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EIU study: Effective knowledge management at top of corporate wish list
Mumbai: Knowledge management solutions are now the most important strategic technologies for large companies, according to a survey conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) on behalf of the Tata Consultancy Services.

The survey of 122 European companies found that 67 per cent of them considered knowledge management/business intelligence solutions as important to achieving their strategic goals over the next three years.

63 per cent accorded the same level of importance to new customer relationship management solutions, while 35 per cent cited mobile/wireless technology as vital.

The EIU said that while there had been huge investment in corporate IT, companies still felt unable to exploit large amounts of corporate information. Two-thirds of companies in the survey complained that while their IT systems generated huge volumes of data, much of it was not actionable, prompting the EIU to suggest that too much information impeded decision-making.

Over 55 per cent of the executives said that IT's failure to prioritise information was the main barrier to effective decision-making. The EIU said companies were now seeking smarter IT tools that enabled them to filter, prioritise and analyse corporate data.

The survey report, Managing Knowledge for Competitive Advantage, is available free at: www.eiu.com/KnowHow
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Infineon's low cost chip platform to halve cost of handsets
New Delhi: Mobile handset prices are set to drop below $20 (Rs869) with the German semiconductor manufacturer, Infineon Technologies, launching its low-cost chip platform.

The platform could halve the production costs for mobile phones, from the current figure of around $35 (Rs1,521). These costs include the complete mobile phone with its key-pad, display and charging system, software for ensuring ease of use with SMS and phone functions, packaging and documentation.

The new platform reduces the number of components from 200, at present, to 100.

"Infineon's platform is ready to release to handset manufacturers as a `reference platform' for new product designs, which means that ultra low-cost handsets could be planned for volume production in the first half of 2006, a company statement said.

In India, Motorola currently has the cheapest off-the-shelf handset priced at Rs1,400. Operators such as Tata Teleservices, Bharti and Reliance are offering handsets manufactured by others such as LG along with a connection for Rs2,000. The new chipset is expected to bring down these prices to below Rs1,000.

Infineon estimates that an ultra low-cost handset would have a standby time of more than ten days and talk-time of more than four hours.
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Dabhol SPV to opt for commercial borrowings to settle dues
Kolkata: Ratnagiri Gas and Power Private Ltd, a special purpose vehicle (SPV) formed to run the Dabhol plant, will go for commercial borrowings in order to repay the $380mn (about Rs1500 crore) dues of the Export Credit Agency (ECA), a consortium of foreign lenders headed by JBIC of Japan.

The SPV's commercial borrowing programme will not be backed by any government guarantee.

The overseas equity of Dabhol, held by GE and Bechtel, has now been transferred to Maharashtra Power Development Corporation Ltd (MPDCL) with Bechtel's claim of $160 million (over Rs700 crore) being settled on Tuesday. The claim of GE ($145 million) had been settled earlier.

Sources disclosed that both GE and Bechtel agreed to settle only after extracting an indemnification arrangement from the Union government against any future claims by LNG suppliers and the carrier company, Greenfield Shipping.

With Bechtel's claim now being settled, the only claimants left are the ECA and the LNG suppliers of DPC. While the LNG suppliers have raised a claim of $1.3 billion, ECA's claim is about $380 million. The LNG suppliers include Oman LNG and AdGas of Abu Dhabi.
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Reliance Info says VSNL creating bandwidth barriers
New Delhi: In a communication to the telecom regulator, TRAI, Reliance Infocomm has said that Tata controlled VSNL was denying access to cable landing stations by resorting to both price and non-price barriers, thus killing competition.

The communication was in response to a consultation paper on "Measures to promote Competition in International Private Leased Circuit in India" even as VSNL countered the charges saying it was not charging high tariff for its facilities and the company was all for the competition to benefit consumers.

However, VSNL disagreed with Infocomm on the need for regulatory intervention in the bandwidth pricing mechanism and said that there was enough competition even now and prices would thus be market determined.

VSNL's commercial decisions on the tariff and non-tariff practices are driven by market forces, the Tata company said.

Based on the available infrastructure, the current IPLC market is already competitive enough in India and there is no bottleneck for accessing to capacity available at the cable heads, VSNL said in its response.

"The lack of competition in the IPLC segment is primarily on account of the incumbent (VSNL's) deliberate obstructions and denial of access to its cable landing station by resorting to both price and non-price barriers," RIC said.

Reliance further said although TRAI had already initiated controls on the IPLC pricing, all efforts to introduce effective competition have been stonewalled by the incumbent.
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JK Tyre on the look out for acquisitions
Mysore: JK Tyre is on the look out for acquisitions in India and abroad in order to meet capacity constraints.

"We are short of capacity despite capacity expansions undertaken during the current fiscal. While we would prefer direct acquisitions of plants in India, we might opt for a strategic partner or outsourcing overseas depending on the nature of the deal," Raghupati Singhania, vice-chairman and MD of JK Industries, said today.

Singhania, however, said the company is still in the process of finding the right company to be acquired and has not zeroed in on any specific deal.

JK Tyre rolled out its one-millionth truck radial tyre from its Mysore plant.

Post its expansion of capacity, JK's total four-wheeler tyre capacity will go up to 7.1 million tyres per annum, from the current six million tyres. The company said that 50 per cent of expansion was for radial truck tyres while 30 per cent was for passenger car radial tyres.
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BSNL's $5bn tender for GSM equipment
New Delhi: State-owned telecom company, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd., (BSNL) tender for the procurement of GSM equipment, slated to hit the market within two months would become the world's largest single tender, worth over $5bn.

