HCL Tech signs five-year deal with Freescale

New Delhi: HCL Technologies on Wednesday entered into a five-year deal with Freescale Semiconductor, manufacturer of embedded processing solutions. The companies declined to give the deal value but sources said that it was a multi-million dollar deal.

HCL will be managing desktop support, computer, storage, database, telecom (network and security) and process automation. It will deliver services to Freescale across 20 countries, handling a user base of 19,000 employees spread across 80 locations.

Freescale will also leverage HCL’s global delivery centres in Poland and Shanghai for multilingual helpdesk support. It will develop more resilient systems, optimise its operational costs, increase visibility into IT operations, experience reduced technology complexity and drive innovation to existing and new initiatives.

“HCL will be sharing our vision of building a robust and agile IT environment required to keep pace with the growing technological innovation demands of the business and creating new ideas and technologies for the next generation opportunities,” Hal Yarbrough, Director of IT Infrastructure at Freescale Semiconductor, said.

HCL Technologies infrastructure services division (ISD) manages mission critical environments and handles over three million devices for over 1.7 million end users.

The ISD business contributes 26 per cent to the overall revenue of $4.2 billion as of June 30.

India-Pakistan commerce secretaries likely to discuss new trade routes, air links, petro trade

Opening of new trade routes for boosting bilateral trade via land with Pakistan, including the Khokrapar-Munabao link, would feature in the commerce secretary-level talks with India over the next two days.

Commerce Secretary S R Rao, who is leading a 10-member delegation on a two-day visit to the neighbouring country, would review the progress in bilateral trade with his counterpart Munir Qureshi.

Issues such as increasing air connectivity and starting trade in petroleum products are expected to figure in the talks beginning tomorrow in Islamabad. The last commerce secretary-level talks were held in November 2011 here.

During the meeting, which aims at further boosting trade relations, matters that might get prominence include trade in electricity and opening of bank branches in each other’s country, said an official at the ministry of commerce and industry. Both sides might also sign the Customs cooperation and redressal of trade-related grievances agreement.

India was also keen to export petrol and diesel through the land route. New Delhi had also expressed its desire to supply 500 Mw of power.

India and Pakistan recently inked a visa liberalisation agreement to increase movement of businessmen and professionals between the two countries.

In a joint press statement in April after the meeting between the commerce ministers of both countries, the two sides had desired that discussions continue at the official level for possibilities of opening more land Customs stations for bilateral trade, which stands at around $3 billion.

Two-way trade between India and Pakistan is estimated to increase to $6 billion by 2013-14.

IndiGo emerges top carrier for 2nd month

New Delhi: Domestic airlines carried 43.69 lakh passengers in August this year, a decline of over 8.6 per cent compared with the same period last year.

According to the latest data from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), for the second consecutive month, the low-cost airline IndiGo carried the maximum number of domestic passengers at 12.05 lakh.

Market Share
In terms of market share, IndiGo again took the top spot with 27.6 per cent.

In August, Jet Airways flew 8.16 lakh passengers while SpiceJet carried 8.07 lakh.
The number of passengers flown by Jet Airways will be more if the 2.85 lakh passengers flown by its low-cost arm, JetLite (2.85 lakh), is also considered.

In addition, Air India carried 7.94 lakh passengers, GoAir (3.24 lakh) and Kingfisher (1.38 lakh).

Jet Airways enjoyed a market share of 18.7 per cent, followed by SpiceJet (18.5 per cent) and Air India (18.2 per cent).

Meanwhile, Air India has been asked to submit within a week a plan to enhance its domestic market share.

A Civil Aviation Ministry statement said the airline had been asked to include month-wise targets of market share along with the corresponding strategy to achieve these targets for the next one year.

IAN invests in Mexican food chain Poncho

ndian Angel Network (IAN), a network of over 200 business angels investing in start-ups and early stage ventures, made an undisclosed investment in Poncho, a Mumbai-based Mexican quick service restaurant. IAN investor Kaushal Aggarwal led the investment and investors like Saurabh Srivastava have invested in this round in Poncho.

IAN’s investment will help Poncho, founded by IITians Amit Raj and Anshul Gupta in August 2011, to scale up by opening new outlets, strengthening the back-end operations and ramping up the core team, a company statement said. Poncho has opened 6 outlets since its inception and plans to reach 15 by the end of this year.

