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CORPORATE MONITOR
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| Technology Companies | |
Intel, the world's largest chip manufacturing company, has reportedly decided to become a technology and financial partner in the mega semiconductor fabrication (Fab) unit in Hyderabad, the capital city of south Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. Intel will join hands with NanoTech Silicon India Pvt Ltd (NTSI), which is setting up a Fab unit near the upcoming international airport near Hyderabad. NTSI's Fab facility is expected to be a part of Fab City, for which U.S.-based Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), the world's second largest chip manufacturer, has a tie-up with SemIndia. In NTSI's $600 million facility, Intel is expected to hold an equity stake of $32 million while the state government is expected to hold equity of $24 million. |
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Tata Consultancy Services, India’s largest IT services company, is in the final stages of negotiations with Deutsche Bank for an outsourcing deal estimated at around $1 billion. And if TCS, which had signed a $848-million deal from the U.K.-based Pearl Group in October last year, bags the contract, this can be the biggest outsourcing deal won by an Indian information technology company. TCS is the only company in this fray. Earlier, TCS, along with Infosys Technologies and Patni Computer Systems, two other IT services companies, had also bagged a $250-million outsourcing contract from ABN Amro Bank. |
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Tata Consultancy Services, India’s largest IT services company, recently signed a 12-year, 486-million ($868.6 million) deal to take over claims processing from British firm Pearl Group Ltd. The top Indian software exporter's British subsidiary Diligenta will provide back office administration services to the British insurance and pensions firm. |
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Wipro Infotech, the Asia-Pacific and Gulf division of India's third largest $1.8-billion IT company Wipro Technologies, recently bagged a Rs. 360-crore ($80 million) IT outsourcing contract from HDFC Bank. This contract, the largest-ever being awarded by any bank in India, is spread over 10 years. This is also India's second largest domestic IT contract after the $150 million (Rs. 700 crore) Bharti-IBM deal in 2005. The outsourcing will be on a pay-per-use model under which Wipro Infotech will buy assets (PCs and other equipment) for HDFC, operate it and refresh them as requirement. |
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Close on the heels of the announcement of its multi-million dollar deal with U.K.-based The Carphone Warehouse, Mumbai-headquartered IT services company Patni Computer Services has entered into a multi-year deal with a company in the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) region and will be announcing the details shortly. Currently Patni has around 25 clients in the telecom space serviced from its Hyderabad and Pune centres. The telecom unit contributes to around 15% of the company’s business. |
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Looking at opportunities in life sciences, retail and other verticals, Patni Computer Systems, India’s sixth largest software company, recently said it was actively scouting for acquisitions. The software company wants to acquire companies with revenues in the range of $45-$50 million or those companies with revenues roughly in the range of 10% of Patni’s revenue. Patni expects to raise headcount by 4,000. |
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Patni Computer Systems Ltd, India’s sixth largest software company, recently said its wholly owned subsidiary Patni Computer Systems Inc has signed a multi-service contract with U.S.-based Disney Mobile company, provider of a new mobile phone service designed just for families. As per the contract, Patni would be responsible for the development of consumer, retail and operational portals and end-to-end system testing across multiple vendors and technologies utilized by Disney Mobile. |
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Patni Computer Services, India’s sixth largest software company, recently bagged a $50-million two-year HR outsourcing contract from Mercer Consulting, one of the world’s largest consulting firms. The outsourcing unit will be based at NOIDA and will hire 2000 people by 2007. The Mercer unit managed by Patni will deliver HR services like retirement plan administration, health and benefit administration, absence management and HRO (Human Resource Outsourcing) solutions. With the HRO pegged to reach $16 billion by 2009, more and more companies are offshoring to India. HRO rates in India range from $15 to $17 per hour as compared to $6-$10 per hour for other voice-based services. |
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Trinity Convergence, a voice over internet protocol (VoIP) software provider, with a view to focus on developing two key products, VeriCall Core and VeriCall Edge, besides working on newer products, has set up its India development centre in Pune, an emerging IT city situated close to the financial capital of India, Mumbai. Trinity designs, develops and licences embedded VoIP software solutions, which help original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) of communication and entertainment products introduce new products in lesser time. |
