Qualis, the SUV from Toyota-Kirloskar, may sport a higher price tag
Bangalore: Toyota Kirloskar Motor, which introduced its multi-purpose vehicle, the Qualis, in January this year at a very low introductory price, may raise the price of the vehicle in light of the exceedingly good demand for it. This introductory pricing has been facilitated by the high level – nearly 60 per cent -- of localisation of its parts

The company has apparently secured orders for 8,141 vehicles and has already delivered 2,326 vehicles. The high demand for the vehicle has resulted in a long waiting period of 12-14 weeks for the vehicle.

The company’s plant which currently produces 1,000 vehicles a month, is planning to raise production to 2,000 vehicles a month with the addition of a second shift. The company is not planning to bring in any new models and the priority was to ensure that the growing demand for Qualis is catered to.
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IBM and Cisco plan joint servicing
New Delhi: IBM and Cisco Systems today announced plans to deliver a powerful combination of networking solutions by joining hands to serve customers in the Asean region. The arrangement will be in the area of Internet business solutions and will include joint marketing and promotion activities, training and competency centres.

This announcement follows a global alliance between the two IT majors, announced last year. Under this alliance, Cisco acquired some portions of IBM’s networking intellectual property.

The arrangement was based on the view that the Internet is driving the network industry’s growth and networks will become more mission critical with a greater need for reliability, availability and security.
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PriceWaterhouseCoopers subsidiary to take stake in Magic Software
Calcutta: Noted management consulting firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers, through its wholly owned subsidiary, Indiainitiative.com, is planning to acquire a 26 per cent stake in the Israel based e-commerce major, Magic Software.

In a report appearing in the Business Standard, the consulting firm is said to be close to finalising the deal with the Israeli company and deal is likely to be closed shortly.

Magic, a leading global player in the software market, is a member of the Formula Group (Nasdaq: Forty). It develops, markets and supports software development and deployment technology that enables enterprises to speed up deployment of applications. There are currently over 2,500 Magic solution partners globally. The company has also had a string of acquisitions last year. Some notable ones being Open Sesame Systems of Canada, which has been merged with Magic's California-based US subsidiary. Another acquisition being Mexico-based Access Data, which provides web-based law enforcement solutions. The company also acquired a majority stake last year in Hungary-based Magic (Onyx) Software Enterprises.
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US based BioCoreMedical to plan launch in India
New Delhi: US based biotech company, BioCoreMedical Technologies, is planning to introduce its collagen wound management product in India shortly. It is entering into a strategic alliancewith Wisec Global for this purpose. At an appropriate later date it may plan to enter into a joint venture for the manufacture of the wound dressing product.

Collagen, a fibrous insoluble protein found in abundant quantities in the body, encourages wound healing through the deposition and organisation of newly formed collagen fibres and granulation tissue in the wound bed., It also stimulates new tissue development and wound debridement creating an environment that facilitates quick wound healing.

The products are currently marketed under the names SkinTemp and Medifil. According to a company release, the products are derived from bovine hide which is the safest and most plentiful source of type-I collagen available.
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Elbee to take over family owned travel services arm
Mumbai: Elbee Services Limited, a domestic courier major which is contemplating a private placement of its shares, is taking over Fiesta Travel Services and making it the company’s wholly owned subsidiary. The travel agency has been floated by Sandip Shah, the promoter of Elbee.

Fiesta has also been involved in developing, alongwith Elbee, a office-cum-hub for the latter at a cost of approximately Rs. 70 crore.
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Trade union raises funds for IPCL stake acqusition
Mumbai: The BJP affiliated trade union, Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, is said to have raised a corpus of Rs. 140 crore for acquiring a stake in the public sector petrochem company, IPCL. The money is said to have been raised from its supporters as well as supporters of the BJP.

In response to the bids made by Reliance and the George-Soros promoted The Chaterjee Group, the union had submitted a proposal to the government to acquire a 30 per cent stake in IPCL in three tranches of 10 per cent each, with each tranche at an increasing premium. The government’s response to this proposal by its affiliate trade union is still awaited.

