The premier management institute, Indian Institute of Management-Bangalore, is in a bind. It had asked for Rs 114 crore (Rs 1.14 billion) to build infrastructure to accommodate additional students under the OBC quota.
In another setback to software giant Microsoft, it will have to wait for "several months" before the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) can take a final decision on whether its Office Open XML (OOXML) file format will be an international standard or not.
The Finnish handset giant, however, has never been able to cope with the mystique that surrounds Apple CEO Steve Jobs' iPhone, which has been illegally imported and unlocked by hundreds of Indians -- corporate chiefs and celebrities included. Jobs has now announced a 3G version of the device with full global positioning system for just $199 (around Rs 8,400) for the 8GB model and $299 (Rs 12,600) for the 16GB version.
The rural BPO centre will be established by the Tata Business Support Services -- the BPO wing and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tata Sons -- in partnership with Tata Steel Rural Development Society -- a corporate NGO managed by the Tata Group for the last 60 years. To start with, it is expected to employ around 200 people. Sources close to the development said the company has already recruited the first batch of the executives for the BPO unit.
The Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, has taken strong objection to the fact that despite a "No" to OOXML by a majority of the Bureau of Indian Standardsmembers, the software giant "continued to make representations to the top Indian leadership (read Ministry of Consumer Affairs), pressuring them to change the Indian vote".
Wipro, the $5 billion company with interests in IT services, consumer care, lighting and furniture, is entering a new set of businesses which will enable the company to leverage its growth on the clean energy and agriculture sectors. The company is readying a plan to include alternate energy, water treatment, food and agriculture businesses under its infrastructure business - Wipro Infrastructure Engineering Limited.
Even as India's external affairs ministry has reportedly assured Canada that the Department of Telecommunications is trying to resolve the issue of a potential threat to India's security posed by BlackBerry phones, Research in Motion, the makers of the phones, said it is committed to addressing all aspects of the issue.
Ravi Singh aims to empower politicians by effectively planning campaigns using software technology. It's election time, and Ravi Singh, the founder of US-based ElectionMall Technologies, knows what it means to be in India.
Infosys BPO, which started knowledge process outsourcing services as a part of its BPO offerings four years ago, is aiming to make Gurgaon the hub for its KPO business.
India's third-largest software company, Wipro, has initiated a second round of major business and executive changes within a few weeks. A fortnight ago, the company announced the appointment of Suresh Vaswani and Girish Paranjpe as joint chief executive officers of Wipro Technologies, the company's global IT arm.
In the largest deal in the domestic information technology (IT) space, MindTree Consulting is set to acquire mid-tier outsourcing product development (OPD) and testing player, Aztecsoft, for around Rs 400 crore (Rs 4 billion). Both are Bangalore-based firms. Aztecsoft has over 2,200 employees and caters to the North American, European, Indian and Australian markets.
Hundreds of sellers of eBay have called for a global boycott of the online auction giant on May 1 over payment, pricing and feedback changes which they allege will hurt their profits. The sellers, for instance, are distressed that they can no longer give buyers negative feedback, and that eBay will increase the fees that are paid as a percentage of the final sales price. Their angst has spilled over social networking sites and forums like Myspace and Delphiforums too.
It's a $38-billion company with a touchingly simple ambition. Cisco wants to become a household name. Having sold over 80 million devices to consumers the world over, it no longer wants to be perceived as a boring company that only manufactures networking gear such as routers and switches. The ambition may sound soft but for Cisco, it is serious business.
The fourth quarter (January-March) is usually a weak quarter for the Indian IT companies due to the lesser number of billing days. This time, however, the good news is that the rupee has depreciated by about 1.3 per cent during the quarter. Every increase/decrease of a percentage point in the rupee lowers/adds to the operating (EBIDTA) margins by 30-50 basis points (bps).
Not a single Indian insurance company offers a comprehensive anti-cybercrime policy for the corporate sector. In India there are few takers for cybercrime insurance primarily because of the high cost vis-a-vis their exposure. These policies are of a high value and, on request from a few brokers, are customised for banks. Cybercrime policies in the US cover e-theft, denial or impairment of e-service, e-communication, e-vandalism, e-threat and fraudulent e-signatures.
The media and entertainment industry in 2007 grew by an estimated 17 per cent over the previous year to touch Rs 51,300 crore (Rs 513 billion), according to a recent Ficci-PwC 2008 report. However, this is 6 percentage points lower than the 23 per cent growth registered in 2006. All the major segments within the M&E industry, comprising TV, film and print, will see a year-on-year fall in their growth rates going by the report estimates for 2007.
Indian operators offering BlackBerry services, top executives of Canadian telco Research in Motion (RIM), the company that owns the brand, security agencies and officials of the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) are expected to meet on March 14 to answer the concerns of security agencies in a bid to prevent having BlackBerry services terminated after the March-end deadline.
The Central Board of Excise and Customs has been empowered to frame a scheme for preparation and filing of service tax returns through service tax return preparers, similar to the tax return preparer scheme for income tax introduced in 2006. The performance of the TRP scheme so far, however, indicates that it is in need of fine tuning - in terms of recruitment, training and remuneration - to become more effective and serve as a benchmark for the STRP scheme.
The Open Document Format (ODF) proponents are alleging that the Microsoft has "cajoled" Indian NGOs to write to the IT ministry and BIS, supporting OOXML as a standard.
While consulting firms and investment bankers preferred not to participate in the lateral placements as usual, sources say that companies such as KPMG, Aditya Birla Group, Barclays Bank, Microsoft, Infosys and Capgemini have issued the maximum number of offers.
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