Air-India to sell off 6 aircraft
New Delhi: Despite having an extremely low fleet count for an international airline of its size, India's international carrier, Air India, has decided to put six more of its aircraft on sale. On the block are three Airbus A300-B4 and three Boeing 747-200 planes which the carrier wants to get rid of. The sale is likely to fetch the airline approximately $15 million.

Once these aircraft are sold, the carrier's fleet would be reduced to a abysmally low 17 -- clearly not worthy of an international airline. It will be left with six Boeing B747-400, three B747-300 and eight A310s.

The A300-B4 aircraft, planned to be sold, are around 18 years old while the B747-200 are 22 years old, according to airline sources. The company was keen on getting rid of these planes in order to reduce the number of aircraft types deployed by it.

Once these planes are sold, the employee per aircraft ratio of Air India would shoot up further while revenues will go down due to reduced level of operations. Given the undue delays the airline is already facing over its new fleet acquisition program, unless the company manages to get aircraft on dry lease as planned by it, there is bound to be a very bad impact on its operations in the near future. Coming at a time when the government wants to privatise the airline by selling off a substantial part of its holding, this move does not portend well for the airline.

Air India has received about six bids for the tender it has floated for leasing half-a-dozen A310 and a couple of B747-400 combi aircraft. However, given the strict conditions stipulated in the tender regarding the age of the aircraft and various other technical details, most of the bids have not qualified.
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TCS to make an IPO at an opportune moment
Mumbai: India's leading software consultancy organisation, Tata Consultancy Services, will come out with an IPO at an "opportune moment", according to the chief executive officer of the organisation, Mr. S. Ramadorai. What TCS is evaluating is the right value the shares would command when floated, thus giving it the ability to pursue its growth strategy through acquisitions.

The company, which earned a revenue of Rs. 2,100 crore in the recent financial year, has identified e-business as the key driver of its growth strategy in the near future. It aims to increase revenue from this area to 25 per cent of the total turnover by 2001.

The company has zeroed in on the e-business area as a focus given its expertise, insights and experience in the market over the last three years. It plans to deliver the widest range of offerings, establish specialised practices such as ERP and CRM, and enter into strategic partnerships with e-biz product companies as its focus areas for enhancing end-to-end business solutions.

The company has already partnered e-biz product companies such as Broadvision, Siebel, Clarify and ATG Dynamo for providing it consultancy and system integration services.

It also plans to make a foray into the application service provider business, for which its was thinking of utilising its 14 development centres across the country as data centres.
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IPCL to redesign its strategies with external help
Baroda: With intense competition setting in, pursuant to the commissioning of two large petrochemicals complexes in the country, India's oldest petrochemicals company, Indian Petrochemicals Corporation Ltd., has decided to redesign its strategies for marketing. It is roping in an external consultant for this purpose.

Mr. Ashok Chawla, chairman and managing director of the company, announced that the board of directors of the company had already cleared the proposal of appointing an external consultant. The company also plans to reduce its workforce through the introduction of a voluntary retirement scheme. IPCL has over 14,000 employees in total of its three plant at Baroda, Nagothane in Maharashtra and Gandhar in Gujarat. VRS if offered, it will be mainly aimed at its Baroda complex, where approximately 6,000 employees are working in 21 different plants.

The company's performance has been under pressure since the commissioning of petrochemical complex of Gail with 300,000 mt capacity during the last financial year and the 425, 000 mt petrochemical complex of Haldia group during the current financial year. As a result of these new plants, there has been an oversupply situation in the market and, according to Mr. Chawla, this situation is to continue for the next three years.

Although the company has a well-entrenched marketing network, the oversupply situation is not helping move its products fast enough. IPCL has identified areas which will be touched upon while formulating new marketing strategy for the company.
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Campco bags Amul chocolate deal
Bangalore: The Central Arecanut and Cocoa Marketing and Processing Cooperative Limited (Campco) which has been making chocolates for multantional, Nestle, has managed to get India's largest co-operative sector dairy products manufacturer, Amul, manufacture its entire range of chocolates at Campco's Puttur unit near Mangalore. Campco's agreement with Nestle is coming to an end on December 31. It is understood that an MoU with Amul to this effect is to be signed very shortly.

