Monitor: Innovation China’s Future in Bioscience

Monitor: Innovation China’s Future in Bioscience

Saint-Gobain to acquire Electrotherm iron's pipe business

MUMBAI: France's Saint Gobain, a global leader in construction, building materials and glass, will acquire electrotherm's iron pipe business and 100 per cent stake in a subsidiary of the company for Rs 950 crore.

"Electrotherm had today executed binding agreement pursuant to which Saint-Gobain Pour La Construction SAS will acquire Electrotherm's Ductile iron pipes business for Rs 950 plus the value of working capital at closing," Electrotherm Ltd said today in a filing to the BSE.

The transaction will be subject to the terms and condition as set out in the binding agreement entered by the parties, it added.

The company which achieved a sales of over Rs 2,300 crore in 2010-11, is India's largest manufacturer of induction melting furnace and refining equipment.

Saint Gobain has presence in 64 countries and employs nearly 190,000 employees.

Shares of Electrotherm ended at Rs 151.60 on the BSE, down 7.95 per cent from previous close.

Petrol just 30p a litre, but speeding could cost Rs 100

Remember the days when phone calls were made with an eye on the watch? The third minute used to be the cue to wind up a local call. A century ago, visitors to the Coronation Durbar of George V did much the same thing while making phone calls from post offices. The only difference then was that a threeminute call cost 4 annas (25 paise) against Rs 1.2 now.

Of course, 4 annas was a big deal in those days when an (imperial) gallon of petrol cost a rupee and 6 annas, or just over 30 paise a litre. That was the government's contract rate with Burma Oil Co for the entire duration of the Durbar.

While petrol was cheap, drivers had to be careful as the police were strict and the penalties steep. For the first instance of reckless driving, you could be fined Rs 100, and subsequent offences were compounded at Rs 200. The fines for other offences, such as speeding, were Rs 50 for the first instance and Rs 100 thereafter.

The speed limit? Just 12 miles per hour (19 kmph).

Fresh whole milk that was sold by weight was a little more expensive, but nothing like the Rs 37 a litre that you pay today. Milk from the military dairy specially established for the Durbar cost 2 annas and 6 paise per pound (454 grams), approximately 40 paise per litre. Cream cost Re 1 per pound while fresh table butter could be bought for Rs 1.25 per pound, which is the same as Rs 1.37 per 500g. Today, a half-kilo brick of butter will set you back Rs 147.

These prices are all the more remarkable because they were fixed for a celebration in a makeshift tent city. If you've ever bought a burger and cola in a stadium, you will appreciate this: refreshment coupons for the Durbar were sold in a booklet worth Rs 5, and refunds on unused coupons were given till December 21 - a week after all cultural and sporting activities had ceased. Who gives a refund nowadays?

Priced at Re 1, the admission ticket to the archaeological exhibition in Red Fort would seem prohibitive, but the show was meant only for the elite. Other than that, going sightseeing or attending the games did not cost much. Ekkas were the cheapest and lowest class of personal transport and cost Re 1 per hour.

If even that was too much, you could travel ordinary class in the broad gauge trains for 4 annas per trip. Return trips in the Durbar Railways' upper class were also relatively affordable at Rs 4. However, trips in first-class horse carriages were fairly expensive - Rs 5 per hour or Rs 40 for a day.

At the polo grounds, tickets to the Durbar polo, hockey and football tournaments were affordably priced. While entry to the ordinary enclosures was free up to the semi-finals, 8 annas was the charge for finals. In the elite Enclosure A, a membership ticket entitling the holder to watch every sport and match cost Rs 30 for men, and Rs 15 for women. It came with the added perk of three free tea tickets.

New Honda City launched at Rs 6.99 lakh starting price; cuts entry-level price by Rs 50,000

NEW DELHI: Japanese car maker Honda on Wednesday launched a new entry-level variant of its flagship sedan City in India, slashing the price by Rs 50,000 compared to that of the existing model.

The company, which is present in India through a joint venture with the Siel Group, had cut the price of the City by up to Rs 66,000 in June also, after implementing various cost reduction measures.