BSNL will invite bids for procuring GSM equipment for 60 million lines, which would be 40 per cent more than the country's GSM subscriber base.

Siemens, Nokia, Ericsson, Alcatel, Motorola, Huawei, Nortel and ZTE are the leading GSM suppliers.

Once this equipment is installed, BSNL will become India's largest mobile operator, company officials said. With a total subscriber base of over 10 million, BSNL is the second largest GSM service operator in the country. Bharti is the largest service provider with a total subscriber base of over 11 million.
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Rs.1,233 crore BSNL network order for ITI
Bangalore: ITI Ltd, the public sector telecom manufacturer, has bagged an order worth Rs1,233 crore to set up GSM mobile network of four million lines in four BSNL circles in the West Zone.

The order is expected to help ITI achieve its targeted turnover of Rs3,500 crore for the current fiscal. According to a spokesman, ITI would undertake the task on a turnkey basis and complete the work in the next 10 months. The company already has orders worth Rs1,500 crore for various other projects. An order for one million lines valued at Rs300 crore, which was received last year, is currently in an advanced stage of completion.

Alcatel CIT, its technology partner, would be its equipment supplier.

ITI, which recently started the manufacture of GSM mobile equipment at its Mankapur plant, would account for 54 per cent of the supplies of equipment such as Base Transreceiver System (BTS), power plants and other accessories, while Alcatel would supply mobile switching centre, base station controller and other equipment for the project.

ITI, which upgraded its infrastructure for producing GSM equipment with an initial capacity of one million lines at its Mankapur plant, plans to expand the capacity to three million lines.

This, it hopes, would help the company step up its revival efforts.

The new facility has been created with an investment of Rs43 crore. A similar facility was being set up at its Rae Bareli plant, which would increase the overall capacity to six million lines per year.

Together, these plants would serve the BSNL order for three million lines, comprising 3,100 base stations equipment.

The Rae Bareli plant was geared to supply shelters and power plants, the spokesman said.
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Newscorp objects to Reliance DTH's 'Skymagic' name
New Delhi: In a dispute over a trademark, the Rupert Murdoch-owned Newscorp is understood to have taken objection to Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Enterprises' using the word `Sky' in its direct-to-home (DTH) venture which has been christened as Reliance Skymagic. Newscorp has claimed that Sky is registered trademark of BSkyB.

The Anil Ambani group had only recently applied for a DTH licence under this brand name.

Early last week, a caution notice was issued by the British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB) Group Plc, UK, and BSkyB Ltd, in India claiming that they were proprietors and adopters of the well-known trademarks Sky, Sky News, Sky Sports and Sky Radio. "The trademark SKY is also registered in India in Classes 9 and 16 under the provisions of the Trademarks Act, 1999," it said.

The DTH market is getting crowded with four players - the Subhash Chandra-promoted Dish TV, Prasar Bharati's DD Direct, Sun Direct and T-Sky - already in the fray.
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Maharashtra FDA bans sale of 'Red Bull'
Mumbai: The Maharashtra Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has prohibited the sale of the energy drink Red Bull in the State, until the importers of Red Bull substantiate that the drink does not contain ingredients of animal origin.

FDA officials said that as per their information, the drink contains taurine, an ingredient whose natural source is various animal parts, whereas the company importing the drink says it is synthetic. The FDA has asked them to substantiate that taurine can be synthetically made and that Red Bull contains the synthetic product. The energy drink is at present imported into the country from an Austria-based company, he said.

While no time frame has been given to the importer, FDA said the company would be expected to get back with the information quickly, if the issue is to be cleared and the sales resumed.
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Corporate results: ACC, Aztec Soft
ACC Q1 net jumps 72 per cent
Cement major ACC Limited has posted a 72% growth in Q1 net profit to clock Rs139.3 crore and a 19% growth in sales to Rs1128.2 crore.

ACC had a net profit of Rs81.2 crore and sales of Rs947.9 crore in the Q1 of last fiscal.

In a bid to exit non-core businesses, ACC has sold off its refractory business to ICICI Venture Funds for Rs257 crore.

Announcing this at the annual general meeting of the company here today, chairman Tarun Das said that the company wants to focus only on cement, its core business, and would gradually exit from all non-core activities.

The refractory business grew 36% in 2004-05 with revenues of Rs224.4 crore.

Following its deal with the Swiss cement major, Holcim, ACC has changed its fiscal year to January-December. Its current financial year will be for a period of nine months between April-December, 2005.

Holcim and Ambuja Cements India jointly hold 34.71 % stake in ACC.

Aztec Soft Q1 net up at Rs.7.4 crore
Aztec Software and Technology Services has clocked a net profit of Rs7.38 crore for the first quarter of the current fiscal, up 163 per cent compared to the corresponding previous period.

The figure represents a 12 per cent rise over that recorded in the last quarter of the previous fiscal.

Revenues at Rs42.28 crore have risen by 162 per cent compared to the corresponding previous period and by 17 per cent sequentially. Offshore efforts accounted for 83 per cent of Aztec's revenues during the quarter under review.

Aztec has 1,649 people, a net addition of 244 people during the quarter. The company added 12 new clients to take the active client list to 61, across existing and new accounts.

The recent acquisition of Disha Technologies contributed significantly with its independent testing services to clients. Disha revenues grew 17 per cent sequentially to Rs14.14 crore.
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