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U.S.-based International Decision Systems (IDS), an asset finance portfolio management software and services developer, recently announced its plans to expand its operations in Bangalore, the capital city of the South Indian state of Karnataka. The company had set up its Global Product Development Centre at Bangalore in October 2005, the largest of its kind for IDS, for the continued development of its leasing and loan accounting and portfolio management solutions. Besides that, the Bangalore Global Development Centre is expanding to include development for ‘Rapport’, an origination system implemented at dozens of companies, many listed on the U.S. Fortune 500 list. |
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Sun Microsystems and Wipro Technologies set up India's first Sun center of excellence for java enter |
Sun Microsystems India Pvt Ltd, a wholly-owned subsidiary of U.S.-based Sun Microsystems Inc., and Wipro Technologies, the Global IT Services division of Wipro Limited, recently announced setting up of the first-ever Sun Center of Excellence (CoE) for Java Enterprise System in India. The center, located in the Electronics City Wipro Technologies campus in Bangalore, will assist customers in India as well as globally on leading technology solutions around hot technology paradigms such as Identity Management, Portal technologies, Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Grid Computing. |
Satyam Computer Services, India’s fourth largest IT services company, recently informed the Bombay Stock Exchange that its corporate leadership University School of Leadership (USL) has tied up with Harvard Business School Publishing (HBSP) and U21Global (the online graduate school set up by the Universitas 21 network of globally recognized universities) to offer advanced global business leadership learning for its senior executives. |
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Aiming to help firms in New Zealand to optimize their use of technology as business enabler, Satyam Computer Services, India’s fourth largest IT services company, has entered into a six-year strategic partnership with Optimation, a leading New Zealand software and technology services company. The combined competencies of these companies include business intelligence and data warehousing, enterprise solutions, business process outsourcing and service and asset management. |
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With a view to jointly enter Europe, Middle East and African markets through a dedicated Global Delivery Centre (GDC) in Pune, Zensar Technologies Ltd, a software solutions provider, has entered into a five-year partnership with Fujitsu Services, a global customer-focused IT and communications provider. Under the partnership, Zensar would build and operate a dedicated facility for Fujitsu capable of delivering optimal business benefit through technical and business solutions. |
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Polaris setting up application certification centre in N Ireland |
To serve its customers in the European market, Polaris Software Lab, a leading global provider of financial technology solutions and offshore IT Services, is setting up a certification centre for banking and financial service application in Belfast, with £1.5-million investment assistance from Northern Ireland government. Besides providing cost advantages, the Belfast centre is expected to serve as a near-shore centre to meet the requirements of the company’s customers in Europe. European region accounted for 30% of the company's revenue and the U.K. alone accounted for 28% of it. Of the top ten banks in the U.K., five were Polaris’ customers. |
With the test and measurement market in India growing at an accelerated rate, Agilent Technologies, a world-leading provider of instrumentation, systems, supplies, software, services and support to electronics, telecommunication, life science and chemical analysis, recently announced an investment of $25 million, spread over the next two years, for establishing a 10-acre campus. The campus, one of Agilent's largest campuses worldwide, will be set up near Manesar, an upcoming IT destination in the north Indian state of Haryana. This campus will have a capacity to house over 2,000 employees involved in research and development (R&D), engineering support and financial services for Agilent globally. |
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Perceiving that India is fast emerging as a large design outsourcing hub, Autodesk, Inc., a design software and digital content company, recently announced the launch of its Center of Excellence (CoE) in Architecture Design at Sir JJ College of Architecture in Mumbai, the capital of the Indian state of Maharashtra. Autodesk also plans to set up a similar CoE at the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi, the capital city of India. Autodesk's CoE in architecture design comprises a laboratory equipped with the latest version of Autodesk's 3D design software for the architecture, urban design, building technology and industrial design industries. |
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In a bid to expand its global workforce, Infosys Technologies, India's second largest software exporter company, has plans to aggressively scout for talent in U.S. universities, from where it would hire 300 fresh graduates. It will be for the first time that Infosys would hire on such a large scale directly from U.S. universities. Infosys will train those fresh graduates for nine months at its Mysore training facility, which is the largest of its kind in the world, and thereafter they will take over technology and management functions. Overall the company plans to hire 25,000 people in 2006-07 to take its headcount to above 75,000. |
