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Dataquest: Indian IT revenues cross $28.5bn in 2004-05
New Delhi: The domestic IT industry logged in total revenues of Rs1,24,039 crore ($28.5 billion) in the year ended March 31, 2005, recording a growth of 33 per cent, a recent survey of the Indian IT industry by the industry journal Dataquest has reported.

According to the report the industry showed a substantial growth across all segments, while IT exports grew 36 per cent to record revenues of Rs81,013 crore.

The industry grew 27 per cent to report revenues of Rs43,026 crore.

The top five IT groups - TCS, Wipro, Infosys, HP and HCL - collectively grew 41 per cent, thus accounting for a third of the total Indian IT industry. The hardware segment, comprising servers, workstations, peripherals, and networking equipment, recorded a growth of 17 per cent to post revenues of Rs25,079 crore.

The training industry recorded a growth of 10 per cent to log in revenues of Rs1,270 crore.

NIIT maintained its leadership as the top training company by increasing its revenues 11 per cent last year and improving its market share to 31 per cent.
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Tata Infotech to merge with TCS
Mumbai: As part of a consolidation exercise, the Tatas have decided to merge two InfoTech companies in the group. Tata Infotech (TIL) will now be merged with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), the largest infotech company in India.

Shareholders of Tata Infotech will receive one equity share of TCS of Re1 each for two equity shares of Rs10 each of TIL.
The merger is expected to be effective from April 1, 2005.

The Tata group also owns two other infotech companies - CMC Ltd , which was bought from the Government of India, and Tata Elxsi.

Tata group officials had earlier said before a US listing, the group will have to re-examine whether it needs to merge other group IT companies like Tata Elxsi and Tata Infotech and possibly merge them with TCS.

The announcement came after the stock markets closed for business on Friday.

Post-merger, the paid up capital of TCS will increase from Rs48.01 crore to Rs48.93 crore.

The consolidated income of TCS for fiscal 2005 was Rs9,824 crore with a PAT of Rs1,976 crore while Tata Infotech recorded an income of Rs966.6 crore with a PAT of Rs79 crore.

Tata Sons holds 80.6 per cent stake in TCS and 74.18 per cent in TIL. Post, merger, Tata Sons' stake will be 80.52 per cent.

Addressing a news conference here today, TCS Managing Director and CEO S. Ramadorai said, "The merger is expected to lead to more efficient operations particularly in the marketing services.''

Meanwhile, TCS said its net profit grew 33.02 per cent for the first quarter ended June 2005 at Rs630.62. (See Corporate Results)
TCS added 68 clients and 2,690 employees in the quarter.
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Petroleum subsidy formula runs into uncertainties
New Delhi: The petroleum ministry's efforts to save oil marketing firms from a certain loss in the first quarter of the current fiscal has run into resistance from the upstream firms and refiners. The marketing firms are expected to register loss of Rs4,100 crore due to under-recoveries in petrol, diesel, kerosene and LPG.

Despite assurance from some upstream firms like ONGC, GAIL and OIL for some contribution, the shortfall in the amount needed to ensure that HPCL, BPCL and IOC do not incur loss is Rs850 crore.

According to sources, the government was also expecting around Rs700 crore from Reliance but it is not yet certain whether Reliance will pay. The company may instead offer the government concessions and discounts that may be much less than Rs700 crore.

Neither is there any assurance from MRPL and other refiners on the subsidy sharing formula, sources said.

As of now what is almost certain is that ONGC will pay Rs2,876 crore, GAIL Rs150 crore and OIL Rs220 crore. Of the Rs3,246 crore contribution by upstream firms, IOC may get around Rs1,625 crore while BPCL and HPCL may get about Rs810 crore each.

The loss for IOC in the first quarter is expected to be around Rs1,800 crore, for BPCL around Rs1,300 crore and for HPCL Rs1,030 crore.

Till last year, upstream firms shared losses only on LPG and kerosene but this year they have been asked to foot even under-realisation on petrol and diesel.
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HP strengthens global alliance with Wipro
Bangalore: HP has further strengthened its global alliance with Wipro by extending system integration partnership to HP's entire portfolio of its OpenView suite of software.

HP OpenVeiw suite focuses on telecom network management.

This extension of partnership will catapult Wipro into the league of Cap Gemini and Accenture on a global basis.

To start off this expansion of partnership, Wipro will focus on the Middle East, Europe and Asia Pacific markets. Under this alliance, HP and Wipro will together maximise opportunities in the market to deliver remote management services and system integration services.

"Wipro was the first company to have a global tie-up with HP software and we have been successfully developing and deploying management solutions addressed at telecom service providers. Going ahead, Wipro will be the key implementation partner for HP's entire portfolio of OpenView suite of software," said Sandeep Johri, VP (Strategy & Planning), HP Software.

"This alliance will help bring businesses come one step closer to becoming adaptive enterprises by synchronising business with IT help to capitalise on change," he added.

According to IDC, HP has 21 per cent market share in the network management software space in India and it recorded more than 200 per cent year-on-year growth in the country.
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Posco to invest $900mn in its dedicated port in Orissa
New Delhi: Korean steel major Posco will invest $900 million for setting up a dedicated port facility at Jatadhari in Orissa. The proposed port will be constructed in two phases, according to a company release.

