Reliance Communications launches mass segment phones priced at Rs777
Mumbai: Reliance Communications has launched the Classic range of mobile handsets priced from Rs777 onwards. While Classic 202 is available at Rs777, Classic 204 & Classic 203 are available at Rs844 and Rs888, respectively.

All Classic handsets are now SIM-enabled, which allow easy changeover from one model to another while retaining the Reliance SIM card.
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Tata Chemicals finalises $1bn expansion plan
Mumbai: Tata Chemicals has finalised its expansion plan, which includes acquisitions and setting up of new projects which would be backed by an investment of $1 billion over the next four years.

R Gopalakrishnan, executive director, Tata Sons said the company planned to make acquisitions both in India and overseas.

Tata Chemicals, which deals with soda ash, urea and phosphatics, is the third largest global player in soda ash and has recently set up its innovation centre in Pune. The company will also look at emerging areas such as nano-technology, fermentation and bio-fuels.
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Cognizant Q1 net income up 60 pc at $75.4mn
Mumbai: Cognizant Technologies has reported a 60 pc increase in net income for the first quarter of financial year ended March 31, 2007 at $75.4 million (Rs310 crore) against $47.2 million (Rs195 crore) in the corresponding period of the previous year.

Revenue in the first quarter rose to $460.3 million (Rs1,930 crore) - up 61 pc from $285.5 million (Rs1,200 crore) in the corresponding quarter of financial year 2005-06.

Cognizant in its second quarter outlook, anticipates revenue to touch $500 million (around Rs2,100 crore). Calendar and fiscal 2007 revenue is now anticipated to reach at least $2.07 billion (around Rs8,400 crore) which is a $30 million increase over the guidance of $2.04 million in 2006, a 45.36 pc growth from $1.42 billion in calendar 2006.
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Birla Retail not to use Trinethra brand
Mumbai: Aditya Birla Retail (ABRL), which acquired the South based Trinethra super markets chain this year is planning to launch a pan-India retail chain by the year-end. It is also planning to replace the Trinethra brand name in 170 stores across south India with it own national brand.

Trinethra Super Retail was using the Trinethra brand in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu and the Fabmall brand in Kerala and Karnataka.

Sources said the objective of the new brand name is to use the high recall value, quality and goodwill associated with the Birla brand.

Trinethra started as a partnership firm in 1986 which was later changed into a public limited company in 1998 as Trinethra Super Market. The company changed its name to Trinethra Super Retail in 2003. The company had revenues of Rs240 crore in FY06. Trinethra also had an in-house brand, Quality First, under which it sold staples such as rice, wheat and pulses.

Apart from launching its own network, ABRL is also looking at picking up equity stake in the supply chain companies so that it can have control over its vendors.
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Ranbaxy to challenge Merck patent dispute
Mumbai: Ranbaxy Laboratories is again getting into litigation. This time it will contest a challenge by Merck & Co., the third-largest pharma maker in the US that prevents it from marketing a generic copy of the antibiotic Primaxin I.M. on the grounds of patent infringement.

Ranbaxy applied to the US Food and Drug Administration to sell its version of the injectable medicine before Merck's patent expires September 15, 2009, according to the complaint filed by Merck last month in federal court in Wilmington, Delaware.

Merck, based in Whitehouse Station, New Jersey, reported $705 million in Primaxin sales for 2006.

Merck in the lawsuit said Ranbaxy can marketing and manufacturing medicines immediately upon receiving regulatory approval and asked a judge for an order prohibiting sales during the term of its patent.

Ranbaxy said it has not infringed the patent.
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Tata Power takes recourse to MERC against Maha Discom
Mumbai: Tata Power (TPC) has filed a petition with the Maharashtra Electricity Regulatory Commission (MERC) against the Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company's (Maha Discom's) move seeking the regulator's help to recover around Rs 80 crore from it.

Maha Discom earlier on Tuesday, claimed that TPC owed this amount for the net energy drawn by the state-owned distribution utility. In a letter to MERC, Maha Discom had urged the regulator to direct TPC to immediately pay up the outstanding amount for January and February with an interest of 18 pc per annum.

TPC sources said Maha Discom's move was against the interest of Mumbai consumers who would be paying higher charges, when they are already paying for standby power for over several decades as reliable charges approved by MERC.

TPC has a standby agreement with MSEB to supply uninterrupted power to the consumers Mumbai in case of any shortfall/shutdown/outage at the generating units. Tata Power can draw power from MSEB to fulfill the required deficit and is expected to charge Rs2.99 and fuel adjustment charges per unit for power drawn as standby. However, sources said Maha Discom has raised a bill on Tata Power with a per unit cost of Rs6 for January and February 2007.
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Strides and Accu-Break cancel joint venture plan
Bangalore: Strides Arcolab and Accu-Break Pharmaceuticals Inc (ABP) have cancelled their joint venture plan of June 2006. Earlier the two companies had announced setting up a 50:50 company, called Accu-Strides, to develop generic products using Accu-Break's proprietary technologies. (Accu-Break's technology, pending patent, makes tablets that can be accurately split into equal halves, a third or a quarter of dose.)