The entry of renowned international brands and celebrities and rapidly growing eating-out habit have made restaurant sector a hot investment destination for Indian private equity/venture capital investors.

Major Indian PE/VC firms already have wider exposure to small and mid-sized QSRs. The Chennai-based TVS Capital has investments in Om Pizza (runs Papa John’s pizza chain) and Indian Cookery (runs the Yellow Chilli brand of restaurants of chef Sanjeev Kapoor). New Silk Route (NSR) is planning an investment to the tune of $100 million to expanding its food and restaurant portfolio. In May 2012, NSR invested in Bangalore-based restaurant chain Adiga’s.

Kaushal Aggarwal, an IAN member and co-founder & Managing Director, Avendus Capital said, “Food and beverage space has lately gained a lot of attention from the investors. Exclusive services and products are being offered by the start-ups in this sector.”

Other PE/VC deals that took place in restaurants space this year include Navis Asia’s investment in Nirulas Corner House, Verlinvest SA’s investment in Cuisine Asia. Last year, ICICI Ventures invested in RJ Corp’s Devyani International that runs KFC, Pizza Hut and Costa Coffee chains. The Delhi-based Sagar Ratna, a restaurant chain serving South Indian cuisine across the National Capital Region, raised $35 million from India Equity Partners.

TCS opens new centre in Minneapolis

New Delhi: Tata Consultancy Services has opened a new facility in Minnesota, which will serve as a hub for delivering technology services to customers in the region. The 50,000-square foot facility will house roughly 300 employees.

“The decision to open a new TCS facility in the Minneapolis region is part of our company’s on-going commitment to grow our presence in each and every market we serve,” said N. Chandrasekaran, TCS’ Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director.

“Over the past few years, Minnesota has put an emphasis on technological innovation that aligns with TCS’ breadth of industry expertise, innovative engineering strength and commitment to providing cutting-edge solutions, and will only enhance the scope and scale of our customer offerings in North America,” he added.

TCS, which had set up operations in New York City in 1979, now has 18 offices in the US.

Bajaj inks distribution deal with Kawasaki for Indonesian market

Pune: Bajaj Auto has inked an alliance with Kawasaki Heavy Industries, under which Bajaj motorcycles will be assembled and sold in Indonesia through the latter’s distribution network as co-branded products.

The BAL board accorded its approval to the deal this morning, while the KHI had approved it on September 12.

The first product under this alliance will be the newly launched Bajaj Pulsar 200 NS and shipments to Indonesia will begin

in the middle of 2013, Rajiv Bajaj, Managing Director, BAL said. The bikes will be made in India and assembled overseas from SKD units.
Bajaj already exports variants of the Pulsar to Indonesia and has sold nearly 50,000 units here over the years. But given that the big four Japanese bike makers have a virtual stronghold over this 0.5 million units per annum market, the company required an entry strategy that was sustainable, Bajaj explained, adding “otherwise you can make a lot of losses.”

Bajaj and Kawasaki have had a similar partnership in the Philippines since 2004, and together command 45 per cent market share here. After Indonesia, the Indian company hopes to extend such a marketing arrangement to another six to seven markets globally, including Brazil, in the next 3-5 years’ time.

Elaborating on BAL’s strategy, Bajaj said it was clearly to stay specialised. “We have decide

d to be a global company and sell motorcycles all over the world. We want to stay in a narrow band as far as products are concerned,” he said.
Speaking at the company’s AGM here in July, Bajaj had told shareholders that the company wanted to achieve 10 million units in annual sales by 2016 and estimated that 50 per cent or more of this would come from exports.

Last year, Bajaj Auto sold 1.2 million motorbikes in overseas markets, representing 70 per cent of total motorcycle exported from India. In every market where sales exceed 10,000 units, the company sets up assembly units, Rakesh Sharma, President, International Business said, adding that the company has 14 such units so far in Africa, South Asia and Latin America. It is in the process of setting up six more in Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Egypt, and two more in West Africa.

India fourth most economically confident country in world: Ipsos

Mumbai: India's economic confidence has shot up by 8 points to 68% in the month of August compared to the previous month, according to the 'Ipsos Economic Pulse of the World' survey. This makes India the fourth most economically confident country in the world after Saudi Arabia, Sweden and Germany.