The union has floated a new co-operative society for this purpose to act as the vehicle for the acquisition and 40 per cent of the equity will be held by employees and the remaining by domestic investors, including financial institutions.
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Lyka Labs to appoint Ernst & Young for brand valuation
Mumbai: With a view to reflect the intrinsic worth of the company, the Rs. 180 crore pharma company, Lyka Laboratories, has appointed Ernst & Young, to value the ‘Lyka’ brand.

The consulting major is likely to take into account the number of product registrations that the company has in foreign countries for export purposes in the valuation exercise. Currently, the company has around five hundred product packs that are registered in the developing countries of South America, south-east Asia, Africa and Russia. Also, another 100 are pending registration. The turnover of the company this year from exports is in the vicinity of Rs 80 crore or 45 per cent.

Lyka is following the footseps of another pharma major, Dr. Reddy's Laboratories, which has been conducting such an exercise for the last three years. The 'Dr Reddy's' brand was valued at Rs 342 crore last year.

The company management is hoping that the value of the brand will improve sentiment about the share on the bourses thereby providing for capital appreciation. The Lyka scrip closed at Rs 74.05 on the Bombay Stock Exchange on Thursday.
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Maruti-800 to be the market maker
New Delhi: Contrary to popular belief that the warhorse for Maruti Udyog Limited, the Maruti-800 model, has outlived its utility, the company seems to be using this model to spearhead a campaign that will expand the passenger car market. It has set an ambitious target of 200,000 units for the model in the financial year 2000-01.

The company is planning to take the car into markets it has never been before – markets that will be smaller than the ones it currently operates in. This has been based on the encouraging response to the 800 cc model that has been fitted with MPFI system.
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Philips plans several product launches
Mumbai: Dutch consumer electronics company, Philips India, is planning a slew of new product launches in its renewed bid to become a market leader in the consumer electronic segment.

The domestic appliances and personal care (DAP) division of the company is planning to introduce over 12 products over the next one year in India. The company is said to have conducted an extensive market survey for this purpose.

The first product which will be introduced in the Indian market is a blender bar that can be used to make chutneys and buttermilk. The launch is scheduled for August 2000. Other products that may be introduced are irons, toaster, hairdryers, ovens, mixer grinders.

Philips has international leadership positions in irons. In India too its number one. The irons category in India was expanded in 1999 with a range of steam irons and dry lightweight irons. Initially, the steam irons were launched in North and are now being rolled out at the national level.
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Star TV and UTV: reduced stake, but greater co-operation
Mumbai: Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch’s Star TV has, while it will diluting its stake in Ronnie Screwvala promoted UTV, entered into a strategic alliance with UTV for content creation and Internet portals. According to the new arrangement between the two groups, Star TV will hold a 12 per cent stake in UTV following the latter’s initial public offering.

The new alliance is said to be focussing on seven specific areas that include, content for television channels, animation, content for webcasting and internet sites, TV content for sharkstream.com -- UTV’s broadband venture in Singapore -- programming and packaging of new niche channels, distribution of UTV’s bouquet of channels in India and abroad, and production of movies for theatrical and satellite release.

UTV will also provide content for the proposed health and education channels being planned by Star TV. Besides education and health, Star TV is also contemplating a launch of Fox Kids in India.
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Wipro ties up for EAI solutions
Bangalore: Indian software major, Wipro, has tied up with Sun Forte to offer enterprise application integration solutions that will be based on the Forte software platform.

It will begin by using Forte Conductor — a software that makes it possible to isolate the business processes from the application logic — and Forte Adapters — that eases the task of integrating and extending an existing application infrastructure.

The company feels that with companies increasingly wanting to take their businesses on to the Internet, the need to address integration issues at various levels was gaining importance and hence the market for providing EAI solutions is huge.

Sun Forte is a leading global player in the EAI area.
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Global Telesystems announces major plans for internet
Mumbai: Leading telecom player, Global Telesystems, today announced plans to enter into interactive content for the Internet, an area, it believes, is not occupied by any company as of date. The company believes that its prior experience in telecom consultancy and the network and software business uniquely positions it to occupy this space.

