Year 2008 results of India's largest drug maker, Ranbaxy Laboratories, and Wockhardt were also impacted by forex losses. Companies such as Aurobindo and Orchid are also expected to post forex losses, say analysts.
Market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) is understood to be contemplating legal action against P S Saminathan, managing director and one of the promoters of Pyramid Saimira Theatre (PSTL), and Nirmal N Kotecha, another promoter of the company.
Keeping a reserve pool of staff is proving to be a liability. This is forcing companies to devise ways to reduce bench strength, by posting in other areas and paying them less till they become productive assets. Moreover, while the physical bench had always been there, mid-sized IT firms like Hexaware and Mastek have coined the word 'virtual desk' to define a certain section of their unutilised resources who will be enjoying lesser privileges and perks.
"Performance management tools have been always used by companies to reward good performers and weed out the bad ones. However, due to the significant growth over the last few years, they were not enforced. With the industry facing the economic downturn, it is using this tool fairly effectively. And it is being done all over the world," explained Som Mittal, president of software body Nasscom.
Wipro sees a silver lining in Q1; others say recovery by 2009-end.
Bangalore and Hyderabad have seen the highest attrition rates in the country. During the past year, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai had higher attrition rates than other cities. In Bangalore, ITeS lead in employment growth and it was followed by the health sector. On the other hand, financial services sector saw a negative growth in the city.
The jury is still out on whether Tech Mahindra should retain the Satyam name. Srinivasan Swamy, CMD, R K Swamy BBDO, says. "Brand Satyam took a beating for only one reason -- accounting irregularities by its erstwhile chairman. The employees were not even aware of the fraud. The company's core values and foundation have not been impacted." The task for the new management, he believes, is to retain its clients and people and the brand image would get resurrected.
In the current fiscal (2009-10), the company expects that this may further go down to about 50 per cent. "In fiscal 2010, we expect the variable pay for the senior management to be less than 58 per cent," said Infosys head of HR, education and research T V Mohandas Pai. He is also a member on the Infosys' board. Variable component is as high as 50 per cent in the total pay packet of the senior executives whereas the fixed component constitutes the other half.
The impact of the global meltdown has forced India's second largest IT bellwether Infosys Technologies to freeze wage hikes and hiring in new fiscal 2009-10.
UNITES, the union that represents workers in the IT and ITeS sector in India, has requested the CEC to invoke the model code of conduct to stall the whole process citing the scandal-hit company's legal liabilities and other ambiguities as deterrents for any potential bidder to carry an effective due diligence process. Over 2,000 Satyam employees, claims UNITES, have registered with the union since the scandal was reported on January 7 this year.
Google allows users to phone a toll-free number and make a query. The 'voice search' uses a combination of automated voice recognition engine and operators to provide this facility. To make the service faster and better, Google is also experimenting with voice recognition technology, which will ensure 24-hour support. Currently, the automated system offers results in English, but the operator-driven system offers results in only Hindi and Telugu.
The company has told its employees that there won't be wage hikes for the financial year ending July 31, 2009, due to tight demand in the US and Europe, declining volumes and the need to further tighten expenses across business divisions. In a harsher step, the company has slashed retainer bonus, which averages 10 per cent of an employee's salary, from April 1. Travel allowance has been sharply reduced, if not curbed, in most cases.
The bank, which had announced a similar cut in January, will see its mortgage prime rate fall to 13.75 per cent from April 1. In a statement, the bank said that the benefit will be available to all its existing customers on floating rate loans. A bank spokesperson said that, depending on loan tenure and amount as well as the customer's relationship with the bank, he could get a loan at up to 50 basis points lower than the benchmark rate.
It's a digital prototype called "sixth sense" that is currently being evaluated by major companies like Microsoft, Google, Hewlett-Packard and Samsung. The brain behind this device is the 28-year-old Indian-born Pranav Mistry, a researcher at the Media Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Global clients continue to keep purse strings tight and very few deals are coming from traditionally large markets like the Americas and Europe, which account for almost 80 per cent of revenues of most Indian IT firms. The billing rates of most Indian IT firms in the third quarter were either flat or were cut, compared with the second quarter of the current financial year.
iGate had in a statement on Friday evening said that it had dropped its bid for Satyam on 'further analysis'. Clarfying his stand last week that iGate would be keen to bid for Satyam at an offer price of below 90 cents a share, Murthy said, "Had we decided to pursue the bid, the share price would have had no bearing on our offer price as we would have bid at a price we thought was a fair valuation."
"We have not lost a single customer in Asia, despite the news (its bankruptcy protection filing in Canada and the US)," said Francois Lancon, President Enterprise EMEA and Asia. He admits, though, that "what works for us (stickiness of clients) also works for our competitors," adding, "The slowing economy is helping us retain clients, since customers don't like taking big decisions like changing vendors during times of uncertainty."
The last couple of years of frenzied activity in the MRO space made many believe that time is not far when umpteen number of MROs will start servicing narrow and wide-bodied aircraft on the Indian soil like motor garages. While many of the projects announced over the last couple of years have not seen the light of the day, Aviation firm AirWorks which launched India's first MRO in airline segment at Hosur (Tamil Nadu) is yet to land their first anchor customer.
R N Rao, special director, sales and marketing, Ashok Leyland said the company is going ahead with its expansion of capacity despite a drop in sales during the current financial year owing to the economic slowdown in the country. The company is likely to close the current financial year ending March 2009 with a 30 per cent drop in its sales to around 60,000 units including exports compared to the last fiscal, he said.
The Satyam board may present prospective bidders for the troubled Satyam Computer Services with operating statements for two quarters - October-December 2008 and January-March 2009 - to help them arrive at a decision.
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