Carrier Aircon to launch Toshiba ACs
New Delhi: Carrier Aircon is planning launch of products made by Toshiba Airconditioning, to secure a greater share of the rapidly expanding domestic market. Toshiba products, to be launched in March, include window air-conditioners and large multi-modular systems used in big commercial buildings. The systems will be imported entirely from Japan and be positioned for their reliability and technology.

Carrier Aircon, leading maker of air-conditioning systems, is 51 per cent owned by Carrier, the biggest US maker of airconditioning equipment and a subsidiary of United Technologies. In 1999, Carrier bought a 40 per cent stake in Toshiba Airconditioning and won the right to market its products outside Japan. Carrier has recently faced stiff competition from new entrants in India's air-conditioning markets including LG Electronics, Samsung, Hitachi and National and Indian firms Godrej, Fedders Lloyd and Videocon.

The company has presently 27 per cent share, the largest in the window air-conditioner market, and the new products are expected to help retain its leadership in the segment.
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Lafarge India to make cement from fly-ash
Jamshedpur: Lafarge India has begun making Portland Pozzolana cement with the fly ash available from the adjacent Tata Power plant in Jamshedpur. Lafarge is using a portion of the `high quality fly ash' emanating from the 67.5 mw plant of Tata Power, located adjacent to its unit. About a quarter of the fly-ash generated by the power plant is brought into the cement plant directly from the hopper funnel of the power plant, through a pipeline which Lafarge set up with a investment of around Rs 9 crore.

Tata Power, which has to dispose off the fly-ash coming out of its two power plants by road transport to a place about 4 km away, the Lafarge’s offtake of fly-ash load is proving to be more economical. Fly ash, clinker and gypsum go into the making of Portland Pozzolana cement.

Lafarge has been making Portland Pozzolana cement since November 2000. It was making only Portland Slag Cement at the 1.43 million tonne plant, which it bought from Tata Steel at Rs 550 crore in March 1999. The 1.1 mt clinker plant at Sonadih in Madhya Pradesh came as a part of the deal. At present only around 10 per cent to 15 per cent of the total production infrastructure was being earmarked for making Portland Pozzolana cement.
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Ford against used car imports
New Delhi: Ford Motor India has expressed itself against imports of second-hand cars into India saying it would "severely" harm the domestic automobile industry. Mr. John Fink, Ford India vice-president (marketing, sales and service) has said that imports of second hand cars will shrink the new car market in India. The domestic car market is still at a growing stage and all car manufacturers have invested huge amounts of money and imports would seriously jeopardise their prospects, Mr. Fink has said.

As per the stipulations of the WTO, all quantitative restrictions are to be lifted after April 2001. This would open up the Indian car market to imported second-hand cars as well. However, the government is currently working on a draft auto policy, which would include restrictions permissible under the WTO, to curtail the import of such cars into the country.
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Fujitsu ICIM to merge its subsidiary with itself
Kolkata: Fujitsu ICIM, an RPG Group company, has decided to merge its subsidiary - Zensar Technologies, with itself. The merger will become effective from April 1, 2000, after the company obtains approval of Mumbai High Court.
The share exchange ratio is fixed as 1:1 for every Rs 10 ordinary share. The paid-up equity share capital of the merged company would be Rs 23.29 crore. The respective paid-up equity share capital of Fujitsu ICIM and Zensar are Rs 17.44 crore and Rs 23.29 crore, respectively.

The scheme of merger follows an out-of-court settlement reached between RPG and Fujitsu of Japan, wherein the Japanese company had agreed to offload its 10 per cent holding in Fujitsu ICIM. After the merger, Fujitsu ICIM name would be changed to Zensar Technologies. Zensar is a software company with a turnover of Rs 240 crore.
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Swedish parent to pump in Rs 93 crore for Wimco restructuring
Kolkata: Swedish Match, which holds about 74 per cent equity in Wimco, India's 'ship' brand matches will invest about Rs 93 crore to clear company debts. The infusion of fresh funds is expected to help restructuring the operations of Wimco and make it viable and profitable.

The funds would be utilised to repay short-term and long-term debts to reduce heavy financial costs and improve cash flows

In order to receive Rs 93 crore from Swedish parent, Wimco proposes to issue 0.05 per cent redeemable cumulative preference shares of Rs 100 each to be redeemed upon expiry of 5 years from the date of allotment to Match or its subsidiaries. The company plans to increase its authorised share capital by creating new redeemable preference shares by amending the capital clause of the memorandum and articles of association.

The Swedish company had earlier acquired additional 21.89 per cent of the paid-up equity share capital of Wimco in September 2000 increasing its stake to 74 per cent along with its subsidiaries
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Kamat Hotel plans to expand its chain to US
Mumbai: Kamat Hotel India, the South Indian restaurant chain has outlined plans to set up 50 restaurants in the US to be branded as Vithal Kamat. The first such restaurant will be operational in June and is being set up in Silicon Valley at California.

The company is planning to have the 50 restaurants operational over a five-year period in 50 different locations. All the restaurants will be franchised out to NRIs and local Americans. The Indian company will only lend its name and has no plans to invest in the restaurants.

The restaurant will offer only vegetarian food in the US and the cuisine served will be authentic South Indian and Maharashtrian. The menu will comprise of steamed and semi-fried dishes. The emphasis will be on serving clean, healthy food at affordable prices. While the food will be Indian, the decor and ambience will be American.
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Dhunn-Carr set to invest in Indian start-ups
Mumbai: The Boston-based venture capital firm- Dhunn-Carr is all set to start investing in Indian start-ups having. The India specific component of the fund has been activated with the completion of the registration process with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi).

Dhunn-Carr has instituted a $500 million fund in which the investors are largely institutional. The rupee component of this fund is to the tune of about Rs 250 crores. The outfit is likely to invest in emerging technologies like e-commerce, m-commerce, hardware, communication and infrastructure and services.

Dhunn-Carr has already invested in three US companies, all three promoted by Indians, which are in the process of setting up R&D and development centres in Bangalore. The companies are Vegam, Azurn and Dcomx. Vegam specialises in optimising routing, Azurn is in the hardware segment and Dcomx is in the financial derivatives exchange space.
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Bax Global & Karstadt set up quality centre in Tirupur
Coimbatore: Bax Global Inc. the US multi-national cargo transporter and logistics services provider has joined hands with Karstadt-Quelle Neckermann, the Europe's largest garment retailing group to set up a quality inspection centre in the knitwear production centre of Tirupur.

Bax Global’s Indian subsidiary Bax Global India Ltd. will operate the centre, exclusively for Karstadt-Quelle Neckermann (KQN) and their vendors from Tirupur and Bangalore, who supply garments to the European buying house. The QC platform will offer itself as a central testing facility, where the vendors supplying garments, textile items to KQN converge their cargo for rigorous quality inspection done under uniformly controlled conditions.

KQN a major European buying agent, with a global sales turnover of 29 billion DM bought apparel/home textiles from India to the tune of 140 million DM in the year 2000, which included knitwear procured from Tirupur worth 30 million DM. Bax Global India, IS the first MNC forwarder in India to have the ISO 9002 certification and provides the entire range of logistics services including air freight/sea freight, customs brokerage and logistics supply chain management.
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