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I&B ministry clears Tata-Star's DTH proposal
New Delhi: The Tata-Star TV's Direct to Home (DTH) venture has finally got a letter-of-intent (LoI) to start operations. The newly appointed I&B Secretary, S.K. Arora, said, ''The two companies have complied with the DTH guidelines and the LoI was issued after comments from the concerned ministries.''

The Tata-Star, Rs1,600-crore DTH project has been awaiting the government's approval ever since it was asked to restructure its company to conform to the guidelines which stipulate that management control must rest in Indian hands.

Also to be taken up before the Cabinet will be the new guidelines for downlinking, to make channels uplinking from outside India accountable to the laws of the land. The policy would make it mandatory for channels to register their offices in India.

Since secretaries to government of India usually refrain from saying anything particular on their first day in office, Arora was not forthcoming on deatails.
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Govt. to divest 15 per cent stake in the Shipping Corporation of India
New Delhi: The Government intends to sell 15 per cent of its stake in the Shipping Corporation of India in the next three to six months.

This stake will be sold via a public issue through a book-built route. The government will retain 51 per cent stake in SCI.

On the BSE, SCI was trading with gains of Rs4.65 or 3.1 per cent at Rs153 in midday trades.
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BSNL slashes ISD tariffs - highest rate at Rs.12 per minute
New Delhi: The BSNL has announced a major reduction in the international long distance (ISD) call rates for Australia, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Africa, Gulf and SAARC countries to Rs12 per minute from the existing Rs18 a minute, with the new tariffs comeing into effect from midnight of May 20. BSNL Chairman and Managing Director A K Sinha made the announcement during World Telecom Day celebrations.

The reduced rates will be applicable from landline, cellular and WLL networks of BSNL, he said, adding the highest ISD tariff to any part of the world from BSNL network will be Rs12 per minute.

BSNL has also announced a hefty discount of up to 25 per cent on domestic bandwidth, which may result in reduction in the broadband tariffs. The discount on domestic bandwidth would be applicable in 74 major cities, including all state capitals and union territories.
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NDTV to add another channel
New Delhi: Prannoy Roy promoted NDTV is all set to add another channel to its stable, taking the total number of its offerings to four.

The channel is likely to have a bit of both information and entertainment. NDTV has informed the National Stock Exchange of its intention to start a fourth channel and has sought the I&B ministry's permission to uplink.

NDTV currently operates three channels - namely 24X7, NDTV India and NDTV Profit.
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Daimler Chrysler India first in country to complete dealer certification
Pune: Luxury car manufacturer Daimler Chrysler India Ltd (DCIL) has announced that it has completed the ISO 9001: 2000 certification for its entire dealer network, becoming the first automotive company in the country and the only one in Daimler Chrysler's Asian operations to do so.

Only four other companies in DaimlerChrysler's global operations, all of them in Europe, have achieved this status till date.

DCIL CEO and Managing Director, Hans-Michael Huber has said that all the 15 authorised dealer showrooms and 18 authorised workshops were issued the certification in 15 months.

DCIL has been chosen as the pilot market for implementing the parent company's new international dealer standards, a vision sheet verbalising its expectations from dealerships.

"What it essentially means is that dealers not meeting the minimum expectations will have to go, while those exceeding it by providing extras will be rewarded with incentives," said Huber.

The company has no immediate plans to expand its kitty of products in the market, said Huber. He said that in addition to the models manufactured here, the demand for niche super-premium products is being met through imports.

DCIL has been conferred the quality award for `Best Mercedes Benz production plant outside Germany and within the DC group' four times since the operation was set up in 1994.
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Bajaj Auto to invest Rs.200 crore over next eigteen months
New Delhi: Bajaj Auto Ltd has said that it plans to invest Rs200 crore over the next 18 months towards capacity expansion, research and development and the launch of new products.

According to Rahul Bajaj, Chairman the company will be introducing three new scooter models in both the geared and gearless segments next year. Further, the company would be expanding capacity at its plants by more than 30 per cent to 2.4 million units a year. Bajaj said that he expects the company's motorcycle sales to grow 25-30 per cent in the current year over the 1.45 million motorcycles sold last fiscal.