India's economic confidence, said a report by Ipsos, has got a major boost due to recent big-bang economic reforms such as the hike in diesel prices, FDI in retail, aviation and broadcasting, disinvestment in 4 public sector undertakings and cut in cash reserve ratio (CRR) by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

Mick Gordon, CEO of Ipsos in India said, Union Government of India unleashed a burst of economic policy reforms that included steep rise in heavily subsidized diesel price, limit on cooking gas subsidy for consumers and foreign investments into critical sectors such as aviation and retail, raising the hope that expected fiscal breach will now be lower and investments will pick up. Borrowers could see better days ahead as banks are expected to cut lending rates following the RBI's decision to unlock Rs 17,000 crore by slashing CRR by 25 basis points. The liquidity infusion would ensure adequate flow of credit to productive sectors of the economy.''

Slightly less than a half of Indian citizens (48%) believe their local economy which impacts their personal finance is good, a marginal rise of 2 points and an optimistic 53% people expect that the economy in their local area will be stronger in next six months.

The online Ipsos Economic Pulse of the World survey was conducted in August 2012 among 20,915 people in 24 countries.

The average global economic assessment of national economies remains static from last month as 38% of global citizens rate their national economies to be 'good'. Countries with the strongest proportion of citizens expecting their local economies to be 'stronger' six months from now include Brazil (65%) followed by India (53%), Saudi Arabia (47%), Mexico (41%), Argentina (40%) and China (38%).

CSIR-NIIST to transfer tech for making wood substitute

Thiruvananthapuram: The CSIR-National Institute for Interdisciplinary Science and Technology-Thiruvananthapuram (NIIST) is ready to transfer the latest home-grown technology.

NIIST will sign a memorandum of understanding with Kerala Furniture Consortium Pvt Ltd (KFCPL) for the purpose on Wednesday.

This is for transfer of the technology for making wood substitute from natural fibre composites, an official spokesman said here.

KFCPL will use the coir composite developed by CSIR-NIIST as a raw material to be used as an alternative substitute for hardwood.

The natural fibre polymer composite named ‘polycoir’ has been found to be suitable as a substitute for wood-based or alternative products, the spokesman said.

The process for making ‘polycoir’ utilises coir fibre as well as other natural fibres such as banana, jute, sisal etc.

Further technical development required for commercialisation of fibre composites will be undertaken jointly by the parties to the MoU.

The composite will be converted by KFCPL into unique design formats of furniture and accessories on market requirements.

Great Potential
According to Suresh Das, director, CSIR-NIIST, there is great potential for employing unutilised or underutilised lingo-cellulosic fibres for making composite material.

The material can be engineered as per requirement and possesses several unique properties like fire, termite and water resistance.

Surface properties as well as physical and mechanical attributes may also be fine-tuned as per requirement.

KFCPL now joins hands with CSIR-NIIST for employing natural resources in the making of alternate materials, which can substitute wood, the spokesman said.

K.P. Raveendran, managing director, KFCPL, said that a range of knocked-down furniture series would be brought out using this material by the end of this year.

Benchmarked Cluster
KFCPL is one of the seven clusters benchmarked by the National Innovation Council under the chairmanship of Sam Pitroda.

It is a common facility centre to pursue seasoning, designing, standardising, testing and finishing of rubber woods for manufacturing furniture.

As an innovation cluster of national importance, KFCPL is dedicated to develop patented alternate substitutes for the deficient rainforest hardwood.

The cluster is destined to boost innovation and competitiveness in the micro, small and medium enterprises sector in the State.

This is sought to be done by upgrading the quality of the furniture and related industry business environment.

Tech Mahindra buys 51% stake in Comviva

Tech Mahindra, on Monday announced the acquisition of 51 per cent stake in mobile value-added services (VAS) provider Comviva Technologies, a Bharti Group company, for Rs 260 crore. The acquisition is expected to shore Tech Mahindra’s top line.

With the new brand identity, Mahindra Comviva, the mobility business of Tech Mahindra and Mahindra Satyam combined is expected to clock revenues of Rs 1,000 crore by March 2013.

At present, Tech Mahindra and Mahindra Satyam get around Rs 500 crore of revenues from their telecom mobility business, which includes providing software and billing systems. Comviva gets an annual revenue of Rs 400 crore. The operating margins of the company are in mid-teens.

