An unhappy, restive mood prevails at the Ford factory Maraimala Nagar, 50 km from Chennai, and the surrounding area. The security is tight - not just Ford security personnel but also Tamil Nadu state police who are posted at the main gate. From September 9, when Ford India announced it was phasing out its units in India and leaving, workers at its manufacturing unit at Maraimala Nagar have held onto one hope: that the state government will step in to save their jobs.
'With our focus and strategy we can solve at least 20 per cent per cent of India's education problems.'
Giving a fresh twist to the Ford India employees' strike at the firm's Maraimalai Nagar factory, the company has set the deadline for Monday evening for workers to accept a 'non-negotiable' severance package it is offering. It also indicated the possibility of legal action against workers from June 14 (Tuesday) and warned of early closure of the unit, before completing remaining export volume production. For the past 14 days, some 2,000 employees at the unit had struck work, seeking a better package from the company.
N Chandrasekaran, chairman of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Tata Sons, believes that the Digital India Act is a necessity. "The Digital India Act is a necessity because so much has changed over the decades since the original Information Technology (IT) Act was put in place. I am glad the government is developing a participative approach to developing the Digital Act," he said, while answering shareholders at TCS' 27th annual general meeting. Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar a few months ago had said that the government would shortly roll out the Digital India Act - a renewed policy for the digital ecosystem and cyberspace in the country.
'At present Metaverse is a hype cycle.' 'If it succeeds, then I would like to see TCS there, too.'
With Tata Motors subsidiary taking over Ford's passenger vehicle (PV) manufacturing unit at Sanand in Gujarat, uncertainty over the future of Ford's Maraimalai Nagar unit in Tamil Nadu continues, with workers protesting on Thursday demanding a better severance package. There are over 2,000 employees working at the unit. On Thursday, there was a meeting between agitating employees and the state labour department. The workers started protests at the Chennai unit after Tata Passenger Electric Mobility signed a tripartite memorandum of understanding with Ford India and the Government of Gujarat for acquisition of Ford's PV manufacturing plant at Sanand.
Earlier in May, Ford India announced that it had dropped its plans to make electric vehicles (EVs) in India, which it intended to export, under the production-linked incentive scheme (PLI). Ford was among 20 companies that had signed a Champion OEM Incentive Scheme under the PLI project with the government in February this year. The decision comes as a blow for the 4,000-odd employees at Ford India's Maraimalai Nagar plant near Chennai and in Sanand, Gujarat. In September last year, the company had announced that it would exit the India market, which it had entered in 1995 through an on-again, off-again joint venture with Mahindra & Mahindra (they split in 1998, signed a JV in 2019 and split again in December 2020), retailing petrol and diesel brands such as the EcoSport, Figo, Aspire, and Endeavour.
In 2017, when Infosys announced that Salil Parekh would be its next chief executive officer (CEO) and managing director (MD), very few in the industry or the analyst community doubted his ability to bring the company back to a healthy growth trajectory, improve morale within the company and, more importantly, win the promoters' trust and investor confidence. There were reasons for this confidence. He was not only the deputy CEO of the Paris-headquartered IT services major Capgemini, but also one of the only non-European faces on the executive board of the company.
Employee costs for Indian IT services players have touched an all-time high as salaries soar in their effort to retain talent. Engineer salaries are going through the roof. According to a news report, Infosys, which reported a 27.7 per cent attrition rate for the fourth quarter of FY22, plans to have an average salary hike of 12-13 per cent. High potential employees will get increases of 22-23 per cent.
Any adverse electoral fallout in Thrikkakara by-poll may have an impact on Rahul Gandhi because this falls in the state he represents as a member of Parliament and KC Venugopal because it is his home state, reports Shine Jacob.
The Indian startup ecosystem recently celebrated the 100th unicorn milestone. It came after a month of no big fund announcements. Compare this to 2021, when three to four unicorns were being added every month. Nevertheless, the 100th unicorn needs to be celebrated since the first unicorn was announced in 2011 - 11 years ago.
American automaker Ford on Thursday said that it had withdrawn plans to manufacture electric vehicles (EVs) in India and it won't invest in the country under the performance-linked incentive (PLI) scheme. "After careful review, we have decided to no longer pursue EV manufacturing for exports from any of the Indian plants. "We remain grateful to the government for approving our proposal under the PLI and for being supportive while we continued our exploration. "Ford India's previously announced business restructuring continues as planned, including exploring other alternatives for our manufacturing facilities.
IT major Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), in its Q4FY22 results, said the company's banking, finance services and insurance (BFSI) crossed the $10 billion milestone. This includes revenue from financial products, services and platforms. For Suresh Muthuswami, who recently took over as Chairman of North America, one of the focus will be to grow this percentage going ahead. The first step to grow the US market is hiring. Muthuswami said that the company will be hiring more in the US, especially from the campuses. In FY22 TCS hired over 7,000 people in the US and going ahead too the numbers will be similar.
Old timers in Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) still remember how in early 2000 its overseas subsidiary, ONGC Videsh Ltd (OVL), was on the verge of closure. Though OVL was set up in 1965, the only discovery the company had made till then was in Vietnam offshore, with more investment needed to monetise it. In 2001, when OVL started looking for new blocks abroad, the company's previous acquisition was 13 years old.
Do you suspect that your partner is cheating on you and want to find out the truth by installing spyware on their phone? Or, perhaps you are a student who wants to get out of an online classroom so you can play an online game with friends? How about some Zoom raiding for a mere Rs 50-100? Or, are you a person who wishes to hack into someone's phone or laptop, and steal their financial details? Crimeware-as-a-Service (CaaS) allows you to do all this and more.
Tech giant Apple has stopped accepting payments via debit and credit cards in India. Apple has stopped accepting cards for subscriptions, and purchases using credit cards issued by banks in India. Apple will also not accept payments for ad campaigns on Apple Search using credit cards issued by Indian banks. All campaigns will be put on hold from June 1.
Tata Consultancy Services, India's largest software exporter, hired 100,000 freshers in the financial year 2021-22, more than in any other year. That means an average of 8,300 trainees joining the company every month. This is not merely a mathematical calculation: hiring of freshers at the top IT companies is no longer a compressed affair confined to the campus season.
It has taken a pandemic to move the needle on the salary packages for greenhorn engineers hired by the Indian IT services sector. The country's third-largest IT services player, HCL Technologies, has decided to boost the entry-level packages from Rs 3-3.6 lakh to Rs 4.25 lakh for FY23, in a bid to attract fresh talent and keep them for longer to counter the impact of rising attrition. This new package would also be applicable to those freshers who joined the firm in FY22.
So far at least eight incidents of EV fires have been reported in just over a month's time.
On August 15 last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced from the ramparts of the Red Fort that the Indian Railways would launch 75 Vande Bharat Express trains by August 2023. Later, in her 2022 Budget speech, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced that 400 Vande Bharat trains will be manufactured in the next three years, which are expected to cost between Rs 40,000 crore and Rs 50,000 crore. Those upbeat announcements come after a series of cancelled tenders, vigilance actions against officials and interdepartmental rivalry that delayed the addition of these iconic trains developed entirely indigenously by the Integral Coach Factory (ICF) in Chennai.
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