SAIL aims to transport 15 pc more cargo this year
Steel Authority of India (SAIL) is aiming to transport 71.50 mt of cargo in 2007-08 against 61.88 mt in 2006-07 a jump pf 15 per cent.

The company's plans are on the back of a 14 per cent jump in the production of hot metal at 16.37 million tonnes (mt) in 2007-08 compared to 14.37 mt in 2006-07.

The inward-outward break-up shows that this year, SAIL's rail-borne inward traffic comprising raw materials such as coal — indigenous , imported and boiler — iron ore, flux and manganese ore will be 56.29 mt (48.74 mt) and the outward traffic made up of finished products, both primary and secondary varieties, 15.21 mt (13.14 mt) — both growing at over 15 per cent.
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Educomp Solutions to foray overseas
New Delhi: Educomp Solutions will soon begin marketing its digital content products in Malaysia, Thailand and West Asia and is eyeing acquisitions in the US. The company plans to take its Smartclass (digitised content of school-level curriculum) to the two South East Asian countries and West Asia in six months.

The company is also looking at taking over "small and medium sized companies engaged in similar business segments in the US and India.

The company has recently acquired 76 per cent stake in ThreeBrix E-Services Pvt Ltd, an online tutoring service provider.

Educomp also plans to scale up its team for content development from 250 members to more than 400 by next March.
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Future Group to launch Big Bazaar Supercentres
Mumbai: Future Group plans to launch "Big Bazaar Supercentres," which will house a gamut of facilities including postal services, health and beauty zones care and entertainment sections. The group would launch 6 such centres in the next two months at an investment of Rs96 crore.

The company said it will come up with six Big Bazaar Supercentres by end of May-June. Each Supercentre involves an investment of Rs15-16 crore.

Supercentres would come up in Hyderabad, Baroda, Surat, Nagpur and two in Bangalore. On the Big Bazaar front, the company is targeting to enter the tier-II and tier-III cities in a big way. It plans to take the number of Big Bazaars from the current 50 to 300 by 2010.
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Jet Airways plans makeover
Mumbai: Jet Airways, the country's biggest private sector airliner, is planning a makeover which would involve its fleet of plans having a new colour and a new logo. In addition to this the cabin crew would sport new uniforms while travellers would be treated to brand new seats.

Jet earlier planned to bring about a complete overhaul in its look and style this month itself but it possibly got delayed due to the revival of the proposal to buyout Air Sahara.

The sources said the company has decided on a new look as it is facing intense competition from Vijay Mallya-promoted Kingfisher Airlines.

Meanhwile, Jet does not plan to use the Air Sahara brand for 6 months, and the such as clause has been incorporated in the agreement it has reached with Sahara. Jet officials said the acquisition could be completed in two-three months and then on, the entire fleet of Sahara would carry the identity of Jet.
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Grabal Alok Impex may foray abroad
New Delhi: As foreign retail giants like Wal-Mart and Tesco are eye the fast-growing Indian market, Grabal Alok Impex, a joint venture between Alok Industries and Austria's Grabal Group, has drawn up a restructuring strategy to turn around UK-based retail chain Hansard 2353, in which it is acquiring 75-per cent stake.

Grabal Alok Impex has already invested £16.4 million pounds (Rs140 crore) for acquisition of 26 pc equity stake and convertible debentures, giving it a total of 75-per cent stake in the UK firm.

The company has also formulated a multi-pronged strategy to compete with leading UK retailers such as Primark and Peacock with similar profiles to Hamsard.

The group also plans to bring this store format to India, besides stepping up sourcing activities for its UK operations from the Indian subcontinent - which would help it bring down costs and price products competitively to gain marketshare.
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RPG to merge CESC, Pathik Retail
Kolkata: The RPG group is planning to merge CESC with Pathik Retail, the holding company of Spencer's Retail.

Market sources said the merger implied that the group had abandoned the initial public offering plans (IPO) for the retail company.

The group was earlier considering IPO as one of the options for funding its aggressive retail plans. An investment of close to Rs1,000-1,200 crore had been earmarked for retail expansion throughout the country over the next two years.

Retail has been identified as one of the focus areas for the group and it expects 25-30 per cent of its total revenues to come from its retail business in the near future, from the present five per cent.

In 2006-07, the retail business is expected to touch a turnover of Rs700 crore from Rs315 crore in the previous year.

At present, the group has 400 retail outlets, which are expected to go up to 2,000 by 2009 and 4,000 by 2011.

Currently, there are 125 Spencer's stores across 25 cities, comprising eight hypermarkets, five Spencer's Super Stores, 104 Spencer's Daily, three Spencer's Fresh, and five Spencer's Express. The total contracted area for all Spencer's stores across the country is over one million sq ft.
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TCS awarded $100 million Bank of China deal
New Delhi: Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is said to have signed a $100 million deal with the Bank of China to provide technology solutions. The deal is spread over five years.