Interactive content envisages that all content, unlike books and other media where the content is controlled by the providers, can be perused by the readers using the full capability of the Internet.

The company’s business model envisages a high level of content aggregation or creation of new content specifically for the internet for broad band access. The company is said to be talking to several other specialists, including the likes of Crest Communications, for this purpose.
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Health kiosk scheme from CDR Hospitals
Hyderabad: In an attempt to marry IT with medical science available in top hospitals, for the benefit of the people in the rural areas, CDR Hospitals is launching specially designed health kiosks in the semi-urban and rural areas.

Under this scheme, frontline medical, diagnostic and imaging facilities available among a group of hospitals would be delivered through the specially designed health kiosks.

The kiosks would act as a single window to dispense a variety of health-related services and would be manned by highly trained medical and para-medical people on franchisee basis and through them patients can tele-consult medical specialists of any branch in the city hospitals.

The kiosks which plan to extensively leverage the capabilities of the Internet, will have have digitisers to send X-ray and CT scan pictures to a central station in Hyderabad where radiology specialists would give their opinion. It could also act as collection centres of blood and other pathological samples from nursing homes. The samples would be collected daily and couriered to Hyderabad where they would be analysed and the findings sent by e-mail to the respective kiosks for use by the patients.

The kiosks will also help patients let their doctors know about their progress through e-mail, store medical records electronically and can ensure a regular supply of essential drugs. It also plans to sell medical insurance and health plans of various medicare companies, thus making high-tech medical help affordable.
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Ford takes over Rover’s sport utility vehicles from BMW
Detroit: BMW which has been seeking to sell of its troubled Rover division has finally found a buyer for the sports utility vehicles of the English manufacturer. Ford Motor Co., the world’s No. 2 car manufacturer has agreed to buy the Land Rover group from the beleaguered German auto company for an estimated $2.9bn, thus adding another prestigious brand in its stable. Pending the signing of the final agreement after the process of due diligence has been completed, the entire transaction is expected to be closed by the third quarter of this year.

Announcing the acquisition, Ford’s chief executive officer, Mr. Jacques Nasser, stated that the Land Rover brand fits in very well with its existing brands and goes a long way in consolidating its growth opportunities, particularly in the off-road and four-by-four segments of the auto market. Ford perceives the acquisition to be extremely complementary in terms of the price and product positions.

Under the deal, Ford is set to take over Land Rover's Solihull assembly plant in central England, the Land Rover Discovery Series II mid-sized and large luxury Range Rover SUVs to Ford's truck- heavy US line-up. In this segment Ford already has such hot sellers as the Ford Explorer and Expedition, and Lincoln Navigator SUVs.
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AOL’s largest German partner to sell of its 50 per cent holding
Frankfurt: Bertelsmann AG, the world’s thrid largest media company which has a 50 per cent stake in AOL Europe, is said to be divesting its stake in AOL Europe for an estimated $7 bn.

The exit, which was widely expected after AOL merged with Time Warner Inc., will is not likely to end total relationship between the two companies. Bertelsmann has been retained by AOL Europe as its most preferred partner for content and e-commerce on AOL’s online service. In return, AOL Europe will have access to Bertelsmann’s marketing and distribution reach in Europe.

The sell-off is likely to give Bertelsmann much needed cash infusion for acquisitions it plans to do to strengthen its music business.

AOL Europe is Europe's second-largest internet service provider with about 3.8m customers, compared with some 4.2m for market leader T-Online, a unit of Deutsche Telekom AG.
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‘Amoco’ brand name and logo to be dropped
Chicago: British Petroleum which acquired Amercia’s leading oil company, Amoco, ina $55 bn deal in 1998, is all set to relegate the Amoco brand name to the background.

In a rebranding exercise the company is said to be undertaking, the famous shield logo of Amoco will give way to BP name and logo. Till now the company has been using both the logos’ in its branding exercise.
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