According to him, Bajaj Auto was also exploring the possibility of manufacturing a four-wheeled, low-cost alternative to a car. The project would take 4-5 years to materialise, he said. The four-wheeler would initially be a goods carrying vehicle, with a passenger version to be introduced afterwards.

The three new scooters that would be introduced in 2006 would have engine capacities between 75 cc and 150 cc.
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AMD design centre to come up in Bangalore
Mumbai: Chip manufacturer AMD India Ltd has said that it is setting up a design centre in Bangalore and would invest about Rs22 crore in the next three years for this purpose.

AMD has also launched its range of 64-bit, dual-core processors in the country on Tuesday. These include the AMD Opteron processors for server and workstations and the AMD Athlon processor for desktop users.

The new dual-core AMD Opteron processors deliver up to 90 per cent performance improvement for application servers over single-core AMD Opteron processor, company officials said. AMD's customers who will be using the new Opteron processors include Sun Microsystems, HP, IBM, Wipro and HCL.

Only AMD can upgrade their server platforms with dual-core processors and continue running legacy 32-bit x86 applications as well as new 64-bit OS solutions.
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Tata Motors capex slated at Rs.1400 crore for the fiscal
Mumbai: Tata Motors Ltd. will spend up to Rs1500 crore ($322-$345 million) on capital expenditure in the current financial year ending March 2006, a top company official has said.

The expenditure is part of Rs6000 crore in spending accounted last year for a five-year period, Praveen Kadle, executive director, finance and company affairs of Tata Motors, told reporters at a news conference.

He said the expenditure this year would be mainly for product development and upgrading facilities.
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Mastek to invest Rs.75 crore in Pune, Mumbai centres
Pune: Software solutions and integration services provider, Mastek, has announced that it is launching a development centre here for 550 people to complement a similar centre that it set up last year. It is also simultaneously working on setting up a new development centre at Mahape in Mumbai, which will have the capacity to seat 1,000 people, Ashank Desai, Chairman and Founder, Mastek Group, said.

The company will invest an estimated Rs75 crore next year in expanding operations at the two centres and has recently acquired over 15 acres of land at Chennai's Mahindra City for a large development centre that it proposes to start there in the next fiscal, Desai said.

Mastek is likely to end the year, in June with revenues of over Rs572-578 crore, he said, adding that with the new, expanded operations, it is expected to beat the industry growth standards in the next few years.
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DataSynapse and TCS in partnership for grid computing solutions
Mumbai: DataSynapse, Inc., the fastest-growing provider of grid-computing solutions for the virtual enterprise, and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) a global leader in IT consulting, services and business process outsourcing, have announced that they have entered into a strategic alliance to offer TCS' international customers and prospects grid-computing software and services.

Under the terms of the agreement, TCS will promote, support and implement DataSynapse's GridServer software, providing customers with a highly scalable IT infrastructure able to solve application processing problems in real time for improved productivity, system optimization and business gain.

Offering end-to-end application development and maintenance services over the entire application lifecycle, TCS consultants will be trained by DataSynapse's professional services team to identify, grid-enable and transition into production third-party applications. In turn, DataSynapse will be called upon to offer its services to existing TCS customers who would benefit from implementing a virtual, scalable application infrastructure.

TCS officials said that they have identified grid-computing as an emerging technology that will become increasingly important for commercial business applications, and DataSynapse as a leading technology provider in this space. TCS' Technology Innovation Lab will integrate DataSynapse's GridServer into some of the frameworks that TCS uses for customer projects.

By distributing application workload across a grid of shared system and data resources, DataSynapse's GridServer Virtual Enterprise Edition forms a service execution platform that drives new levels of business performance.
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Satyam bags $1 mn Jordan deal
New Delhi: Satyam Computer Services Ltd has secured a $1 million deal from Umniah Mobile Company (UMC), a GSM operator based in Jordan.

