Ranbaxy Laboratories on Tuesday announced a business alliance with Orchid Chemicals and Pharmaceuticals across multiple geographies and therapies, for finished dosage formulations and bulk drugs. The new alliance will explore new products and markets without disturbing the existing alliances. The deal is independent of any commitment related to management control and is a pure arm's length, independent strategic biz alliance. Ranbaxy will benefit from Orchid's future products
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.
In a move to catapult ayurveda to the main stream of healthcare in the country, the Tata Group is setting up the Indian Institute of Ayurveda Integrated Medicine in Bangalore. The institute will function in association with the Department of Science and Technology, and the Foundation for Revitalisation of Local Health Traditions, a Bangalore-based NGO that supports traditional healing methods.
Anil Ambani-promoted Reliance Power (R-Power) has roped in international consultancy firm Ernst & Young (E&Y) to upgrade its Sasan ultra-mega power project (UMPP) in Madhya Pradesh to conform to the norms for receiving carbon credits.
Dr Reddy's Laboratories & Strides Arcolabs are at a risk of raiders as their promoter holdings are less than 26%. Promoters of Dr Reddy's have 25.15% stake as on Dec 31, 2007 and the share value of the company has dipped 19.9 per cent since January 1 this year. The Bangalore-based Strides Arcolab had only 18.82% promoter-holding as on Dec 31, 2007. The stock price of the company has gone down 34% in the same period. The promoters are taking steps to correct the situation.
Germany-based Humana Milchunion eG, one of the largest baby food products and therapeutic multivitamins manufacturers, will soon foray into India and neighbouring markets in a big way.
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.
While the April to September period (H1) saw as many as eight major deals worth over Rs 5,000 crore (Rs 50 billion), the second half of the year saw a sharp drop in the value of such deals to about Rs 1,500 crore (Rs 15 billion). Though the number of deals in H1 and H2 is almost the same, the sharp decline in value in the second half indicates a clear change in outlook and strategy of companies, say industry experts.
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.
Reliance Power Limited, the flagship company of the Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG), plans to invest about Rs 2,500-3,000 crore (Rs 25-30 billion) over a period of three years, to develop three coal mines to fuel its Sasan Ultra Mega Power Project in Madhya Pradesh. Reliance Power currently has access to coal reserves of about one billion tonnes in India and abroad, including a coal mine in Indonesia, which it acquired recently.
The US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) has asked Caraco Pharmaceutical Laboratories, the US subsidiary of Mumbai-based Sun Pharmaceuticals Industries, to withdraw many batches of its generic Metformin Hydrochloride tablets used for treating diabetes, citing efficacy and quality issues. According to a USFDA Class II withdrawal announced on March 19, Caraco will have to withdraw seven lots of Metformin Hydrochloride in bottles of 100, 500 and 1000 tablets each.
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.
Analysts feel this decision is yet another example of big-ticket acquisitions turning sour for Indian pharma firms, as happened in the case of Dr Reddy's acquisition of Betapharm of Germany for Rs 2,250 crore (Rs 22.5 billion).
Mumbai-based Sun Pharmaceuticals has filed a post-grant opposition with the Mumbai patent office against a product patent granted to the extended release version of Johnson and Johnson's (J&J) blockbuster drug Risperdal, used in the treatment of psychological disorders and schizophrenia.
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.
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