Tatas plan supercomputer venture
New Delhi: The Tata Group is considering setting up a new company that will focus on top-end supercomputers according to reliable sources. Group chairman, Ratan Tata, is said to have taken a personal interest, in the venture. The new venture will build a machine based on a parallel supercomputing architecture that Prof Narendra Krishna Karmakar, well-known Indian computer scientist, at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research claims to have developed. The supercomputer project is estimated to cost Rs400 crore and the group plans to invest about $140 million in the venture.

The proposal was cleared after a technical and business evaluation by the Tata Strategic Management Group, the independent management consulting division of Tata Industries. The new company could be located in Pune and would be headed by Prof Karmarkar and Dr Sunil Sherlekar of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) in Bangalore.

Earlier the group had ventured into high-end computing systems through Tata Elxsi. In recent years, the company has moved away from hardware and its focus has been in software services and providing system solutions.

The new architecture, according to Prof Karmarkar, uses a new theory of interconnects based on the mathematical principles of `projective geometry'. Dr Karmakar claims that the machine built on this new architecture will outperform the fastest machines of today like the Blue Gene of IBM, which has a sustained computational speed of 280-300 teraflops (a trillion or 1012 floating point operations per second), and will aim to achieve a performance of petaflops (1015 flops).

The chip design will make use of the off-the-shelf fast 64-bit processors (of Itanium 2 family) developed jointly by Hewlett-Packard and Intel. This chip has been developed by an Indian computer scientist.
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RCoVL's to raise $1bn from overseas markets
Mumbai: The board of Anil Ambani owned Reliance Communications Ventures (RCoVL) has approved a $1 billion (Rs4,500 crore) sponsored issue of global depository receipts (GDRs) or American depository receipts (ADRs). In a sponsored issue, domestic shareholders offer their shares for sale to overseas investors and the shares sold will get converted into GDRs or ADRs depending on whether the receipts get listed in the US or in Europe.
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Spice to raise funds from DBS consortium
Bangalore: Spice Telecom, that provides mobile services in Karnataka and Punjab circles, is planning to raise close to $250 million (Rs1,000 crore) from a consortium led by DBS (Development Bank of Singapore) including Barclays and Deutsche Bank to raise funds for its Rs2,000 crore expansion plan over the next two years.

DBS had earlier arranged a $215 million debt for Telekom Malaysia, which acquired a 49 per cent stake in Spice Telecom in early March 2006. The company is using the amount to settle debts in the recent restructuring exercise announced by the company.

Telekom Malaysia may also increase its stake upto 76 per cent as per telecom regulations in India. Telekom Malaysia picked up the 49 per cent stake held by Ashmore Investments and Deutsche Bank in Spice Telecom for around $180 million.

Spice Telecom has close to 2 million subscribers.
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RIL to set up bio-diesel refining plant
Mumbai: Reliance Industries (RIL) is planning to set up a bio-diesel refining plant near its existing 33 million tonne per annum (MTPA) crude oil refinery at Jamnagar, Gujarat. The plant is expected to be ready for production by 2008. The proposed 27 MTPA Reliance Petroleum refinery will also get completed at the Jamnagar special economic zone at the same time.

Bio-diesel is made by blending the extract of jatropha, a small tree or shrub with a smooth gray bark, with regular diesel through a specific process. RIL had embarked on massive cultivation of jatropha and earmarked 200 acres of land at Kakinada in Andhra Pradesh to cultivate jatropha.

The cost of the project, including the cultivation of jatropha, will be around Rs2,000 crore.

The capacity of the proposed plant is not known. Sources said the company would use 2 per cent of the diesel produced in the existing refinery as input for the bio-diesel.

RIL will distribute the fuel through its 1,218 outlets across the country and has received approvals for setting up 5,849 more. RIL is expected to invest Rs500 crore for the plant and Rs1,500 crore for jatropha cultivation and extract development.
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Shree Cement Q4 net up 191 percent
Kolkata: BG-HM Bangur group promoted Shree Cement has posted a 191 per cent jump in net profit in the quarter ended March 31, 2006 at Rs60.71 crore from Rs20.84 crore in the quarter ended March 31, 2005. The turnover of the outfit rose by 38 per cent from Rs163 crore in the quarter ended March 31, 2005 to Rs225.5 crore in corresponding period of 2006.

