Godawari Power to get carbon credits
Mumbai: Godawari Power and Ispat's 10 MegaWatt Waste Heat Recovery Boiler (WHRB) captive power project has been registered as CDM project for entitlement of carbon credits under Kyoto Protocol. As per the project design document the company said it would be entitled to 50,620 Carbon Emission Rights per annum for the crediting period commencing from January 1, 2006 to December 31, 2015.
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Tata-Changi to jointly bid for Chennai, Kolkata airport modernisation
New Delhi: The Tata Group and Singapore's Changi Airports International will entered into a joint venture that will jointly bid for the modernisation works of airports at Chennai and Kolkata as also vie for similar projects in non-metro airports.

The Tatas hold a controlling 51 per cent stake in the joint venture company, while Changi would own the rest. The Changi group is open to tying up with other partners with the right skills and expertise joining us in this venture.

The West Bengal government has said that Kolkata airport should be developed by the Airports Authority of India, while Tamil Nadu government favours the public-private partnership route.

This is the second time the Tatas are entering the aviation sector in the recent past. Earlier, the Indian conglomerate had tied up with the Singapore Airline to bid for flag carrier Air-India when it was proposed to be privatised, but the process failed to take off.
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Shell to acquire BPCL's stake in Bharat Shell
New Delhi: Shell Overseas Investments has acquired Bharat Petroleum Corporation's (BPCL) 49 pc stake in Bharat Shell, a joint venture between BPCL and Shell Overseas, incorporated in 1993 for marketing Shell's lubricants in the country.

According to a release issued by Shell, the two companies want to focus on their own specific lubricants brands in the important Indian lubricants growth market.

A Shell spokesperson declined to divulge financial details of the deal.

The joint venture has an authorized capital of Rs250 crore and a paid up capital of Rs200 crore. Bharat Shell also markets LPG to both domestic and industrial consumers.

The proposal has to be cleared by the government and market regulators before a final deal is signed.
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AI, Indian merger approved by GoM
New Delhi: The Group of Ministers headed by External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee has approved the civil aviation ministry's proposal to merge state-run carriers Air-India and Indian, Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel said. The issue has to now go to the Cabinet. The government intends to complete the process by March 31. The transition period would be spread over one to two years.

Patel said that no employee of the airlines would be laid off and employeed would have no reason to be concerned about their employment conditions, salaries or seniority.

The finance ministry has broadly endorsed the issues relating to stamp duty, registration and taxes.
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Manikchand has aggressive expansion plans for bottled water
New Delhi: Manikchand Group said it plans to invest Rs400-500 crore for both organic and inorganic expansion of its bottled water business in the next few years.

The group is weighing options of growing the business through natural expansion and also by acquisitions, for which it plans to invest up to Rs400-500 crore.

Company officials said the group is more keen on acquisitions to give the scale of operations faster and has identified two big national brands for possible acquisitions. The potential targets were not named.

The company is expanding capacities at its various facilities, including Pune where it is adding 1 lakh litres per day to the existing 2 lakh litres per day. The company is also setting up a plant in Lucknow with a 50,000 litres per day capacity and another at Uttarakhand for 30,000 litres per day," he added.

The company has launched a new 'Oxyrich' bottled water, which it claims has 300 pc higher oxygen content.
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BT obtains ISD, NLD licences
Mumbai: BT has obtained international long distance (ILD) and national long distance (NLD) licences from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT). The company is now planning to start services within six weeks.

These licences enable BT's newly-formed joint venture company, BT Telecom India, to offer services for the first time directly to multisite corporate customers in the Indian market.

BT plans to provide corporate customers with virtual private network-based (VPN) services using technologies such as internet protocol-based multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) and ATMs.

The company said it plans to start services within the next six weeks and its focus would be multinational software and BPO houses, banks and financial services that have multi-sites and Indian companies that have global operations.
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DuPont to set up $50 million R&D centre in Hyderabad
Bangalore: US-based products and services company, DuPont plans to open a knowledge centre in Hyderabad with an investment of $50 million and accommodate 500 R&D professionals in the first phase. The centre is expected to be operational next year.

The company said only basis R&D would be conducted at the centre. The bulk of the company's R&D work is now being conducted in the US and some work will be shifted to India in addition to the centre carrying out R&D efforts to meet specific requirements of the Indian market. DuPont offers a range of products and services for markets. These include agriculture and food; building and construction; communications; and transportation. It has six manufacturing facilities in India in three sites in India- Baroda, Madurai and Hyderabad.

