This will pave the way for Kapil Puri to expand Spanco Telesystems, the business process outsourcing and telecommunication services company that he set up after partly exiting Sparsh. Puri is slated to receive around Rs 35 crore (Rs 350 million) from the sale of his stake, which will take place at around Rs 200 per share. This includes a premium as against the existing ruling price of Rs 150 per share.
Despite the lack of policy and clear allotment of spectrum, the domestic telecom industry is all set to usher in 3G services with service and equipment providers readying infrastructure.
While the M1 Group, which holds 9.8 per cent in MTN, today backed Bharti's bid, Singapore Telecommunications said it has no objection to the acquisition.
At a 20 per cent premium, the South African company is valued at $45-47 billion. The Indian GSM provider is looking to acquire a 51 per cent stake in MTN.
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.
Though the controversy over the security of BlackBerry services is yet to be resolved, the four operators that offer these services - Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Essar, BPL Mobile and Reliance Communications - have added over 50,000 customers in the four months since the problems began. Before this, the push-mail service, which was introduced in India in October 2004, had 400,000 subscribers according to industry estimates.
GTL Infrastructure (GIL), a subsidiary of telecom network major GTL, has acquired Essar Group's tower company Essar Telecom Infrastructure (ETIPL) for an estimated $1.5 billion (Rs 6,000 crore), according to sources.
GSM service provider Idea Cellular will invest an additional $400 million (Rs 1,600 crore) for rolling out telecom services in four new circles - Mumbai, Bihar, Tamil Nadu and Orissa - for which it has received spectrum from the Department of Telecommunications.
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.
Datacom Solutions, promoted by consumer electronic goods maker Videocon Industries, is close to roping in South African telecom major MTN group as a partner for its GSM foray in the country. According to sources, Datacom, which was scouting for a partner to bring in investments and technology, has short-listed MTN. Discussions with the South African company are in the final stage and a deal is expected to be signed soon.
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.
The Department of Tele-communications is close to allocating start-up spectrum in seven more circles, in addition to Tamil Nadu, where the process is set to begin next week. According to the telecom ministry's plan, the companies would get 4.4 MHz each and the allocation would be completed within a fortnight.
The Department of Telecommunications is considering a proposal to allocate spectrum, the radio frequencies that enable wireless communications, for third-generation or 3G services to state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd ahead of other operators. The move is expected to frustrate private players since this will give BSNL and MTNL a head-start in rolling out high-value 3G services that offer video calls, music downloads and games.
With the government issuing 120 more licences to over 10 players that are expected to roll out their networks soon, telecom companies fear a major talent crunch over the next 12 to 18 months. Telecom HRD analysts said attrition rates across levels is expected to go up to 25 per cent from 18 to 20 per cent. Companies expect salaries to jump 15 to 40 per cent, depending on the level, as the great hunt for new recruits takes off.
Struggling US telecom giant Motorola is exploring the possibility of shifting part of the manufacturing facility it is closing in Singapore to India. China and Thailand are also on the radar. Top sources said India is high on the list since Motorola already has a plant in Chennai and a large domestic mobile phone base of over 120 million phones annually.
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.
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