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Ratan
Tata: Tata's may enter nuclear power, if allowed
Mumbai: At the Tata Power Company's AGM, Ratan Tata,
Chairman of the Tata group, said that in the event that
Indo-US cooperation takes a form where the possibility
of nuclear power production by the private sector becomes
a reality in India, then " …this company would
like to be involved in that also."
Ratan Tata was part of the CEO team that accompanied the
Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh's US visit this July.
The joint declaration by the two leaders said: "The
President told the Prime Minister that he will work to
achieve full civil nuclear energy cooperation with India
as it realises its goals of promoting nuclear power and
achieving energy security... "
"The President would also seek agreement from Congress
to adjust US laws and policies, and the United States
will work with friends and allies to adjust international
regimes to enable full civil nuclear energy cooperation
and trade with India, including but not limited to expeditious
consideration of fuel supplies for safeguarded nuclear
reactors at Tarapur," said the declaration.
The declaration also mentioned that the countries would
"Revitalise the US-India Economic Dialogue and launch
a CEO Forum to harness private sector energy and ideas
to deepen the bilateral economic relationship."
For the Tata group a step in this area would mean a re-association
of sorts for it with matters nuclear. J.R.D. Tata was
a member of the Atomic Energy Commission from the time
of its inception in 1948 till 1977, when the Janata Party
Government removed him from the commission.
Another well-known advocate of nuclear energy, Homi Sethna,
has also been associated with Tata Power as its erstwhile
Chairman.
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Tata
Sons to ramp up outsourcing business
New
Delhi:
Tata Sons, the holding arm of India's largest private
sector group, has started expanding the operations of
their business process outsourcing (BPO) company after
a quiet entry into the segment last year.
The
group's 100 percent outsourcing subsidiary, E2E SerWiz
Solutions, is based in Pune, with contact centres in Hyderabad,
Mohali, Kolkata and Coimbatore. The company has a staff
of 4,000 employees at present.
According
to Tata officials, the company now wants to expand operations
and emerge as one of India's top three BPO players in
the next two years with a target of employing around 10,000
associates.
The
company earned revenues of US$116 million in the first
year of operations and has earmarked US$55 million for
expansion.
E2E
SerWiz Solutions provides customer contact services in
a host of languages including English, Hindi, Telugu,
Marathi, Kannada, Tamil, Gujarati, Malayalam and Punjabi
and handles over nine million transactions per month.
Global companies like Microsoft Nortel, Cisco, Nice, Blue
Pumpkin and Verint are some of its partners.
The
company recently hired Nagabhushana Rao, a former employee
of Siemens and Standard Charted non-banking finance companies,
as chief executive officer of E2E SerWis to scale up the
outsourcing business.
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Tata
Power plans huge outlay
Mumbai: The Tata Power Company intends to invest Rs18,500
crore in the next five years in new projects including
some abroad. It is also planning a 500 MW plant in South
Africa at an investment of Rs2,000 crore.
"South Africa, which was earlier surplus in power,
is facing some power shortage and there is a move to seek
private sector power in good terms,'' TPC Chairman Ratan
Tata told the annual general meeting here on Thursday.
The company was looking to set up a 500 MW plant in that
country at a cost of Rs2,000 crore and it would be with
an international joint venture partner, Managing Director
Adi Engineer said. He said the company would invest Rs18,500
crore in various projects including the proposed 1,000
MW plant in Raigad district in Maharashtra.
The company was considering another site at coastal Raigad
so as to save fuel transport costs he said, adding that
a plant in Raigad would come up in the next three-and-a-half
years.
The company would invest $244 million in equity in the
proposed power plant in Bangaladesh.
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BK
Birla wills stake in Pilani Investments to Kumar Mangalam
Birla
Mumbai: Basant Kumar Birla will bequeath his stakes
in Pilani Investments, Century Textiles and Century Enka
to his grandson and the Aditya Birla group Chairman Kumar
Mangalam Birla.
In addition to these three companies, Kumar Mangalam Birla
will get nearly 15 charitable trusts that run 16 schools
and educational institutes across the country and the
Birla Academy of Fine Arts in Kolkata. The trusts also
look after BK Birla's interest in a host of unlisted companies.