This is part of the company's earlier announcement of setting up a mega steel plant in the State. The total plan also includes building of necessary infrastructure and logistics such as roads, township, water, power and port in the region.

The first phase of the construction of the dedicated port will involve an investment of $600 million, which will be distributed in two modules of $400 million and $200 million. In the second phase, the company would make an additional $300 million investment, the release said.
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BPL family spat resolved
Bangalore: TPG Nambiar, the BPL group patriarch, and his son-in-law, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, have reached an out-of-court financial settlement over BPL Communications.

According to sources close to the development, Nambiar was looking for Rs125-150 crore by exiting BPL Communications to fund his share of investment in the proposed 50:50 joint venture with Sanyo of Japan for colour televisions.

The family feud came to an end today when Nambiar sought to withdraw his petition against Chandrasekhar at the Company Law Board (CLB), Chennai. CLB Additional Principal Bench Vice-chairman KK Balu then "dismissed" the petition.

This has cleared the way for Chandrasekhar to offload 49 per cent stake in the company to a strategic investor. BPL Communications is the holding company for BPL Mobile Communications and BPL Cellular.

BPL Mobile Communications operates cellular services in Mumbai, while BPL Cellular runs services in Tamil Nadu (excluding Chennai), Kerala and Maharashtra (excluding Mumbai).

Chandrashekhar has been in talks with several telecom operators including China Mobile, Egypt-based Orascom Telecom and Russia-based Alpha Telecom for selling a stake in BPL Communications.

The fight between the two came out in the open in September last year when Nambiar petitioned the CLB to restrain Chandrashekhar from selling BPL Communications shares alleging that he had surreptitiously upped his stake in the company. In his defence, Chandrashekhar had said all the transactions had been above board.

BPL Communications during its past ten year of operations has invested around Rs4,500 crore and it reported an operating profit of Rs406 crore for 2004-05, up 42 per cent over 2003-04. Revenues were up 39 per cent to Rs1,012 crore for 2004-05 as against Rs728 crore for 2003-04.
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Praful Patel: Air India and Indian Airlines IPO in current fiscal
Mumbai: Air-India and Indian Airlines will come out with their initial public offering before the end of this fiscal, Union civil aviation minister Praful Patel said on Thursday.

Patel said, "The advisers for Air-India's IPO are expected to be appointed in another 2-3 weeks. They would also advise the government on the proportion of its stake that it should dilute and indicate the price at which the IPO should be made." However, the government would decide on the proportion to be divested only after the advisors submit their report. The minister said that he expects all this to happen soon.

Patel said further that the government is also considering employees stock option in the forthcoming IPOs of the national carriers.

"Foreign airlines will not be allowed to take a stake in Indian Airlines. The government expects the investment in civil aviation to be around $50 billion in the next five to seven years," Patel said, and added that the number of people using the airlines would increase significantly. He said presently around seven million people use the domestic airlines and this number would grow by 10-15 per cent annually.

In this context, Patel said that the domestic airlines between them have only 185 aircraft so there is tremendous scope for acquiring new aircraft.

Regarding the proposal of India Airlines to acquire 43 planes from Airbus, Patel said that the finance ministry has suggested that the decision to purchase 43 aircraft from Airbus could be reviewed. The finance ministry has made a fair assessment and his civil aviation ministry too would try to get the best possible price he said and added "we are looking for a further decrease in prices.
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ONGC may pick up stake in Qatar's Rasgas II
New Delhi: The Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Ltd (ONGC) hopes to pick up a five per cent stake in Rasgas II. The due diligence exercise has been on for the last six months, company sources have said.

Rasgas II is a joint venture company between Qatar Petroleum and Exxon Mobil. Qatar Petroleum has 70 per cent stake, while Exxon has 30 per cent stake in the company.

Rasgas II has five LNG trains with total capacity of over 29 million tonnes per annum. It supplies 5 million tonnes of LNG to India at Petronet LNG Ltd's Dahej terminal in Gujarat.

ONGC Videsh Ltd (OVL), ONGC overseas arm, has already picked up stakes in 15 properties in 13 countries including Russia, Vietnam, Myanmar, Australia, Egypt, Qatar, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Ivory Coast, Libya and Sudan.

Further, OVL may also bid for buying a Canadian company, Petrokazakh, in Kazakhstan. The bidding process for Calgary-based PetroKazakh, which was to close on June 30, is understood to have been extended by a month.

According to Petroleum ministry sources said there were some problems with OVL putting in a bid for meeting the June 30 deadline. However, with the deadline extended, OVL is likely to bid for it.
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Corporate Results: TCS
TCS Q1 net profit up 34% at Rs.630 crore
India's largest software services firm Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) on Friday reported a net profit of Rs630 crore for the first quarter ended June 30, '05, 33.6% higher than the net profit in the previous quarter (Jan-March '05). On a year-on-year basis net profit was up by 33.02%.

The TCS board also approved the merger with another group company Tata Infotech. (See Report)

TCS reported a total income of Rs2,721 crore, up 6.2% compared to the January-March '05 quarter. Revenues were 24.6% higher than the same quarter last year.

While the net profit for the Jan-March quarter was below expectation, the 33% growth in net profit is much higher than industry standards.
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