The earlier deadline given for a Corporate Debt Restructuring scheme was July 31. According a senior counsel who is close to the development, Cash and Carry has requested for a meeting with secured and unsecured creditors to work out the compromise. C&C was a firm promoted by R Subramanian, promoter and managing director of Subhiksha. Subramanian was not available for a comment and he did not respond to an e-mail sent by Business Standard.
Projects worth over Rs 70,000 crore (Rs 700 billion) to upgrade technology have been kickstarted in the country.
India's second-largest information technology services provider, Infosys Technologies, has applied for a mere 405 visas till date for financial year 2009-10 - its lowest application count in recent years.
Investment by PEs into HLS sector dropped to $203 million in 2008-09 from $836 million in 2007-08, while the number of deals dropped 51 per cent to 21 from 43 deals. Similarly, VC investments also declined to $48 million from $80 million. In terms of deals, they dropped to 11 from 14.
The gap between operation and inspiration created by the premature exit of Infosys Technologies' key founder, Nandan Mohan Nilekani, is being filled by his colleagues.
Infosys BPO Ltd, the business process outsourcing operation of Infosys Technologies, is looking at raising its headcount in the Americas through inorganic growth. The company is understood to be scouting for a strategic acquisition in the $40-60 million range either in Canada or the US, according to industry sources.
The EDS-owned company had withdrawn this allowance from June 1 following a review of its shift policy sometime last month. This allowance was being given to applications delivery employees at levels 1-7 (those with up to seven years of work experience) doing the day shift beyond 10 pm everyday. The shift allowance of Rs 500 per shift for employees working between 10 pm and 6 am remains untouched.
Over 36 per cent of the 1,630 executives surveyed in India in March this year expected an upturn in the global economy by the end of 2009, as against 34 per cent of North American business executives and 32 per cent of Chinese. Asia-Pacific and Europe recorded 28 per cent and 24 per cent on the hope meter. However, about 62 per cent of Indians surveyed expected the world economy to rebound only by 2010 or later.
Plans to increase headcount in the US, mainly in the banking and finance vertical.
New shift policy to affect hundreds.
The former unit produces motor tyres and tubes, while the latter makes radial tyres. Union sources said employees also decided to boycott the coming Lok Sabha elections. A meeting on Monday between management and union heads saw no settlement.
It is not clear which groups of the Indian operations have been affected by the cuts which are learnt to have been carried out across diverse functions. However, a company source said that a sizeable number of Microsoft's sales and support personnel in Hyderabad and a few in Bangalore were among those affected. The Response Windows team has also been dismantled completely, the source claimed.
A spokesperson attached to GE's Jack Welch Research Center in Bangalore said after the new people join, employee numbers in Bangalore would cross the 4,500-mark. GE's technology product research and development team is currently 3,800-people strong, with an additional 350 people employed in global research.
The 17-day strike by workers at Hyundai Motor India's Sriperumbudur factory ended after a meeting of workers' representatives, the company management and the labour board in Chennai.
Around 800 workers at Hyundai Motor India's Sriperumbudur factory, who were on hunger strike, were arrested on Wednesday.
Most recession-hit clients, domestic and foreign, are asking for price cuts that large Indian IT firms are unable to offer due to high overheads. However, SMEs can afford to do so, since their employee costs are low. This is the right time to enter the domestic market, which is projected to expand five-fold by 2020 to $90-100 billion, including both technology and business outsourcing, said K Purushothaman, Nasscom's regional director for Tamil Nadu and Kerala.
"Employees who have been consistently demonstrating poor performance were counselled out. Less than 1 per cent of our 11,250 employees in Chennai and 11,496 employees in Hyderabad have been impacted. As for the Thiruvananthapuram centre, less than 1 per cent of the 1,800 employees were impacted," said Mohandas Pai, member of the board, director, human resources, Infosys Technologies.
IT services provider MindTree Consulting is restructuring salary offers to its trainees over an 18-month period by staggering payments and linking these to tenure. The plan will be applicable to 250 freshers who joined the company in March this year. Another 250 people are expected to join in October this year.
Infosys is recruiting 18,000 people in 2009-10 compared with 28,231 a year ago and will freeze wages to rein in costs. Of the 18,000 new recruits, about 2,000 will be lateral hires, with the rest being freshers. "Our offer letters have gone out over two-and-a-half months ago and we expect most of the new employees to join soon. The conversion rate will be 80 per cent," said HR Director TVM Pai. He ruled out any revision of the salary offers to freshers.
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.