He has also got a part of his grandfather's rich collection
of paintings. He has a collection of 5000 artworks including
caricatures, Kalighat pots, and the paintings of Rabindranath
Tagore and Abanindranath Tagore.
BK Birla has also bequeathed a slice of his wealth to
Kumar Mangalam Birla's children - Ananyashree (10 years),
Aryaman Vikram (6 years) and Advaitesha (one-and-half
years).
BK
Birla said his daughters, Manjushree Khaitan and Jayshree
Mohta, would get Kesoram Industries and Jay Shree Tea
and Industries, respectively.
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Boeing:
Indian aviation market to absorb 490 planes in 20 years
New Delhi: According to Boeing Co estimates, firms
in India's civil aviation market may purchase up to 490
aircraft over the next two decades as falling ticket prices
and growing passenger traffic fuel demand, a top company
official has said in an interview with Reuters.
Dinesh Keskar, vice-president for sales, said that passenger
traffic was likely to grow more than 20 per cent over
the next three to four years.
"The demand which we are observing in India is one
of the highest growth rates in the world today,"
Keskar said. "We see a demand for about 490 aircraft
for about $36 billion."
Authorities say domestic and international traffic will
grow 20 per cent a year as the government and private
sector invest $20 billion over the next five years, while
more than doubling the number of civilian passenger planes
to 400.
India's average annual air travel is 0.1 trip per person,
a fraction of the global average of 2.0, industry figures
show.
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Vedanta
Resources to take up US$700mn expansion plans
Mumbai: Vedanta Resources, the country's biggest copper
and zinc refiner, has said that it will invest $700 million
on two expansion projects in order to meet rising global
and Indian demand for the metals.
The company will invest $400 million to extend underground
mining at its Konkola unit in Zambia, which will more
than double copper production there by 2009, it said in
a press release on Thursday.
Vedanta will spend another $300 million adding a zinc
smelter at its Chanderiya plant in India.
Vedanta said that a second 170,000 tpa smelter will be
built at Chanderiya, identical to the one recently commissioned
there. Construction will commence in early 2006 and the
expansion, will also include investments in a further
77 MW of capacity at the existing thermal power plant.
The company said that the internal resources of Hindustan
Zinc Limited (HZL) are sufficient to finance the project.
The expansion will further improve Vedanta's globally
competitive cost position and increase total capacity
to around 570,000 tpa.
Separately, the board has approved the Konkola Deep Mining
Project (KDMP), which will substantially increase output
from the Konkola Copper Mines (KCM) and extend existing
mine life. This project realises the potential of one
of the world's most important copper deposits, with 215
million tonne of resources at 3.8% copper, and will sustain
the viability of the Zambian copper industry.
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Texas
Instruments to launch the world's first single-chip mobile
phone in India
New Delhi: US-based Texas Instruments will launch
the world's first single-chip mobile phone in India on
Monday. The single-chip phone will drastically bring down
the cost and increase the battery life of a mobile handset.
This comes after Texas Instruments had announced last
year its success in putting on the same slab of silicon,
two disparate set of circuits, the digital audio portion
that handles the voice capability and the radio frequency
or RF circuits that send the signal, to and fro, as radio
waves.
Thomas J. Engibous, Chairman, Texas Instruments Inc, will
launch the phone in a function at New Delhi organised
by the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI).
Texas Instruments has become part of the COAI as an associate.
In India, Texas Instruments has pioneered semiconductor
design over the last 20 years. It was among the first
companies to start a development centre in India. The
Texas Instruments India centre has been instrumental in
bringing the single-chip mobile phone solution to the
market.
"This key worldwide announcement to be made from
India is an indicator of the possibilities ahead for all
of us. This becomes even more relevant with the recent
announcements by many global telecom players setting up
their manufacturing units in India," said a COAI
release.
Earlier, Germany-based chip manufacturer Infineon had
also announced its single-chip mobile platform. The ULC
chip platform aims to serve as a `reference platform'
for new product designs, an indication that the production
of sub-$20 mobile phones may begin in the first half of
2006. The new chip platform has condensed the current
150- 200 electric components needed in mobile phones today
to just below 100 electric components.
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TVS
Motor to acquire frames division of Bharat Tech.