Campco, which manufactures its own brand of chocolates in a small way, previously had an offer from Amul to pool all chocolates under the Amul brandname, which would have brought the two big Indian co-operative brands together. At that time, Campco was not in favour of the move as it wanted to go alone.

Campco, which re-entered the chocolate market after a gap of ten yers, has made an aggressive return with ten products that include such brands as Melto, Turbo bar, Cream Treat, Megabite, Campco Bar, Campco Eclair, Winner and Kraze. It has also tied up, for the lucrative Mumbai region, with Panama Marketing Company, the marketing arm of Akbarallys, Mumbai's noted department store.

Campco also manufactures a clutch of semi-finished products for the market namely cocoa mass, cocoa butter, cocoa powder, unsweet-covering, sweet covering, chocolate mass, choco-paste, cocoa chips and bitter chocolate.
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India not likely to be affected by Bestfoods deal
Mumbai: FMCG major, Unilever’s, $20-billion global acquisition of Bestfoods Inc is unlikely to have any immediate significant effect on the Indian operations of both companies.

The only impact may be that, Hindustan Lever, which is always on the lookout for good brands, will get an assorted mix of foods brands.

According to analysts in the US, Unilever is unlikely to effect any changes in Bestfoods in the near future, since the buy-out will mutually benefit both companies. The takeover deal is subject to approvals and clearances from competent authorities. The region to benefit most from this deal would be Europe, where the two companies are likely to complement each other's strengths.

Further, Unilever’s strength in Asia Pacific will be used to extend the Bestfoods franchisee. Unilever will also use the Bestfoods excellent food-service channel to distribute Unilever’s range of spreads, tea and tea based beverage and culinary.

In the staple foods segment in India, Hindustan Lever has a presence in the "atta" sector through its Annapurna atta, while Bestfoods owns Captain Cook, acquired earlier from the DCW Group. It is expected that the Captain Cook brand will help Hindustan Lever consolidate its postion in the atta sector.
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Hughes Telecom gets approval for its equity expansion
Mumbai: Hughes Telecom, one of India's private basic telephone service providers, has been allowed by the Department of Telecommunications to raise an additional Rs 1,000 crore as equity. The approval is subject to a five year lock-in period on the current shareholding and is subject to a cap of 49 per cent on the extent of foreign holding in the company.

Hughes Telecom is to come out with an IPO of Rs 753 crore, while an additional Rs 138 crore would be simultaneously picked up by promoters led by Hughes Electronics Corporation. The funds are being raised to create a broadband network across Maharashtra. The company has already signed an agreement with with Lucent Technologies to develop the infrastructure for internet services that it plans to provide.

The idea is to provide seamless connectivity to the subscriber through high-speed optic fibre network and also provide access to the internet.

The company hopes to follow the international trend of telecom operators charging for access, content and applications but not for internet subscription but tariff plans are yet to be worked out.

The company now awaits the approval from the Foreign Investment Promotion Board for the foreign equity being brought in by promoters and the nod from the Securities and Exchange Board of India in response to its offer document filed on May 16.
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Zee plans rural education drive
Bangalore: Mr. Subash Chandra, chairman of media group Zee Telefilms, said that the group is launching a novel initiative to take basic education to the rural areas using digital technology. The service, termed "Best Basic Education and Support Television", is being launched in April 2001, in rural India in association with NGOs and teachers to provide primary school education.

In one year, the aim is to cover 10,000 villages in the Hindi speaking areas. It will be later duplicated in other languages and run countrywide if found successful. The company will plan to give away a television and a battery free of cost.

Mr. Chandra stated that with a billion people in the country, of which nearly 600 million are currently non-consumers, the program will help improve their living standards, commercial benefits will flow over time.
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Sun Pharma to focus on oncology, gynaecology
Mumbai: Sun Pharmaceuticals Industries Ltd (SPIL), which sees the areas of gynaecology and oncology segments as future growth segments, is all set to to increase its presence in these segments.

The company has nine to ten drugs in its product range in the oncology segment and plans to introduce four to five new drugs this year, in its bid to capture a larger market share in the segment. The company also sees mounting potential in gynaecology and related area such as paediatrics. The company's strategy of identifying future growth areas and entering the market early, has immensely contributed to their success in recent years.

The company has presence in 26 international markets including Europe, South-East Asia, West Asia and the CIS countries.
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