“By March 2013, the combined mobility practice of the group, which will include revenue of Tech Mahindra, Mahindra Satyam and Comviva, along with CanvasM (another group company), should be around Rs 1,000 crore,” C P Gurnani, managing director, Tech Mahindra, said. The deal will be earnings per share-accretive from the first year.

As part of the deal, Tech Mahindra, the country’s sixth-largest software provider, is making an up-front payment of Rs 125 crore for the stake and the remaining Rs 135 crore will be paid over a five-year period based on the company achieving mutually-agreed performance targets. The deal will be funded through internal accruals.

"It is a positive move. Tech Mahindra has not been able to grow organically, and has been building on competencies outside its domain, inorganically. This acquisition will give Tech Mahindra a foothold in mobile payment and solutions. The top-10 clients account for almost 85 per cent of the company's revenue. They also get to expand into markets like Africa and Latin America. The only concern is Comviva is a Bharti Group company, and Airtel is the top client, " said Ankita Somani, an information technology analyst at Angel Broking.

The current promoter Bharti Group will continue to hold a 20 per cent stake on a fully-diluted basis in Comviva after the deal closure. Investors Sequoia Capital and Cisco Systems, which had nine per cent and six per cent stake in the company, respectively, have exited fully. Another investor, WestBridge Capital, will have a nine per cent stake in Mahindra Comviva.

The deal comes two weeks after the Mahindra group bought the India-based call-centre operations of Hutchison Whampoa for $87.1 million (Rs 484.03 crore), a deal the software services provider said will give it a revenue leg-up of $845 million over the next five years. This deal was financed by funds borrowed from Mahindra Satyam.

This acquisition will significantly enhance Tech Mahindra’s capabilities in the mobile VAS domain, and will provide access to a marquee client base, enabling significant cross-selling opportunities. Tech Mahindra will enable Comviva’s entry into developed markets such as the US and the Europe.

Comviva was founded in 1999 as Bharti Telesoft Limited. It changed its name to Comviva Technologies in 2009. The company’s solutions are deployed with over 130 service providers and banks in over 90 countries across Asia, Africa, Middle East, Latin America and Europe. It gives services to more than a billion mobile subscribers.

“This is a significant step forward, in our vision of being a complete and comprehensive partner to our clients and, like always, we are confident of making this a successful venture for our stakeholders. In addition to the market leading capabilities, this will also add to our relationship with large operator groups across the world,” said Vineet Nayyar, executive vice-chairman, Tech Mahindra.

Shares of Tech Mahindra on Monday closed at Rs 903.45, down 0.69 per cent from the previous close.

Spices Board joins hands with CII, USFDA for training centre

Kochi: The Spices Board has decided to partner with CII and USFDA to set up a collaborative training centre for food safety and supply chain management. This is to clear apprehension and concern on quality of spices and spices products exported from India.

Inaugurating the collaborative training centre here on Monday, A. Jayathilak, Chairman, Spices Board, said that the centre, the first of its kind in India, is the culmination of the decision taken in the aftermath of the World Spice Congress held in Pune in February this year.

The collaborative training centre for food safety and supply chain management in spices/botanical ingredients is being set up to facilitate capacity building and developing product specific testing procedures in the sector of spices and botanical ingredients.

Spices Board and CII – FACE (Jubilant Bhartia Food and Agriculture Centre of Excellence) is partnering with JIFSAN (The Joint Institute for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition) / USFDA (US Food and Drug Administration) in establishing the centre.

The first phase of the training has commenced in Kochi on Monday being attended by over 60 officials and functionaries from 50 organisations from both the Government and non government sector consisting of processors, trader, exporters, etc.

The phase two for selected deleparticipants attending phase two would be involved in a series of workshop and gates will be held in the US for two weeks. In phase three, training programmes in different regions of India.

Supply chain help
The training centre assumes importance in the context of most of the countries especially the US and EU bringing in stringent legislations regarding the standards of spices imported to respective countries. This will give producing countries like India, an edge over the other competitors on the export front.

The centre would strengthen the supply chain management for both domestic and international trade through providing technical support to organisations through training, information sharing and technical consultancy to organisations selected by the Board, in the upgradation of their manufacturing, processing facilities, quality control assurance system, implementing hygiene and food safety management system, etc.

Various stakeholders in the supply chain will be provided with training, counselling, consultancy, etc to build up their capabilities and enable them to be globally competitive.