Videocon set to buy Daewoo Electronics
Seoul: A consortium led by Videocon Industries is all set to acquire South Korea's Daewoo Electronics from the latter's creditors for $ 730 million.

The acquisition price is subject to change after a month-long review, the creditors which include Korea Asset Management Corporation and Woori Bank said.

The consortium comprises electronic goods manufacturer Videocon Industries and Ripplewood Holdings, a US private equity fund which was picked as preferred bidder for the Korean company in early September.

Daewoo Electronics is a former unit of the Daewoo Group which collapsed in 1999 under 80 billion dollars in debts.
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BBC to send accounting, financing jobs to India
London: British Broadcasting Corporation plans to send some of its accounting and financing jobs to India to save 20 million pounds a year for the next decade.

The contract, which includes managing payroll and financial management, has been won by Xansa which will provide customer support services from the UK, though other roles will be performed at its Chennai offices.

Savings will go towards the BBC's target of releasing 355 million pounds to be invested in programmes and services.

The contract was previously held by another private organisation, Medas.
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Rel Comm to set up B2C platform for oil companies
Mumbai: Reliance Communications is planning to set up a B2C platform for Indian petroleum giants that will enable the public sector undertakings to service customers through mobile phones.

The company would create a mobile zone for the oil companies, enabling them to handle queries and complaints, sales and cooking gas bookings over the air, a first-of-its-kind in the country.

Reliance Comm is said to be in advanced stages of negotiations with Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), Bharat Petroleum Corporation (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation (HPCL) and is expected to sign an agreement "soon", sources close to the development said.

The telecom major has also begun mapping certain areas to set up high-speed wireless infrastructure to make this initiative a reality, they said.

The company intends to create an interactive zone on its R World platform (a suite of data applications) and post a slew of LPG services, which can be accessed by the company's cellular operators.

A user can log on to R World suite to avail of the services. Even though, R World would be used as an interface between the consumers of gas majors, the fulfilment of the order would be routed through the existing distributor network of these companies.

The LPG companies have a total of around 80 million customers, while the customers of Reliance Communications stand at 26 million.

The services would be initially available to Reliance Communications' subscribers and this will make it one of the largest B2C services in the country.
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Raman Roy's Quatrro acquires Flextronics' BPO arm
New Delhi: Raman Roy-promoted Quatrro has acquired the BPO arm of Flextronics Software Systems (FSS) along with 120 employees in its technical support function.

The two companies have also entered into strategic alliance under which Flextronics would refer any BPO requirements of IT clients to Quatrro, while Quatrro would influence IT services requirements of its BPO clients to FSS.

After the buyout, the BPO business will be brought under AuxiCogent, the joint venture company of Quatrro and John Keells (a shipping and port company). Early this year US private equity firm KKR had bought out FSS in a $900-million deal.

Flextronics' BPO business came to KKR via this acquisition.

With the buyout, the BPO work done by FSS for its existing client HNS would also move to Quatrro. AuxiCogent has committed $22 million for development of BPO business.
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