The contract can be termed as one of the major IT-related deals signed by a Chinese bank and is timely for a company aggressively expanding in China, industry sources said.

Bank of China had called for bids to revamp its IT infrastructure. It is the second-biggest lender in China and has the largest global network among all Chinese banks. The bank is looking at integrating its IT requirements for its international network.

Sources said the opportunity is seen as huge because the vendors who are able to bag the deal for the international network will get an edge for mainland operations of the bank. Chinese banks have not outsourced their IT development to external vendors.

TCS has built up a close relationship with Chinese trade finance and software products company China Systems.

The latest deal came close on the heels of a seven-year, $65 million agreement TCS had announced early this month with Somerfield, a British small-format food retailer, to provide a full range of managed IT services.
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Sesa Goa told to develop mines or leave Jharkhand
Kolkata: Sesa Goa has received a showcause notice from the Jharkhand government asking it why its prospective licence for iron ore mines in the state should not be cancelled.

The district mining officer of Chaibasa has said the company seemed more interested in keeping the 7 square km of mining area in its fold rather than developing it.

The company has been asked to reply to the showcause notice in a month's time.

Sesa's valuation received the first blow when the Centre imposed an export levy of Rs300 a tonne on iron ore on February 28. The company exports one-tenth of its 9.6-million-tonne output to Japan and 58 per cent to China and Taiwan.

Sesa Goa received the prospective licence for the mines in Jharkhand's West Singhbhum district in early 2005.

Industry sources said the letter gains significance because the valuation of the country's second-largest iron ore exporter would be determined by its reported 150 million tonne of iron ore reserves in Orissa, Karnataka and Goa and the prospective mining licence in Jharkhand (government-owned MMTC is the country's largest iron ore exporter).

Lakhmi Mittal controlled Arcelor Mittal, Anil Agarwal-controlled Vedanta Resources, and the Aditya Birla Group's closely-held Essel Mining & Industries — have submitted bids for Mitsui's 51 per cent stake in Sesa Goa.
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RIL to introduce stock option scheme
Mumbai: Reliance Industries has informed BSE and NSE that it is planning to introduce employee stock options schemes (ESOPs) of 2.87 crore to its eligible employees, exercisable into equal number of fully paid-up equity shares of the company.

The ESOP of RIL would benefit more than 18,000 employees and is the largest ESOP declared by any Indian oil and gas company.

According to industry sources, RIL has been planning to reward its employees with stock options for the past seven years and decided that the Options would be vest-based on the specified criteria. The vesting period would range from one to seven years from the date of the grant and the exercise period would extend up to five years from the date of vesting.

The options not vested in the specified vesting period on account of not meeting the specified criteria and the options vested but not exercised within the specified exercise period will lapse.

The shareholders have approved the issuance of 52.6 million equity shares of Rs10 each under the ESOP scheme. According to a company sources, the prices will be as per ESOP norms. The exercise price will be somewhere around Rs1,300 to 1,400 without taxes.
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ITC to expand operations with Rs15,000 crore investment
New Delhi: FMCG, hospitality and cigarettes company ITC plans to invest about Rs15,000 crore in the next 5-7 years in other areas such as hotels, agri-business and FMCG as it seeks to transform its image to a diversified corporate conglomerate.

The company is giving added impetus to its FMCG, agro business, paper and packaging, hotels and the infotech business and has has earmarked an investment of Rs15,000 crore in the next five-seven years on these business segments.

As part of ramping up non-tobacco divisions, ITC also plans to rev up its social farm forestry projects in states like Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, which will involve 12 lakh farmers by 2012-14, up from current three lakh.

Sources said ITC is focusing on taking modern retail to rural India and plans to enhance its reach through e-choupals (direct marketing channel for farmers) and Choupal Sagars (rural retail stores). At present, ITC has about 6,500 e-choupals covering 40,000 villages and 40 Choupal Sagars.

ITC has already announced Rs5,000 crore investments in its hotels division in the next three-four years to add 3,000 rooms in addition to the current 5,500 rooms.
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Aksh Optifibre to get into set top boxes
New Delhi: Optical fibre manufacturer Aksh Optifibre plans to start making set top boxes in India this year to tap the rising demand in the wake of the roll out of conditional access system (CAS), a move which will also bring down the cost of STBs by up to 30 per cent.

The company, which aims to become an end-to-end Internet Protocol TV player, currently imports STBs for providing IPTV service in Delhi in association with state-run firm MTNL.

The company also plans to introduce IPTV service in Mumbai in the next 6-8 weeks.

However, the company has not yet decided the location to set up the manufacturing facility for STBs. Officials said the company planned to set up a facility in Uttarakhand or expand its existing plant in Rajasthan to manufacture STBs.

These boxes are used in areas of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai where CAS has been made mandatory.
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