Venture capitalists and seed fund providers receive around 500-1,200 business plans every year. The trend continued even among the student fraternity. Venture firms such as Morpheus Venture Partners and Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship that work closely with students and incubator centres have seen a spurt in activity.
With increased awareness and concern over unexpected events like the 26/11 terror attack on Mumbai, Ganesh mandals (organisers of the Ganapati festival) are seeking higher insurance cover. For instance, Mumbai's most popular mandal, Lalbaughcha Raja Ganesh Mandal, has bought insurance worth Rs 4 crore (Rs 40 million).
Mushrooming app stores are offering a huge 70 per cent revenue to developers.
A pass-through in taxation means that the business entity need not pay tax. Instead, all taxable income is passed through to its owners or members.
Experts believe it will take another three to five years for Indian IT firms to move to a non-linear business model.
In his first interview since taking over as ICICI Lombard managing director and CEO, Bhargav Dasgupta tells Shilpy Sinha that during the first quarter of 2009-10, the company has seen an increase in profit, while most other players are bleeding.
McKinsey, RBS postpone placements by three to six months
According to a web information company, Alexa, Google dominates the charts but Bing is already at 19th position with about 5 per cent of users from India accessing internet to visit Bing.
The additional step is the result of a Reserve Bank of India's guideline issued this February that mandates additional authentications/verifications based on information about the card-holder that is not contained on the card. This measure is expected to contain online card fraud.
In a bid to reduce costs and increased offshoring focus, Tata Consultancy Services, India's largest information technology company, has recalled close to 1,200 employees from the US and has decided not to hand out any salary increment this year.
Suvir Sujan talks about his company's vision, investment plans and belief in the Indian growth story.
'Our visit gives us an opportunity to understand the culture of the country.'
Insurers, mostly private ones, are opting to cancel mediclaim, marine and cargo cover at a later stage due to adverse claims ratio. In order to grab market share, they have not been pricing the product correctly. Sources said that ICICI Lombard has asked L&T to pay additional premium for the group mediclaim policy in the middle of the year. When contacted, L&T said that ICICI Lombard has requested for extra premium but has not sent any notice.
So far, VCs used to fund start-ups which either had product prototypes ready or had some customers on board.
Nitish Mittersain, founder of Nazara Technologies, is among the few entrepreneurs who have remained unflappable in the current economic crisis. Having set up Nazara, a mobile entertainment company, right at the time of the dotcom bust, Mittersain claims to have sufficient experience to withstand this financial downturn too.
Life insurance companies have put their plans to list their shares on the stock exchanges on the backburner, though they are hopeful of Parliament's nod for the Insurance Bill, which will increase the foreign investment limit, during the Winter session.
One year after the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority's (Irda) allowed insurance companies to invest in venture capital (VC) funds, no insurer has shown interest in funding VCs.
Kingfisher pays 37 per cent higher premium while Air India defers renewal. "The Air France crash is expected to provide a $600-$700 million hit (to global insurance companies), which is 40 per cent of the total premium collected, and therefore hardening of reinsurance rates was evident. We had seen prices go up from $2 billion to $4 billion after the 9/11 attacks (in the US)," said ICICI Lombard Reinsurance Head Rajiv Kumaraswamy.
Easy usage, no-maintenance claim draw consumers to these desktop alternatives.
These four youngsters turned their passion for books into a successful online book lending service, discovers Shivani Shinde.