Avon Tech seeks strategic investor
Hyderabad: Avon Technologies, a solution-oriented technology consulting and software development firm, is looking for a strategic investor for in fresh investments to fund its expansion and also to partner in the company’s venture into growth markets of South Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Middle East. Avon offers mobile enterprise and telecom service provider solutions to integrate and deploy unified messaging, instant messaging, besides connecting the existing applications with e-mail, databases, ERP, and legacy systems. Having developed a suite of solutions, the company is focusing on the mobile enterprise segment for growth through partnerships. The company is seeking investments to the tune of Rs 5 crore from strategic partnerships to move into new markets. We see value in our solutions and would like to expand through partnerships. There is a lot of traction in some Asian markets and we expect promising business from the countries. We would like to partner with firms that help expand into new markets, Avon’s director-operations, Ashok Nandi said.
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MTNL to strengthen VCC business
Mumbai: Mahanagar Telecom Nigam Ltd (MTNL) plans to strengthen its virtual calling cards (VCC) operations, which includes adding intelligent network (IN) platforms and franchisees. This is to increase sales by over 25 per cent to touch Rs 100 crore per year. "At present, sales revenue from our VCC business is about Rs 65-75 crore per year and we expect it to leapfrog to Rs 100 crore by end of September. We see a huge potential in VCC business and will actively promote it," says MTNL deputy general manager Kishore Kumar. Also, after crossing the Rs 100-crore mark, MTNL will look at improving sales to post Rs 125-135 crore per year and later to touch a Rs 200-crore mark. MTNL, which has around 163 IN platforms in India, is planning to add another 20 platforms, mostly in ‘C’ class cities and towns within a week. The platforms will enable use of its VCC cards anywhere in the country and over every network."The trial runs of the platforms are already over and with their commissioning, we expect a quantum jump in sales of our VCC cards," Kumar says. MTNL has already set up in platforms in most of the ‘B’ class cities and towns in the country. MTNL will increase the number of its private channel franchisees, with a view to increase "visibility" of its telephone calling cards. MTNL would appoint nine main distributors, who, in turn, could recruit sub-distributors in their respective areas.
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Bajaj Auto plans manufacturing facility in Indonesia
New Delhi: Bajaj Auto is planning to form its first overseas two- and three-wheeler manufacturing plant in Indonesia. This is part of its strategies to grow its global business, according to a senior company official. The Pune company is presently working out a feasibility study on the size and location of the plant in Indonesia, which is a big and growing market that cannot be ignored. "We hope to complete the study soon," the official said but did not give details. Bajaj Auto plans to establish the plant to save on high import duties in Indonesia and effectively take on competition from Japanese, Chinese and Taiwanese two-wheeler makers. The company now exports its two and three-wheelers to that country as completely-built-units. About 5 lakh two-wheelers are sold in Indonesia every year. The country opened its doors to imports in 1999 and currently companies like Honda, Suzuki, Yamaha, Kawasaki, Vespa, Mahator and Jialing compete in the market. Presently, Bajaj Auto’s distributor in Brazil has an assembly line to produce three-wheelers from knocked-down kits imported from India.
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Visakhapatnam Steel Plant sales turnover crosses Rs 1,000 cr
Visakhapatnam: Visakhapatnam Steel Plant's (Rashtriya Ispat Nigam) sales turnover has crossed the Rs 1,000-crore mark in the first quarter for the first time. It is likely to earn Rs 160 crore as net profit during the period. Chairman and managing director B K Panda said the plant is performing excellently on all techno-economic parameters. The plant had recorded a growth of 10 per cent in hot metal, 9 per cent in liquid steel and 3 per cent in special steels over the first quarter of last year. The plant had exported 68,000 tonnes of steel products during the first quarter, earning Rs 109 crore. While stating that exports had slumped compared to last year, he said: "This is because we are preferring the domestic market to the export market, as the realisation is more in the former. Steel prices have risen on the aggregate by Rs 1,000 or so per tonne and the domestic market is absorbing the hike caused by input price hike. Therefore, consciously we are going a bit slow on the export front." Labour productivity in the plant at 265 tonnes/man-year and the blast furnace productivity of 1.79 ton/day/cum were better than that of Tata Steel. Referring to the financial position of the RINL, C Appa Rao, director (personnel) holding additional charge of finance, said at the beginning of the financial year the company had debts of Rs 773.37 crore. But in the quarter itself, the loan taken from LIC (Rs 473 crores) had been repaid. "By November, we will clear all term loans and RINL would be a debt-free company. We would save nearly Rs 300-400 crore incurred on debt servicing," he said.
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