the commercialisation of our Japanese Encephalitis vaccine and will be another step in our efforts to continue to develop and commercialise our broad portfolio of vaccine candidates and technologies."
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Ford India's volumes grow 30 per cent
Bangalore: Ford India's revenues are expected to cross the Rs1,000-crore mark this year.

Terming 2004-05, as Ford's 'best year yet' in India, officials said the volumes have grown 30 per cent over the previous year.

Ford is also expected to launch a new vehicle this year, probably in the mid-size segment. For 2004, Ford sold a total of 24,536 units of Ikon, about 32 per cent more than last year while it sold 2,240 Endeavours during the same period. Fusion sold about 330 units in December, its first month of sales and in the first two months of 2005, it has sold about 650 units.

The current capacity of the Ford plant near Chennai is about 50,000 units per year.
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MBT unveils conversion software
Pune: Mahindra British Telecom (MBT) has launched new language conversion software, which facilitates fully automated conversion of outdated computer programmes to modern programming languages.

The company has also applied for a patent for this software in the US and the application is currently pending. Currently, there was no such framework available. There were software available for conversions from language to language, he added.

It is only known as a framework technology and a name for it is yet to be coined, he said. This framework could convert legacy systems that are written even in Fortran to the latest language.
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