7th Regional Pravasi Bhartiya Divas to be held at Sydney

New Delhi: The Union Minister of Overseas Indian Affairs, Shri Vayalar Ravi, announced that the 7th Regional Pravasi Bhartiya Divas to be held at Sydney, Australia from 10-12th November, 2013. He said that Sydney is the most important commercial city in Australia, and has a large Indian community. It is the best location on the Eastern sea board of Australia in terms of connectivity with New Zealand and the Pacific Islands. The theme of this event is ‘Connecting for a Shared Future – The Indian Diaspora, India and The Pacific’. The session of the Regional PBD will include there on bilateral business opportunities, skill development and technology, education and culture. It will also provide a forum for sharing of Ideas and experiences among the Indian Diaspora in the region.

Shri Ravi also had a video conferencing with Mr. Barry O’Farrell, Premier of New South Wales. Mr. Barry expressed pleasure for holding the 7th Regional PBD at Sydney. He said it will strengthen the bilateral ties between Indian and Australia. It is expected that 1000 participants will attend this Regional PBD from Australia and neighboring countries including Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Fiji, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Hong Kong, Philippines and the Pacific Island.

The Regional PBD conventions are organized by the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs with the collaboration of the host Government, the Indian Mission, prominent Overseas Indians and Organizations catering to the needs of the Indian Diaspora. It is a flagship event of the Ministry, which provides a platform to persons of Indian Origin (PIOs) and Non-Resident Indians (NRIs), in the process of their engagement with the Government and people of India, for charting mutually beneficial partnerships. These conventions have also been useful for PIOs and NRIs to synergize and network among themselves.

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Honda opens third 2-wheeler plant in India

Narasapur: Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India (HMSI), India’s second-largest two-wheeler company, plans to expand its installed annual capacity 15 per cent to 4.6 million units by March 2014.

On Tuesday, the company inaugurated a plant at the industrial area here, 58 km from Bangalore, it’s third plant in the country, after those in Manesar in Haryana and Tapukara in Rajasthan.

The three plants have a combined capacity of four million units a year.

The Narasapura plant would initially produce 1.2 million units a year. By March 2014, additional capacity of 600,000 units would be added, through a third assembly line, said Keira Muramatsu, president & chief executive. The Narasapura plant would see a total investment of Rs 1,350 crore, including the funds for expansion.

The company has acquired 23 acres from the Karnataka government for creating additional facilities such as a safety riding track. By the end of this financial year, the plant, spread over 96 acres, would provide employment to 4,500 people, said Yadvinder Singh Guleria, vice-president (sales and marketing). The company would produce the Dream Yuga motorcycle at the plant from June. Two months later, it would start manufacturing Activa scooters on the second assembly line, he added.

Accordingly, the company would reduce the Activa’s waiting period from the current 15 days.

“At present, 100,000 customers are waiting for delivery of the Activa in cities such as Bangalore, Kochi, Trivandrum, Chennai, Hyderabad and Vizag,” he said.“Seeing the current trend of demand for scooters and motorcycles, we have decided to expand the capacity by 6,00,000 vehicles by the end of this financial year to raise the total capacity to 1.8 million units in Narasapura.

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Mahindra Satyam, Dion Global launch solution for Australia, New Zealand

Hyderabad: Mahindra Satyam and Dion Global Solutions have launched a software solution in Australia and New Zealand targeting the financial institutions. The solutions would help these institutions meet US Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) regulations.

Mahindra Satyam picked about 15 per cent stake in Dion last year. The solution, FATCA TRAC, developed by the two firms, complies with FATCA regulations, providing tools for programme management, client

classification and remediation, Rohit Gandhi, Senior Vice-President (Asia-Pac, India and West Asia and Africa) of Mahindra Satyam, said here in a release on Tuesday.

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Teledensity rises from 7.04 pc to 73.07 pc in last nine years average call rates drop to 47 paisa from Rs 2.89

New Delhi: The Indian telecom sector has registered a phenomenal growth during the past few years and has become second largest telephone network in the world, only after China. A series of reform measures by the Government, the wireless technology and active participation by private sector played an important role in the exponential growth of telecom sector in the country. National Telecom Policy-2012 (NTP-2012) was announced with the primary objective of maximizing public good by making available affordable, reliable and secure telecommunication and broadband services across the entire country.

With the implementation of NTP 2012, the number of telephonic connections rose exponentially. The number of telephone connection was 893.14 million as on January 2013 with the rural telephone connections having increased by nearly 10 million in the last year. The overall teledensity stood at 73.07 per cent as on January 2013 with the rural teledensity crossing 40 per cent. This is in sharp contrast with the overall teledensity of 7.04 per cent and rural teledensity of merely 1.7 per cent in March 2004.

As far as mobile penetration is concerned, the preference for use of wireless telephony continues. The share of wireless telephones increased from 96.62% as on March 31, 2012 to 96.74% by the end of June 2012 and thereafter slightly declined to 96.56% by the end of December 2012. On the other hand, the share of landline telephones slightly increased from 3.38% to 3.44% during the period from April to December 2012.