Kolkata: TVS Motor Company Ltd has decided to buy
out the frames division of Bharat Technologies Auto Components
Ltd, which is located at Hosur, Karnataka for Rs33 crore.
Bharat Technologies is a 100 per cent supplier of all
two-wheeler frames used by TVS Motor.
The acquisition would however be made by TVS's wholly
owned subsidiary, Sundaram Auto Components Ltd. The acquisition
has been identified as a major expansion programme of
the company.
According to the directors' report of Sundaram Auto Components,
the acquisition would be funded through loans from banks
and TVS Motor like its other expansion programmes.
The company has also decided to establish a new unit for
the production of plastic components at Manapakkam in
Chennai. The cost of this expansion has been pegged at
Rs2.5 crore and it is aimed at meeting the demand of customers
located in and around the city.
The report said that the new plant at Chennai would help
the company reduce cost of logistics.
The two-wheeler industry is expected to register 12 per
cent growth this fiscal.
For the year ended March 2005, Sundaram Auto Component
had recorded gross sales of Rs102.03 crore against Rs76.06
crore the previous fiscal, marking a growth of 34 per
cent.
This is the first time that the company has managed to
cross the Rs100-crore turnover mark. The company had also
registered an export turnover of Rs6.57 crore in the last
fiscal.
Similarly, profit after tax increased to Rs4.45 crore
from Rs3.60 crore during the period. The company had proposed
a dividend of 36 per cent, which would lead to a total
payout of Rs97.20 lakh.
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TCS
enters into first of its kind drug discovery deal
Hyderabad: In a biotechnology start-up, claimed to
be the first of its kind for an IT company, Tata Consultancy
Services (TCS) has entered into an agreement with an Italian
biotech firm Congenia, to provide advanced fragment-based
lead optimisation solutions for drug discovery.
The
research division of TCS' life sciences department will
work on "P66", identified by Congenia as a key
protein involved in several age-related diseases, and
will develop optimised drug leads based on this.
TCS
will use modules of its product "Bio-Suite"
to work on the target protein.
It
will screen a "virtual fragment library" of
tens of thousands of potential lead molecules to predict
which of these might bind themselves to the target protein
and thereby inhibit its function.
The
work will be executed in the Advanced Technology Centre
of TCS in Hyderabad, where the bulk of research and development
work related to life sciences is done.
M
Vidyasagar, executive vice president and head of TCS'
Advanced Technology Centre, Hyderabad, which houses the
life sciences' research division along with other activities,
told a news conference here to Thursday that this was
a historic occasion for TCS.
"We
are proud to work with the Genextra group, a bio-tech
pioneer in Italy," he said.
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L
&T to supply 2.5-million tonne
blast furnace to Tata steel
Mumbai:
Tata Iron and Steel Company (TISCO) has placed an order
for a new 2.5 million tonne per annum (MTPA) blast furnace
with a group of engineering companies headed by Larsen
& Toubro (L&T).
TISCO
informed the BSE on Thursday "the 2.5 MTPA blast
furnace order given to the consortium of L&T, Paul
Wurth-Italia and Paul Wurth-India is part of the next
phase of the company's expansion plans."
This
is the second major order in this phase of expansion as
it had placed an order for the 2 MTPA sinter plant with
L&T and Outokumpu, the release added.
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TCS
and Oracle begin RFID pilot project
at Heathrow Airport
London: Oracle Corp. and Tata Consultancy Services
Ltd. have begun an RFID pilot with Virgin Atlantic to
RFID tag critical parts used in aircraft maintenance and
repairs at its Heathrow Airport warehouse in the UK.
The
pilot will use the RFID and sensor-based solution to manage
the accurate consignment, storage and dispatch of parts.
Virgin Atlantic Airways is a long-standing Oracle and
TCS customer. The proposed solution will be used along
with process reviews and Virgin Atlantic's current materials
management software, Ultramain, to enable Virgin Atlantic
Engineering to reduce costs and increase efficiencies
through improved visibility and accountability, and to
gain better automated control of its engineering parts
supply chain.
The solution will be developed and implemented by Tata
Consultancy Services on Oracle Fusion Middleware, RFID-enabled
applications and Oracle Database 10g.
The pilot will commence in mid-June and is expected to
go live at Virgin Atlantic's warehouse store in Heathrow
in the UK by August.
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