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Hyderabad-based Satyam Computer Services Limited, India’s fourth largest IT services company, which has the current staff strength of approximately 30,000, is planning to increase its headcount to 50,000 that is an increase of 66.7%, by March 2008. Satyam has grown from around 8,000 employees to close to 30,000 within a span of a few years. |
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Global software giant Microsoft Corporation recently announced that it would launch the latest version of its office software suite named ‘Office 2007’ by the end of this year. Praising India development team, which has played a key role in developing Office 2007, Mr Jeff Raikes, President, Microsoft Business Division, Microsoft Corporation said that India development team has designed tools that support unified communication, pocket applications for mobile usage and has worked on many other functionalities. Microsoft has 1,100 people at its India development centre. |
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Tata Consultancy Services, India’s largest global software and services company, is planning to set up more delivery centres in Eastern Europe and expand its existing centre in Hungary. This was announced by the Chief Financial Officer of TCS, S Mahalingam, who also said that TCS is also looking at expanding its operations in two existing locations in South America. Recently, TCS opened a new centre in the U.K. and appointed 1,000 professionals from the Pearl Group, which was acquired by the company. Europe is one of the high growth markets for TCS. Its revenues from the region grew 50 per cent year-on-year in 2005-06. |
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Aiming to gear up its Bangalore center to carry out entire hardware design for its enterprise class of products right from board design, chassis, BIOS to storage and server products, U.S.-based Dell Inc, the world's No 1 personal computer maker company, is planning to set up a hardware design center at its Bangalore R&D center. It also plans to double its engineering team from the current 300. Dell plans to start the center by this September. Besides hardware design, the Bangalore center will also carry out performing beta testing and validation for all its products. |
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| Telecom Companies | |
After getting the feedback from bankers, state-owned telecom service provider Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited has dropped plans for its proposed initial public offering during the current financial year. Earlier, BSNL had initiated the process of appointing an advisor for its proposed IPO and had also invited bids from the merchant bankers. When asked till what time the company will be ready to hit the capital market, S D Saxena, Director (finance), BSNL, replied, "We need 12 to 18 months to clean up our accounts." Conservative estimates value BSNL at around 15 billion dollar. |
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India's leading international telecommunications service provider Tata-owned Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited’s South African telecom venture, Second Network Operator (SNO) Telecommunications is eyeing a billion dollar revenue in its initial five years of operations. The total investment for SNO project is about $1.2 billion. VSNL along with the Tata group’s African holding company Tata Africa will invest over $200 million in the venture. VSNL is part of the group of entities forming the Strategic Equity Partner Company (SEPCO), which has a controlling stake of 51% in SNO. |
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With a view to addressing the urgent requirement for additional capacity in both Delhi and Mumbai, state-owned Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) will soon expand its network by an additional 400,000 GSM lines. For this purpose it has awarded a contract to U.S.-based telecom equipment vendor Motorola. The expansion cost for Delhi was estimated at $12 million (Rs. 54 crore), while for Mumbai it would be about $6.7 million (Rs. 30 crore). The Motorola deal comes in the backdrop of MTNL’s global tender for 2 million additional lines for Delhi and a contract worth $170 million (Rs. 750 crore) given to the collaborating partners Indian Telephone Industries Ltd (Indian public sector manufacturer of telecom equipment) and Alcatel (French telecom equipment manufacturer) for the same number of lines for its Mumbai circle. For Motorola, this is the second deal with MTNL. In 2004, the company had won a contract to supply 800,000 GSM lines to MTNL. |
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Siemens to bid for BSNL's $5 bln tender, eyes higher market share |
Eyeing to leverage its position in India, Siemens AG, a German telecom equipment vendor, will bid for the 45.5 million GSM network tender of state-owned telecom service provider Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) for both mobile equipment as well as third generation mobile services. In addition, Siemens will ramp up its existing manufacturing unit in Kolkata to extend the line of production to mobile equipment if need arises. The estimated value of BSNL's tender is $4.5 billion to $5 billion. All leading network vendors like Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola, Nortel, Huawei and ZTE are expected to participate in the BSNL's mega tender. |