The wireless subscriber base increased from 33.6 million in March 2004 to 864.72 million as on December 2012. On the other hand, the average tariff for each outgoing call per minute for GSM services dropped from Rs. 2.89 in March 2004 to 47 paisa in December 2012.

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Tandem Capital launches India fund

Bangalore: Silicon Valley-based Tandem Capital, an accelerator founded in 2007 for startups in the mobile space, is launching an India-focused fund that plans to invest in 20 startups in the country over the next one year.

The California-based accelerator has roped in Manipal Education and Medical Group CEO Ranjan Pai and the company's chief advisor T V Mohandas Pai as partners who will co-invest in the fund, which will be Tandem's third. Sunil Bhargava, co-founder, and Rohit Bhagat, partner in Tandem, who met TOI in Bangalore, said they would not be able to disclose the fund size immediately. They said they would add more partners in India soon.

With India on the cusp of a mobile revolution, the opportunities to develop consumer-focused mobile technologies are seen to be huge. "For millions of Indian consumers who missed the PC revolution, the explosion of smartphones gives access to computers in their pockets," said Bhargava. India is the second-largest mobile phone market with a total of 861 million mobile connections as of February, as per data from telecom regulator Telecom Regulatory Authority of India ( Trai).

Tandem, started by Bhargava and Doug Renert, both technology entrepreneurs, utilizes what it calls `muscle capital' to take forward the ventures it supports. Tandem's partners work closely with startup founders to get a minimum viable product to market quickly, providing hands-on support in areas such as strategy, product design, technology, user acquisition, recruitment and channel development.

Bhargava has twenty years of deep technology experience and worked in Xerox PARC, HP, Oracle, Webvan and Business Signatures. Renert has a similar tech experience in building and helping startups at Oracle, DLA and Tello.

The mobile accelerator invests in about 12 companies every year. Its partners do not mentor more than three companies at any point. The accelerator has invested in Pune-based Quadnode and Bangalore-based gaming portal Bash Gaming.

Tandem invests about $200,000 in each mobile startup and works closely with the team for an initial 6-month period. However, it could support a venture beyond the seed stage to series A and B rounds. "In India, we may have to handhold companies for a longer period," said Bhagat, who previously worked as the chairman of investment management company BlackRock's Asia Pacific region.

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Top five Indian IT services firms grew 13 per cent in 2012

Bangalore: Last year, the top five Indian information technology (IT) services providers - Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys, Wipro, HCL and Cognizant- together grew 13.3 per cent, accounting for revenues of $34.3 billion. During the same period, the overall IT services industry grew just two per cent, research and advisory firm Gartner said today.

However, the companies' growth was lower than 21.8 per cent, their combined growth in 2011.

The Gartner report includes the Nasdaq-listed Cognizant, as the company predominantly has an India-based delivery model and its management is largely India-based.

According to the report, though the growth of India-based providers had slowed for some years, the trend was more pronounced last year. However, "this growth rate is still quite high compared with IT services worldwide, or the growth of the top 10 global IT services providers", it said.

The top five Indian IT services companies improved their market share from 3.5 per cent in 2011 to 3.7 per cent in 2012, the report said. Cognizant, which overtook Infosys in terms of annual revenues in 2012, improved its global ranking from 28 in 2011 to 23 in 2012.

The difference between the revenues of TCS and 10th ranked Hitachi was about $1.5 billion, the report said. In 2012, TCS continued to hold on to its global ranking of 16.

"The top five Indian service providers have continuously chipped away market share from large multinational corporation providers. In the past five years, they have been winning large outsourcing deals (those with a total contract value of more than $100 million)," said Arup Roy, research director at Gartner. "Most of these firms have a large-deal pursuit sales team, which goes after deals of more than $35 million in contract value," he added.

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Shree Ganesh Jewellery House enters into joint venture with Rocks Creation of Bangladesh

Kolkata: Shree Ganesh Jewellery House (SGJH) has entered into a joint venture with Rocks Creation Limited of Dhaka, Bangladesh for manufacture of gold jewellery, both plain and studded with diamonds and other precious and semi-precious stones.

SGJH has clocked a 28% increase in turnover to Rs 12971 crore and a net profit of Rs 462 crore in FY13 as compared to Rs 461 crore in FY12.

During the fourth quarter of FY13, Alex Astral Power Private Limited, Group Company of SGJHL has received Indian Industrial Excellence Award organized by IREDA towards one of the best PLF (Power Load Factor) generating Company.

The company has formed a 100% subsidiary in Ghana for procurement of Dore Gold / Unrefined gold for further refining in India. Current order book size stands at Rs 2500 crore.

Commenting on the performance of FY13, Mr Umesh Parekh, managing director of said,: 'I am happy to inform that we had a great financial year as company revenue increased by 28%. The market witnessed dynamism this year with gold price fluctuations. Retail sales in India picked up significantly in the third quarter, with Diwali and a prolonged marriage season driving growth. Middle East continues to be our global market focus. To explore the emerging market in Bangladesh we have entered into a joint venture to set up a manufacturing unit at Dhaka in Bangladesh. Also, through our subsidiary at Ghana, we are planning for procurement of dore gold for refining in India."

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