[raghav507]

Upgrade to Windows 7, tax issues resolved

NEW DELHI: Computer users in India will soon be able to buy Microsoft’s new operating system Windows 7 to replace their old operating systems, as the government has removed the anomalies in taxation of packaged software sold through physical media.

The Windows 7 consignment to India was held up at the Customs because of a tax dispute leading to a possible double taxation, leaving many customers disappointed who were hoping to upgrade from Windows XP and the more recent Vista.

The Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC), that administers indirect taxes in the country, has instructed Customs officials to take note of the measures taken in 2009 Budget and not tax the same software twice, once as goods and again as service, a finance ministry official told ET.

This directive from CBEC clears the ambiguity regarding the treatment of imported packaged software available on a physical storage media, such as CDs and DVDs. The market for it is pegged at Rs 10,000 crore. The move will favourably impact comapnies like Microsoft, Adobe, SAP, Oracle, Autodesk, gaming software developers and others.

Reacting to the development, Microsoft India chairman Ravi Venkatesan said: “We are delighted that shipments will clear the Customs now.” According to industry association, the Infotech Software Dealers Association (ISODA), the tax anomaly had caused the market for new software to fall by nearly 40% over the past 12-18 months, as packaged software was stuck at Customs and many individual buyers moved to pirated versions.

“In the past three months, most of the software consignments sold in a box (comprising about 20% of the Rs 10,000-crore market) have not moved out of Customs at Chennai and Mumbai. In this duration, due to the tax ambiguity, business was down by almost 70%,” said Devesh Agarwal, president, ISODA.

As per the current laws, packaged software is treated as a good and an 8% excise duty is levied if locally manufactured, or an 8% countervailing duty if imported. In the 2008 budget, the government had said that packaged software will have two cost components, cost of actual software and the cost of intellectual property right (IPR) relating to that software. The IPR portion, which is the more significant cost, is to be treated as service in the nature of ‘right to use’ and a 10% service tax is to be levied.

Despite government clarification in the 2009 budget that excise duty or countervailing duty need not be levied on this portion representing the ‘right to use’, consignments were held up as Customs authorities insisted on charging CVD on the entire cost.

[vyomb]

Outsourcing gets a boost as global banks expand captives

MUMBAI: Top multinationals banks continue to set up new back-office units or expand their existing captive operations in India even as the model is

under criticism for being high cost and less efficient than third-party vendor operations. Wells Fargo, Ingersoll Rand and Standard Chartered are some of the banks and companies that are setting up or expanding their back-office centres in India.

Standard Chartered, for example, is setting up a new knowledge process outsourcing centre in Bangalore, while Wells Fargo is expanding its captive operations in India for technology services and BPO. The three are among the 11 firms that have set up new units or added more staff to their existing units in India during the September quarter, taking the number of captives being set up globally to an 18-month high, according to MarketVista, a quarterly analysis of outsourcing trends by Dallas-based Everest Research Institute.

In all, around 28 firms set up captive operations in Asia, Europe, Latin America with India being the most popular destination. “The number of new captives being set up are far more than divestures, indicating a revival in the market,” Ameet Singh, vice-president for global delivery, Everest, told ET. German firm Kontron, which is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of embedded computer technology and a supplier to OEMs, is also setting up a contact centre in Bangalore to provide sale and tech support to its Asia-Pacific operations.


“Near-term economic pressures that were there earlier have been reduced. But organisations that reviewed their global sourcing agenda could still be looking at the same outcome, a modified strategy or a more intensive one,” said Mr Singh. The September quarter also saw four captive divestures — UBS’ captive to Cognizant Technology Services, AIG’s to Mphasis, Schneider Logistics to EXL Services and Kyocera Wireless to Mindtree.

According to Mr Singh, the market for outsourcing transactions is seeing two counter forces — lower business volumes and opportunity to reduce costs.

“Companies are attempting to push the envelope further in terms of costs leading to offshoring and outsourcing,” he said. Based on publicly disclosed transactions, the overall number of transactions have come down to 422 in the September quarter from 467 in the past quarter but contracts from sectors such as financial services have almost doubled from the previous quarter, according to Everest’s research. Apart from financial services, sectors such as healthcare, travel and energy and utilities are also seeing significant rise in demand for offshoring.

“Although there was a marginal decline of 10% in the reported global transaction volumes (BPO volumes decreasing by 14% and IT outsourcing activity reducing by 8%), there were signs of improvement in key geographies and verticals,” Everest said in the study.

[vyomb]

Sudha Murty sells 2 mn shares in Infy

Mumbai/Bangalore: Nearly three decades after Sudha N. Murty pledged her jewellery for Rs10,000 to part-fund N.R. Narayana Murthy and his six colleagues to start the company that would eventually become Infosys Technologies Ltd, she has sold around one-fifth of her shares in the company to fund her husband’s new venture, Catamaran Investments Pvt. Ltd.



