However, financial experts are of the view that though REMFs are good for those who want to participate in the property boom, investors should not look at them as equity funds.
Sluggish volume growth and mark-to-market losses have affected the performance of a majority of mid-cap information technology companies in the January-March 2008 quarter. Analysts expect that growth will continue to be sluggish in the next two quarters.
With the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) hiking their fees, many general category students will have to approach banks for educational loans. Most will also have to furnish collateral to get that all-important loan.IIM-Ahmedabad, for instance, has almost trebled its fees to Rs 4 lakh to Rs 11.5 lakh. IIM-Kolkata has hiked it from Rs 5 lakh to Rs 7.5 lakh. Others like IIM Bangalore and IIM Lucknow have hiked it from Rs 5 lakh to Rs 8 lakh and Rs 4 lakh to Rs 5 lakh.
India's largest IT firm Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) will not announce a cut in variable pay of its employees this year , despite the company reporting a negative net profit on sequential basis.Last quarter, the company had announced a reduction in its staff variable pay as it did not achieve the internal targets.
Shah Rukh Khan's Kolkata Knight Riders have signed on Zapak Digital Entertainment, a Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG) venture, to develop online games for them. As part of the exclusive one-year tie-up, Zapak will create a cricket gaming zone on the official website of the Knight Riders and is said to make an investment of Rs 1 crore (Rs 10 million) in the deal. The exact value of the deal is not known. The portal has already gone live with two games.
Young borrowers have the opportunity to get bigger loans because age is on their side.
In the last few years, unit-linked insurance plans (Ulips) have quietly become one of the largest players in the Indian stock market. With a total investment estimated at Rs 1.5 lakh crore to Rs 2 lakh crore, they are almost close to the investment made by equity mutual funds.
They are aggressive going through the financial details of the customers. All indications that life is going to get tougher for potential home loan borrowers.
WNS Global Services, India's second largest business processes outsourcing company, has signed on Sri Lankan fast bowler Lasith Malinga as its brand ambassador. It has thus become the first Indian IT services firm to have a brand ambassador. Accenture, a multinational company, is another one that has ace golf player Tiger Woods as its mascot.
With hundreds of theatre screens coming up across India in 2009, Texas Instruments (TI) - a leading semiconductor technology company - is eyeing the Indian cinema market with its digital light processing (DLP) technology. TI has patented the DLP technology. In DLP projectors, the image is created by small mirrors laid out in a matrix on a semiconductor chip known as a Digital Micromirror Device (DMD).
IBM has deployed over 1,200 Indian employees to countries like Austria, Finland, Denmark, Costa Rica, under the Blue Opportunities programme.
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.
More and more Indian service providers are taking the help of the Internet to reach out to foreign clients in the US and Europe. There are 4,000 Indian service providers on Elance.com - a business-to-business work-on-demand portal that caters to small- and medium-enterprises (SMEs) across the globe. It acts as a site on which people who have work post their projects and service providers bid for them. India is one of the largest growing service providers in terms of payments.
The fourth quarter of financial year ending March 31, 2008, may hold a mixed bag of results for Indian information technology (IT) companies. On the one hand, IT firms - which hedged themselves taking the view that the Indian rupee would continue rising against the US dollar - will have to bear a negative impact on the portfolio that has been hedged so far. On the other, their top line as well as operating margins (EBIDTA) will get a boost since the rupee has depreciated.
The emerging markets strategic business unit of the country's largest IT services provider Tata Consultancy Services aims to touch the revenues of $2 billion by 2011-2012. The SBU targets regions such as Eastern Europe, West Asia, South Africa and Latin America. The company is also planning to have strategic development centres that will cater to these regions, beginning with Egypt & Russia. Emerging Markets offer great opportunity for TCS as IT sector there is growing at 8%.
The next time you buy a shirt or trouser that claims to be stain- and wrinkle-free, thank nanotechnology for it. The Indian government has allocated Rs 1,500 crore (Rs 15 billion) for the development of nanotechnology which involves studying and working with matter on an ultra-small scale. The nanotech market globally is expected to cross $1 trillion by 2010. In India, the maximum research in nanotechnology is taking place in the biotechnology and medicine segments.
The Union Budget 2008-09 will leave more money in every pocket.
Information technology firms appear to have lost their appeal at the Indian Institutes of Technology. Campus recruitment figures by major Indian and foreign IT firms have dipped this year, raising further concerns of an industry slowdown.
S Venkatramani, who will head the Indian operations, is already bullish about the opportunity the domestic market offers. Venkatramani takes over after the recent rejig announced by TCS in its organisational structure.
The Indian IT companies, which have been hitherto providing back office services (claims processing and others), are now planning to provide actuarial valuations. Genpact, one of the largest players in the property and casualty space has been in actuarial services since the last five years.
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