Satyam has informed the Bombay Stock Exchange that it will implement a CRM solution with a POS system for UMC's customer contact centre. According to the company these systems will be integrated with Oracle Financials, Procurement & Inventory modules in the back office. They will further be integrated with UMC's mediation, provisioning, billing systems and Intelligent Network, the company said.
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ONGC Videsh bids for Ecuador oilfields
New Delhi: ONGC Videsh Ltd (OVL), the overseas arm of Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC), has bid $1.4 billion for a stake in a cluster of oilfields in Ecuador. OVL has made the bid to acquire the stake held by Canadian company EnCana.

OVL made the revised bid for EnCana's stake in the Amazon blocks 14, 17 and Tarapoa, which have a combined output of 66,891 barrels of oil per day. The Indian public sector firm is pitted against Chinese majors for buying out the Canadian firm's interest in Ecuador.

OVL has operations in 12 countries, including Vietnam, Russia, Sudan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Myanmar, Australia, Ivory Coast, Egypt, Syria and Qatar.
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Corporate Results: Tata Motors, Jet Airways, Tata AIG Life
Tata Motors Q4 net up 33 per cent at Rs.388 crore
Mumbai: Tata Motors has posted a net profit of Rs388.2 crore for the quarter ended March 31, '05, up 32.7 per cent from Rs292.5 crore in the corresponding quarter of the previous year. Total income grew to Rs5,368.5 crore during the reporting quarter, against Rs4,152.4 crore in Q4 of FY04.

The company posted a 51.4 per cent growth in consolidated net profit at Rs1,385.3 crore for the year ended March 31, '05, against Rs915.3 crore for the year ended March 31, '04.

The board has recommended a dividend of Rs12.5 per share (including Rs 2.5 as a special dividend) of Rs10 each for FY05, Tata Motors informed the BSE on Tuesday.

Total income during the reporting fiscal grew to Rs19,666.8 crore against Rs13,980.9 crore in FY04, it said. On a standalone basis, the company posted a net profit of Rs1,236.9 crore for the year ended March 31, '05, against Rs810.3 crore for the previous fiscal, it said. Total income increased to Rs17,585.2 crore during the reporting year, against Rs13,282.1 crore in FY04.

Jet Airways FY05 net spurts 140 per cent
Mumbai: Jet Airways India Ltd has posted a 140.32 per cent growth in net profit for the fiscal ended March 31, 2005 at Rs391.99 crore compared to Rs163.11 crore for the previous fiscal.

The board has recommended a dividend of 30 per cent (Rs3 per equity share of Rs10 each) on the equity share capital of the company for the financial year ended March 31, 2005, Jet Airways informed the Bombay Stock Exchange today.

Total income during the reporting fiscal increased to Rs4,420.17 crore from Rs3,565.74 crore in FY04. In the fourth quarter ended March 31, the company posted a net profit of Rs133 crore compared to Rs82.87 crore in the corresponding quarter in the previous fiscal.

Total income during the reporting quarter increased to Rs1,222.61 crore from Rs961.13 crore in Q404, the carrier said.

Tata AIG Life declares 3.5 per cent bonus
New Delhi: Tata AIG Life Insurance Company Ltd., on Monday announced a reversionary bonus of 3.5 per cent of the sum assured for the financial year ended 2004-05. This bonus is applicable for all eligible participating plans.

The reversionary bonus announced by Tata AIG Life is declared on the "Sum Assured or Face Value" of the policy, and not on the premium paid. Further, the bonus announced is calculated on a compounded basis. Consequently, the bonus is payable not only on the Sum Assured but also on the bonuses that have already accrued on the policy. This ensures the policyholders get higher value.

Tata AIG Life continues to offer a wide range of customized, innovative individual life insurance products like ShubhLife, Assure Security & Growth Plan, Assure Golden Years Plan, Assure 21 Years Money Saver Plan, Assure Lifeline Plan and Assure 15 Years Lifeline.

Besides, the company also offers group insurance and pensions products.
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