An announcement from the companies said that Strides and ABP have determined that the joint venture agreement no longer meets the needs of the parties and have elected to terminate the joint venture with each party to bear its own expenses.

The new company was to have sourced from Strides an exclusive product pipeline of generic and ANDA products in finished dosage forms; Strides was to have been in charge of global sales except in North America.
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Wal-Mart-Bharti deal in two weeks
New Delhi: The biggest retailer worldwide, Wal-Mart Stores Inc said it would soon finalise an agreement with its Indian partner Bharti for a wholesale cash-and-carry venture, and will open its first store next year.

Raj Jain, president (emerging markets), Wal-Mart International said the company could place a proposal to this affect to its global board of directors soon.

He negated all reports of a disagreement between Bharti and Wal-Mart which was delaying the joint venture.
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Bharti, Vodafone tie up in Channel Islands
New Delhi: Bharti and Vodafone which are competitors in India are jointly entering the Channel Islands market. Jersey Airtel and Guernsey Airtel, subsidiaries of Bharti Enterprises, have entered into an agreement with Vodafone, to bring a range of Vodafone's global products to its customers in the Island countries. The two will offer services under the `Airtel-Vodafone' brand name.

Incidentally Vodafone and Bharti have agreed to share infrastructure in India.

Sunil Bharti Mittal, chairman & group CEO of Bharti Enterprises said, "We are happy to partner Vodafone to offer services tailored to the needs of customers in this region."

Bharti is now looking to aggressively roll out telecom services in other countries. It has been offering comprehensive telecom services in Seychelles through a subsidiary Telecom Seychelles.
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Tata Sons consolidates stake in Tata Tea
Mumbai: Tata Sons, which holds the largest stake in Tata Tea Ltd, has consolidated its stake in the company through the conversion of 28.10 lakh warrants into the same number of shares.

The company has said that the price at which the warrants were converted into equity shares was in accordance with the applicable SEBI (DIP) Guidelines, 2000 and came to Rs726.45 per share.

Tata Sons Ltd had earlier paid in November 2006 upfront money for these warrants, with a face value of Rs10 each, and the balance money was paid prior to conversion of the warrants into equity shares, the note said.
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Tata Motors' commercial vehicle sales decline in April
Mumbai: Tata Motors has reported a year-on-year decline in commercial vehicle sales for April 2007 due to rising interest rates. However, the company's overall vehicle sales at 40,486 units grew 11 per cent. Tata Motors' commercial vehicle sales declined 0.3 per cent, to 19,607 units, against 19,674 vehicles sold in April last year. The medium and heavy commercial vehicle segment reported a fall of 14 per cent in sales, at 10,392 units. The light commercial vehicle segment showed a positive growth of 22 per cent, reporting sales of 9,215 units.

Tata Motors' passenger vehicles segment reported a 26 per cent increase in sales at 16,842 units in April 2007. Exports were 13 per cent higher, at 4,037 units. Domestic passenger car sales in March 2007 grew only three per cent. Analysts had attributed this low growth rate too to the hardening of interest rates.
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Bharti reduces stake in DTH venture
New Delhi: Bharti Airtel has reduced its share in its wholly owned DTH venture, Bharti Telemedia Ltd, to 40 per cent in order comply with the guidelines on FDI in the DTH sector. Total foreign equity holding in DTH company including FDI, NRIs and financial institutions cannot exceed 49 per cent and within the foreign equity, the FDI component should not exceed 20 per cent.

As Bharti Airtel has an FDI component of 48 per cent, it cannot hold the entire stake in Bharti Telemedia and a Bharti group company will hold the balance 60 per cent. This will keep the FDI level in Bharti Telemedia to under the permitted 20 per cent.

Bharti has applied for a DTH licence and compliance to the FDI norms is necessary before the Government can clear its application. Bharti's DTH venture is expected to roll out by the end of this calendar year. It was initially planned to keep the venture under Bharti Airtel, the telecom business of the Bharti Group, to leverage synergy with broadband services.
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PC industry growth expected at 22 pc in FY08
New Delhi: The personal computer market is expected to grow by 22 per cent in FY 08 and may record sales of 6.5 million units according to the Manufacturers' Association for Information and Technology (MAIT). The association said strong macroeconomic conditions and buoyant buying sentiments in the market led by demand from various industry verticals will push the growth.

MAIT also announced that the total PC sales between October and December 2006, including desktop computers and notebooks, stood at 1.39 million units, a growth of 28 per cent over the same period last financial year.

According to the report, the rise in the sales in the third quarter was due to "increased consumption in the household segment while industry verticals and corporate sectors such as telecom, banking and financial services, manufacturing and IT-enabled services, experienced growth, these are expected to gain further momentum in the fourth quarter of the financial year".
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