However, net profit for the whole year fell to Rs18.41 crore from Rs29.07 crore in 2004-05. The turnover in 2005-06 rose by 29 per cent to Rs667.69 crore from Rs582 crore in 2004-05.

The company has lined up Rs700 crore capex programme to double capacity by March 2008. The entire Rs700 crore capex would be financed through a combination of internal accruals and borrowings.

The company currently has an installed capacity of around 5 million tonnes. After the expansion, it would achieve a capacity of 9.1 million ton, making it one of the biggest in the country.
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Tata in JV with Brazilian company to build buses
New Delhi: Tata Motors is setting up a joint venture with Brazilian company Marcopolo for manufacturing fully-built buses. The JV, in which Tatas will hold 51 per cent equity, will set up a plant in India at an estimated cost of Rs200 crore.
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Sahakari Bhandar to be managed by Reliance
Mumbai: The state-owned Sahakari Bhandar (co-operative store) is in for a makeover. In a soft launch of its retail operations Reliance Industries has reached an understanding with the Sahakari Bhandar to manage the supply chain for the latter's 23 stores in the city. Sources indicated the arrangement is likely to be upgraded into a franchise agreement later.

A buyout may not happen since Sahakari Bhandar is partly owned by the government.

Sahakari Bhandar has over the years built its brand on affordablity, offering marginal discounts on branded products. The unbranded commodities available at Sahakari Bhandar for which the store is popular because of its competitive prices, have been put under another label, SB Home.

Under the new format sections like kitchen appliances and jewellery have been done away with and replaced by additions like a pharmacy, bakery, music and DVD counter along with a fresh fruit and vegetables section.
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BHEL achieve record power output through generating sets
New Delhi: Bharat Heavy Electricals electricity generating sets produced a record 402.6 billion units during 2005-06, up five per cent over the previous year. Its thermal sets achieved a high plant load factor (PLF) of 75 per cent during the year — better than the national average by 1.5 per cent, the company said in a statement here.

As many as 39 BHEL thermal sets achieved a PLF of over 90 per cent, the State-owned firm said. The company, which enjoys a 65 per cent market share in the country's total installed capacity of 1,18,561 MW, added 13 utility and 15 captive/industrial sets of 2,365 MW in the country during the course of the last fiscal. With this, the total installed capacity of BHEL-made utility sets went up to 76,741 MW, it said.
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SC to hear Reliance`s airport plea on June 1
New Delhi: The Supreme Court has admitted Anil Ambani-owned Reliance Airport Developers' appeal challenging the Delhi High Court judgment that upheld the allotment of modernisation work of the Delhi and Mumbai airports to the consortia led by GMR and GVK, respectively.

The Bench, headed by the chief justice, observed that the validity of lowering of the benchmark would have to be examined. It may be recalled that the benchmark was lowered from 80 per cent to 50 per cent. Another question raised by the court is how the group of ministers could claim any expertise in these matters while downgrading the norms.
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Hyundai to launch LCV, small diesel car
New Delhi: South Korea's Hyundai Motor Corp is planning to enter the light commercial vehicle (LCV) market in India with a one-tonne truck pitted against Tata Ace. Apart from this it is also preparing to roll out a diesel compact car, a premium mid-sized model Verna, a diesel version of Sonata and a new top-of-the-line sports utility vehicle Santa Fe in India over the next 12-15 months. The new mid-sizer Verna is slated be launched in the last quarter of 2006 and will be positioned above Accent, while the new 1.2-litre diesel compact car would be positioned along with Santro and Getz. The company does not intend to discontinue Accent and Santro and all the models will co-exist.

In addition, the company will set up a second engine and transmission plant in Chennai, which could entail an investment of about $600 million, according to Hyundai Motor India CEO Heung Soo Lheem.
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