DuPont has close to 700 employees in India and is growing at more than 25 per cent every year, officials said. The company has also started sourcing essential materials from India for global products.

The company has also opened a DuPont Refinish Training Centre here, where it would focus on three major DuPont brands 'Centari', 'LE' and 'Standox' -, its second such facility in the country after the one in Baroda.
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Ranbaxy not to sell stake
Mumbai: Ranbaxy Laboratories said its promoters have no plans to sell any portion of their equity holding in the company. The company also denied that it has any plans to issue American Depository Shares to raise funds.

Ranbaxy said its founders wouldn't sell either a part of their stake or the company's shares in the U.S. to fund the purchase of the generic-drug unit of Germany's Merck KGaA.

Reports of either a Ranbaxy stake sale in the U.S., or the involvement of a private equity firm in the bid for the Merck unit have swirled in the local media after its Chief Executive Officer Mr Malvinder Singh last month announced his interest in the Ge rman company's business.
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BHEL announces two decade run of its first 500 MW power equipment
New Delhi: Bharat Heavy Electricals has announced the successful two decade run of its first 500 MW thermal power generating set. The equipment, set up at the NTPC's Singrauli power plant, was designed, engineered, manufactured, tested, supplied, erected and commissioned by BHEL and had led to several repeat orders, the company said in statement. The company said it now plans to launch indigenously manufactured 800 MW thermal sets with supercritical parameters that would suit the Indian conditions, using domestic as well as imported coal.

The power sector undertaking plans to start manufacturing 600-800 MW generators and steam turbines from 2008-09, which would help in achieving the target of generating 70,000 MW power in 11th Five Year Plan.

BHEL said it has invested over Rs1,200 crore for holistic modernisation and capacity expansion of its facilities from 6000 MW per annum at present to 10,000 MW per annum. It also has plans to further increase its capacity to 15,000 MW.
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Non compete clause signed between Hutchison Telecom and Vodafone
New Delhi: Hutchison Telecom International has entered into a three-year non-compete agreement with UK Mobile phone giant Vodafone as part of the $11.08 billion deal.

HTIL said it has entered into a three-year agreement with Vodafone, pursuant to which the Hong-Kong-based firm would not carry on any business in competition to Hutch-Essar in India. HTIL cannot enter any business in India, establishment of telecom services or related infrastructure facilities or equipment, it said.

Under the agreement, HTIL cannot offer jobs to any key employees of Hutch Essar within six months of completion of the sale. The sale is expected to be completed by either April 2 or the sixth business day after the last conditions have been satisfied for the deal, whichever is later, the letter said.
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SAP to double headcount in three years
Bangalore: SAP India, the business software solutions provider, plans to double its headcount to 7,000 and increase its customer base to 15,000 by 2010.

SAP claims to have a 73 per cent market share in the Asia Pacific-Japan segment and said it also intends to increase the market share to at least 83 per cent by 2010.

SAP has software solutions for about 26 industry verticals including high-tech, retail, financial services, healthcare and public sector. It had also announced an investment of a whopping one billion dollars in India last year to be spent over a period o f five years. The company has 1,348 customers at present that include Asian Paints, Hero Honda, DCM Sriram, Exide, Blue Scope Steel, Videocon, Mindtree and Cadilla.

The company has offices in Bangalore, New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Gurgaon and Chandigarh.
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Ford India launches new model of Fiesta
Chennai: Ford India has launched a new model of the Fiesta ---the 1.4 litre petrol ZXI version, one of the six planned by the company. According to the company the car is ideally suited for city driving. The company plans to introduce the car in three petrol versions and three in diesel.

The model, specific to Indian road conditions, has been developed after feedback from customers. Coming from the company's award winning Fiesta lineup, the new model is expected to increase sales during the coming fiscal. Of the 42,000 cars sold last year, Fiesta's share was over 17 per cent. With the introduction of the new model, the company expects the sales to go up.

The new model would feature either a 1.4 petrol 16V DOHC engine or 1.48 V SOHC TDCI engine, full chrome surround twin headlamps, front fog lamps and front map reading lights, rear reading lights and glove box lamp. The car would cost Rs6.30 lakh ex-showroom in Chennai.
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