Honda Siel Cars India (HSCI) today launched a refreshed version of the new City at prices ranging from Rs 6.99 lakh to Rs 10.22 lakh (ex-showroom, Delhi). The old City was priced between Rs 7.49 lakh and Rs 9.89 lakh.

"Our target is to offer a product as affordable as possible to customers. So we have launched a new Corporate Edition of the City that do not have some features, and we have cut the prices from the earlier entry-level version," HSCI Director (Marketing) Seki Inaba told reporters here.

The company's R&D division is also working on to increase the localisation of components and implement cost reduction activities, he added.

HSCI will start taking booking orders for the new City immediately and delivery will start from January. The company had introduced the current third generation City in 2008 and has sold 1.36 lakh units so far.

The City sales have been facing stiff resistance from other models in the segment such as Hyundai Verna, Maruti SX4 and Volkswagen Vento. While Verna, SX4 and Vento offer both diesel and petrol options, City comes only in petrol variant.

In August, HSCI had launched a new version of its premium hatchback Jazz, cutting the price by over Rs 1.5 lakh from the existing model as it looked to increase sales in a fiercely competitive compact car market.

Talking about the impact on sourcing of components from Thailand due the flood, Inaba said: "Our production was curtailed due to component shortage. However, we have been successful in ensuring components for the new City."

The production of its hatchbacks Jazz and Brio is likely to be normalised from February next year, he added. "After the impact, we are now seeking alternate locations like China and Japan to source various parts. We are hoping that we will attain normal production level from February," Inaba said.

During 2011, HSCI has lost about half of its production than its initial plans for the year due to tsunami in Japan and flood in Thailand, he said without giving details.

Asked about the impact of depreciating rupee, Inaba said: "We are trying to increase the amount of export of components like body panels from India to reduce the affect... We do not have any plans to raise the prices of our products."

Reliance Industries to enter fast-food business with its own brand next year

BANGALORE/NEW DELHI: Reliance Industries, a $50-billion-plus oil and gas giant, will enter the fast-food business with its own brand next year, opening yet another front to do business directly with India's growing young population after retail and 4G wireless services.

Mukesh Ambani has roped in Rishi Negi, COO of multiplex operator Fame India, which is partly owned by his younger brother Anil Ambani, to develop a quick service restaurant (QSR) concept within 3-4 months, two senior Reliance executives said.

Negi will spearhead Reliance's entry into a segment that is growing at least 25% a year and where international brands such as McDonald's and Domino's jostle to introduce Indianised cuisines to take on popular local chains such as Jumbo King and Saravana Bhavan.

Reliance is exploring a scaleable model like McDonald's and Domino's, complete with a standardised menu and express delivery, the executives said. It plans both independent outlets and presence in food courts.

"The company is looking at anything suitable for Indian palate, be it Chinese, Italian or Indian cuisine," one of them said. The Reliance Industries spokesman declined to comment. The executives said the company has zoomed in on Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore as the tentative locations to launch the business.

"With a hypermarket format already attracting a large number of consumers, it makes sense to bundle in food as well," one of the executives said. The company has already experimented with a fresh bakery at its hypermarkets, Reliance Mart.

The move is in line with Mukesh Ambani's aggressive moves to build businesses for the country's consumer class, dominated by demanding and aspirational youngsters. His retail arm, Reliance Retail, operates around 1,146 multi-brand outlets across the country through chains such as Reliance Fresh, Reliance Super and Reliance Mart.

Also, Reliance Industries is the only pan-India licence holder to offer 4G services, which can provide internet connection at more than 100 mbps.

The company, which paidRs13,000 crore for the licence, is expected to launch 4G data services within a couple of months at justRs10 per GB, or almost one-tenth of current 3G charges-an offer the Facebook generation may find hard to resist.

Negi is coming in with some experience in the restaurant business. He was the COO of Pizzeria Restaurants, which operated Pizza Hut a few years ago, and was food & beverage manager at Taj Coromandel, the Taj Group's 5-star hotel in Chennai.