The Department of Telecom has given its approval to Chennai-based Sify Ltd, the third largest Internet Service Provider (ISP) of India, to invest in other telecom companies, thus allowing Sify to function as a holding company and even float new subsidiaries. Although the approval has been given on the condition that even the subsidiaries, joint ventures and acquisitions by the company will have to adhere to the existing FDI norms. The government’s approval was necessary since Sify has foreign direct investment of over 51% which could result in an indirect foreign holding in case the company decides to either pick up stake in an Indian company or form a join venture. |
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Successfully completing its second round of voluntary retirement scheme (VRS), state-owned telecom service provider MTNL, which is saddled with surplus workforce and facing tremendous pressure from employee unions against job cuts, relieved 612 Group B officers with effect from April 1, 2006. This was for the first time in the history of MTNL that Group-B officers were offered VRS. Last year, MTNL had separated over 1,900 employees in the Group C and D categories. The third round for Group C and D employees was currently on and would be open till April 10. After the completion of second round of VRS, MTNL has a workforce of little over 51,000 and that of Group-C and D would be about 42,000. |
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Based in Secunderabad, the fast growing outsourcing hub of India popularly called Cyberabad, XL Telecom, manufacturer of telecom products, in association with California-based Axesstel Inc, a design and development of fixed wireless voice and broadband data products provider, has been awarded a $22 million (Rs 98 crore) tender from state-owned BSNL for the supply of 365,000 Axesstel L800 fixed wireless desktop phones. While Axesstel will ship L800 phone kits in semi-knocked down form, XL Telecom will assemble the kits, load the required software into phones, test the products and distribute to various BSNL depots. |
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Eyeing a target of $100-million turnover by 2009, Ice 365, a U.K. mobile interactive community service provider, is planning to invest more than $10 million over the next three years for setting up its India headquarters at Mohali, an upcoming IT city of the north Indian state of Haryana. Of the total turnover, more than 50% revenue comes from India. The company’s facility in Mohali will have a research and development centre, a help desk and a co-ordination team. Major clients of Ice 365 (which stands for Interactive Community Engagement 365 days a year), include British Telecom, ITV media channel of the U.K., the Loot newspaper and the Meaningful Marketing Group. |
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Calling India as its office of the world and targeting revenue of $250 million from India operations within the next two years, BT Global Services, British Telecom’s enterprises connectivity services arm, has drawn out an ambitious plan to expand its business in India. For this, the company will need a human resource base of about 5,000 software professionals, of which 2000 will be hired in Pune itself over the next 18 months. The company currently serves IT clients like Infosys, TCS and Wipro from the Pune centre. |
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Anil Ambani-controlled Reliance Communications plans to expand its broadband network to 200 cities in the country from present 40 in a short period. Besides that, the company will also increase focus on consumer internet business in the coming years as it was till recently focusing on enterprise broadband services. Reliance Communications is also in the process of building infrastructure for its foray into Internet Protocol Television (IPTV), and the company will initiate talks with companies for content once the infrastructure is ready. |
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Asurion, a U.S.-based provider of insurance solutions and services for the wireless communications industry, has inaugurated its strategic development centre (SDC) at IT Towers, Kharadi, Pune, in collaboration with Synechron, a specialist provider of turnkey, high-end business-technology solutions and services for the mortgage banking, capital markets and insurance domains. This partnership would enable Asurion to set up its own dedicated and enhanced development centre in India. Synechron will offer Asurion turnkey infrastructure, resource and management support through this venture. |
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In a setback to Tatas-managed Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited's control over India’s international long distance (ILD) segment, state-owned telecom service provider, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited recently decided to partner with eight carriers including global majors France Telecom, Telekom Italia, SingTel, FLAG Telecom and MCI for carrying its ILD traffic. Presently, a significant part of the $900 million (Rs. 4,000 crore) worth of ILD traffic generated by BSNL's 60 million telephone users is routed through VSNL's ILD network. VSNL, also part of the panel of eight companies, will now have to compete with these carriers to offer the best price to BSNL for various international sectors. Indian ILD operators empanelled by BSNL as its favoured partners are Bharti Tele-Ventures and Reliance Infocomm, the two leading private sector telecom service providers. |