Apple and Google dominate smartphone space while others scramble

Google’s Android platform and Apple’s iOS dominated the U.S. smartphone space in 2011 while a number of companies that helped shape the market as we know it were forced to reboot. Market research firm The NPD Group on Tuesday issued a report on the smartphone market through October 2011, stating that Android and iOS extended their lead while companies like RIM and Microsoft scrambled to reform their respective strategies. Google’s Android platform represented 53% of the U.S. smartphone market through October in 2011 and Apple’s share grew to 29%. RIM’s market share with the BlackBerry OS dropped to 11% and Microsoft’s Windows Phone continued to struggle out of the gate with less than 2% of the market.

Offshoring: US, Europe opening opportunities for Indian entrepreneurs and start-ups

The offshoring of work by foreign corporations has helped build India's showpiece $76-billion IT industry.

Now many small businesses and families in the US and Europe are doing a mini version of offshoring by engaging 'virtual assistants' from Indian firms for their personal tasks, creating lucrative business opportunities. In the process, they are calling upon these loyal aides to play matchmaker, agony aunt and consciencekeeper.

Unlike traditional outsourcing which is a business service, remote assistance is a consumer-focused service that even provides emotional support to many.

One such provider is Bangalore-headquartered GetFriday, whose name is drawn from the term Man Friday, or personal assistant. Among the requests it received recently was one from an Australian client who wanted help before she had a chat with her boss.

The woman wanted to switch to a work-from-home schedule and needed assistance and tips on how to handle objections by the boss, mock sessions that simulated the event, and loads of emotional support. The switch did not happen because some key employees were about to leave and the work-from-home option wasn't feasible at that point.

"Nonetheless, the client was happy," said Sunder Prakasham, CEO of TTK Services, which runs GetFriday. Virtual assistance is fast catching up in US and Europe, opening opportunities for Indian entrepreneurs and start-ups such as Brickwork India and GetFriday.

Evalueserve, a research firm, predicts that person-to-person offshoring, both consumer services and services for small businesses, will grow to over $2 billion (Rs10,000 crore) by 2015 from the current $887 million.

At Brickwork, one of the more unusual requests it got was from Gail Dick, the owner of Millermeade Farms in the US and a passionate breeder of hedgehogs. When Dick wanted her website to be an encyclopedia of information on hedgehogs, she outsourced the work for around $12-30 an hour to a virtual assistant at the Bangalore-based knowledge process outsourcing start-up founded by former Karnataka IT secretary Vivek Kulkarni and his wife Sangeeta.

The virtual assistant helped her to format and reference the huge number of articles she had gathered over the years. The articles were based on hedgehog behaviour, including eating, bathing and sleeping habits, the diseases they suffer and patterns of hibernation they follow.

"Great! I feel like having a party as we are moving ahead on a project that has been in a stand-still for several years," said Dick. The project was stalled for several years as Dick could find neither the time nor the experts who could do this job for her in the US. She would also have had to pay nearly double the amount for a similar service in the US.

Govt working on special policy for roof-top solar units

Mumbai: The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy is working on a special policy for roof-top solar units, Mr Tarun Kapoor, Joint Secretary, MNRE, said today.

Speaking at Intersolar India, a conference of the solar industry here, and also at a press conference later, Mr Kapoor said that the government is “working on several options”. To aid policy formulation, a “brainstorming meeting” of all the electricity distribution companies (discoms) will take place in New Delhi on the 20th of this month.

The discussion would revolve around why, even with a 30 per cent capital subsidy, the ‘roof-top solar' has not taken off in India.

“We will come up with something very special for roof-tops,” Mr Kapoor said. Today, the economics works out very well. With 30 per cent subsidy (on the cost of equipment), the cost of generation would work out to Rs 7, he said.

Net metering
He observed that ‘Net metering', where a household could both receive power from and feed into the grid and be billed only for the Net consumption, is very important for the development of roof-top solar units.

Today, legally the discoms can do it, Mr Kapoor said, observing that they are perhaps not sensitised to the issue.

He said that the industry is also not attuned to roof-top solar. “I have been telling them ‘please look at roof-tops',” he said, adding that the industry itself is not much aware of the potential.