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Two state-owned telecom giants Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited are on a collision course over the non-payment of STD call carriage charges by the latter. BSNL officials claim that dues worth nearly $155 million to $177 million have accrued in 2005-06, and they have now threatened that if dues remain unpaid, it will block the points of interconnect. MTNL officials, on the other hand, say that there is no logic in calculations made by BSNL and such claims are totally unjustified. |
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With a view to provide 78 million subscribers seamless cross-border mobile services across the Asia-Pacific region, Bharti Televentures Limited, India's leading provider of telecommunications services under the Airtel brand, has partnered with seven other international mobile operators, who are part of the Bridge Mobile Alliance (BMA). The partnership will enable subscribers of CSL (Hong Kong), Globe Telecom (Philippines), Maxis (Malaysia), SingTel Mobile (Singapore), SingTel Optus (Australia), Taiwan Mobile (Taiwan) and Telkomsel (Indonesia) to top up their pre-paid cards through select Airtel outlets while roaming in India. Established in 2004, BMA operates through a Singapore-incorporated joint venture company, Bridge Mobile Pte Ltd. |
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After signing an MoU in July last year to explore opportunities to service both content creators and distributors, Tata-owned Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited (VSNL), India's leading international telecommunications service provider, and France-based Thomson, a world leader in digital video technologies, will together invest $50 million to set up a facility in the suburbs of Mumbai to provide high technology services to the Indian entertainment sector, the first of its kind in the country. At a later stage, more hubs may be set up in south India. The plan is to float a joint venture in which both partners will have equal stakes. The addressable market for this business is estimated to be in the region of $100 million. |
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| Media Companies | |
STAR India launches India’s first webisode for ‘Pyaar Ke Do Naam…’ |
In what can be called India’s first webisode, STAR India, India's largest private entertainment company, recently came up with its official website, Indya.com, premiering the channel’s forthcoming show, ‘Pyaar Ke Do Naam…Ek Radha, Ek Shyaam’ on Indya Tube. This website, available to users of Indya.com to watch it free, also made a pioneering move by allowing viewers to download and watch the first episode of the forthcoming soap. Besides that Star India recently launched new video streaming property, ‘Indya Tube’, which makes Indya.com the first television entertainment website to do so and only second website in India. Since the launch of Indya Tube, there have been more than 150,000 video downloads. |
Aiming to target the non-resident Indian community, Goldstone Technologies Limited, a Hyderabad-based technology solutions provider, has announced its plans to launch Internet Protocol TV (IPTV). For this, Goldstone plans to invest $5.5 million and has partnered with a Singapore firm SPL Innotech Pte Ltd. "Though this technology has the potential to reach out to a whopping 18.5 million NRI community spread across the globe, we are specially targeting about 3.5 million Telugu language speaking NRI community in the U.S.," the Director of Goldstone Technologies, Mr Travis Caddel said this while recently addressing a Press conference. |
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Aiming at catering to millions of music lovers across India and worldwide, Sahara One Media and Entertainment Ltd has announced the soon to be launched Hindi music channel, which will showcase the best of Hindi music from Bollywood (popular term used for the Indian film industry) and non-film albums, along with music events, original programming, and much more. Earlier Sahara had launched its Hindi movie channel ‘Sahara One Television’ and ‘Filmy’. |
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Prasar Bharati gets marketing savvy, brings about a revenue turnaround |
India’s public broadcaster Prasar Bharati has got all reasons to smile as in the financial year ending March 31, 2006, it has registered an annual revenue growth of 48% garnering revenues of $275 million (Rs. 1230 crore) as against $185 million (Rs. 831.47 crore) in FY 2004-05. It’s Television Broadcasting wing Doordarshan’s revenue have gone up from $150 million (Rs. 670.44 crore) to $215 million (Rs. 960 crore), while that of All India Radio have increased from $36 million (Rs. 161.03 crore) to $61 million (Rs. 271 crore). |
Expressing its desire to venture into the satellite radio space, Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Enterprises (ADAE), part of India’s largest diversified business conglomerate, Reliance, has argued that the government cannot grant license for terrestrial transmission of satellite radio to a single party (read WorldSpace) unilaterally as it had done in the case of FM radio, and said that the government must invite bidding from interested parties. “When the government notifies the policy guidelines for satellite radio, we will examine it and if it makes good business sense then we may also consider venturing into the space,” said Rajesh Sawhney, President, Reliance Entertainment. WorldSpace has applied to the government for allowing terrestrial transmission through which it can reach the audience on the move, which has been seriously contested by the Association of Radio Operators of India (AROI). |
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