Solar resource assessment
Mr Kapoor said that the Government was confident that the country would have the targeted 1,100 MW of installed solar power capacity by 2013. Stressing on the need for gathering of data of solar irradiance, Mr Kapoor said that the Government has installed “51 solar stations” across the country till now. A massive programme is under way to do solar resource assessment all across India.

Answering a question, he said that one of the key learnings from the phase-I of the National Solar Mission was that it was advisable to have ‘solar parks' where several developers could put up their projects.

Solar parks makes the job of putting in place the transmission infrastructure easy, he noted. Another learning was the importance of scale.

Government clears creation of new ED slot in public sector banks

Kolkata: Large state-run lenders like Bank of Baroda and Punjab National Bank will get a third executive director (ED) on their board from next April, while smaller banks like Dena or United Bank will get their second ED.

The government has just cleared the Khandelwal Committee's recommendation to this end, two chief executives at state-run banks said. Banks with more than Rs 3 lakh crore business are considered as large entities.

The government has created the new slot in six large banks and said the third executive directors will be responsible for human resource development and technology.

Bank of India, Canara Bank, Central Bank of India and Union Bank of India are dubbed as large banks and will benefit from this move. This is in step with the director-HR position that exists in public sector undertakings like ONGC, Indian Oil, HPCL or BPCL.

"Creation of the ED position for HRD is an important step in the banking industry as this will help in bringing human resource development under board's direct attention," said AK Khandelwal, who headed the HR reform panel and submitted a series of recommendations in June 2010.

The government has also created a second executive director's position in five small banks having a business of less than Rs 1.5 lakh crore. Bank of Maharashtra, Dena Bank, Punjab & Sind Bank, United Bank of India and Vijaya Bank fall in this category and their second ED will also be responsible for HRD and technology. All these banks have one ED at their top deck at present.

Infosys cuts employees' breaks to meet revenue target

Infosys is making its nearly 1.5 lakh employees work extra hard this quarter by shortening two weekend breaks, a rare step which may mean the company is huffing and puffing to meet its revenue growth target.

Staff at India's second-largest software exporter worked on November 19 and December 10 (both Saturdays), giving the company a revenue boost of 1-1.3% for the October-December quarter, J P Morgan analyst Viju K George wrote in a report.

While all top-tier IT services providers have cited the weak global economic situation in their prognosis, Infosys has been particularly pessimistic in recent weeks. Its chief financial officer, V Balakrishnan, said recently that the company may not reach the upper end of its sales growth forecast of 3-5% for the December quarter and 17.1-19.1% for the financial year, or $7.08-7.2 billion.

Infosys has traditionally been cautious in its forecasts and more often than not it promises less and delivers more. Even so, the downbeat noises emanating from the company as well as the decision to truncate the weekend breaks are causing many to sit up and take notice.

"We believe that this move is unconventional and unusual," George wrote, adding that it has positive implications in the near term but adverse consequences in the medium term. Immediately, working extra days will give revenues a leg up and indicate that capacity is the constraint, not demand.

On the other hand, Infosys may be borrowing revenues from the next quarter to feed the current one. But Kris Gopalakrishnan, the co-chairman of Infosys, said the decision to shorten two weekends represents nothing out of the ordinary. It has been done in the past too and is based on client requirements.

"There is nothing unusual as far as I am concerned and I cannot comment about what others are saying," he said. In the short term, the global uncertainty is affecting all software services companies but prospects are very good in the long term, Gopalakrishnan said.

Wipro and Cognizant, ranked just behind Infosys, said they are not burning the midnight oil by asking all their employees to work extra days. J P Morgan's George was of the view that Infosys risks annoying employees by asking them to sacrifice some Saturdays.

"There is also the aspect of staff humor and mood that needs managing. Infosys' quarterly annualised attrition should be a keenly-watched indicator in current and coming quarters," he wrote.

Sudin Apte from advisory firm Offshore Insights said the move may be intended to improve capacity utilisation in a tough environment. His organisation met nearly 300 clients of software services firms and came away with the impression that IT budgets in 2012-13 would shrink.