On Thursday, Sudha Murty sold two million shares or 22% of her holding in Infosys to raise Rs430 crore.
On 22 October, Narayana Murthy sold one-fourth of his holding in the company to raise Rs174.3 crore as seed money for his venture capital firm that will “encourage and support young entrepreneurs having brilliant ideas”. At the time of the first sale, Murthy had hinted that he was willing to sell more Infosys shares to fund his new venture.
The fund will primarily focus on early stage companies in India, Murthy had said at the time of his share sale.
With the fund size growing to Rs604.3 crore, Sudha Murty and Narayana Murthy do not have immediate plans for raising additional capital, Infosys said in a statement.
Sudha Murty, who holds a master’s degree engineering from the Indian Institute of Science, and one of the three trustees of Infosys Foundation, the company’s corporate social responsibility arm, sold the shares at a discount to Thursday’s market price.
In a single block deal, transacted at a 3.2% discount to Thursday’s close, Sudha Murty sold the shares at Rs2,151.80 each on the Bombay Stock Exchange. On Thursday, shares of Infosys fell 0.74% to close at Rs2,223 each, with an intra-day high and low of Rs2,156 and Rs2,235, respectively.
On Thursday, even as one promoter diluted holdings, the company’s chief executive and co-founder S. Gopalakrishnan acquired 400,000 shares in a separate transaction for Rs86.6 crore, Infosys said in a statement.
With Thursday’s purchase, Gopalakrishnan’s total holding in the company has gone up to 6.7 million shares, perhaps a signal to the market of the chief executive officer’s confidence in his company.
Together with their son Rohan Murty and daughter Akshata Murty, the Murthys hold nearly a 5% stake in Infosys.
Narayana Murthy isn’t the first Infosys founder to venture into the venture capital business. In 2000, N.S. Raghavan, one of the seven co-founders and former joint managing director of Infosys, retired from the company to start Nadathur Holdings and Investments Pvt. Ltd. That firm has investments in several companies.
Azim Premji, chairman of Wipro Ltd and one of Murthy’s peers, owns a similar fund with a corpus of $1 billion (Rs4,710 crore).
The stock markets were indifferent to the latest transaction made by Infosys’ first family. Anand Tandon, director, equities, Brics Securities, said: “Clearly, every man reaches a stage in life when most of needs are met…and what is the point in keeping most of his wealth locked in stocks of a mature company, when he can use it to nurture start-ups. Clearly, the best growth days of Infosys are behind it. It is a more mature company and though it may still double in size from here, it may not happen at the same pace as in the past.”

[vyomb]

Wipro buys some Yardley businesses for $45.5 million

Bangalore: Wipro Ltd’s acquisition of some businesses of Yardley is the fifth in the consumer products and lighting space by the company in the past five years, a period that seen the revenue of the company’s consumer division grow fourfold to Rs2,997.5 crore (excluding the Yardley acquisition).
Six years ago, Wipro’s consumer care and lighting arm was mulling ways of getting into the glucose drinks segment.
Instead of starting from scratch and going through the process of introducing a new product in the market and building the brand over years, the firm took a short cut. It acquired Glucovita, a glucose powder brand, from Hindustan Unilever Ltd.Eight months later, the firm acquired Chandrika ayurvedic soaps to add handmade soap bars to its portfolio of personal care products. And in 2007, it bought Unza Holdings Ltd, a Singapore-based consumer goods company for $246 million (around Rs1,159 crore today), to enter the South-East Asian markets. In between, in 2006, it also acquired North-West Switches business from India-based North-West Switchgear Ltd for $22 million.
On Thursday, continuing with its strategy of jump-starting into new markets and categories via acquisitions, the firm said it had agreed to buy some businesses of Yardley, a 240-year-old British premium personal care brand, from the UK’s Lornamead Group for $45.5 million.



Lornamead will retain the Yardley business, which includes soaps, body sprays and talcum powders, in Europe and the US, and Wipro will have the rights to sell the brand in Asia, Australia and Africa, giving it a foothold in the premium personal care segment in these markets.

The Yardley business that Wipro has acquired has a revenue of $24 million.
“In luxury products, margins are an average of 50% of the profit after tax value. It means more money for the company,” said Ashish Dhir, associate vice-president, Technopak Advisors Pvt. Ltd, a retail advisory.
Wipro’s stock closed nearly flat on Thursday, rising Rs2.50, or 0.42%, to Rs598.30 at the end of trade on the Bombay Stock Exchange, on a day the Sensex gained 151.77 points, or 0.95%, to end at 16,063.90.
Interestingly, Wipro has made 11 acquisitions in the information technology (IT) area since 2003.
Wipro’s IT service business still contributes to 72% of its overall revenue and 91% of its pretax profit.
But its non-IT revenue, including consumer care and a small contribution from its infrastructure engineering arm, has grown over the past five years.
In that period, Wipro’s overall and IT business revenues, at Rs25,544.2 crore and Rs22,621.3 crore, respectively, have increased threefold. As a percentage of total revenue, though, the company’s non-IT revenue dropped to 8.52% in fiscal 2009 from 11.7% in fiscal 2005.
The Yardley acquisition marks Wipro’s entry into the premium segment. The firm has a presence in the mid-market segment with brands such as Santoor soap, and Unza’s products. Consumer goods companies prefer high-end brands because of the high profit margins they offer.
“The transaction adds a very strong brand to our portfolio of personal care products. It fits into our strategy of increasing sales and brand presence in the Middle East,” said Vineet Agrawal, president, Wipro Consumer Care and Lighting.
The deal, to be completed by December, will be funded through internal accruals and add to the firm’s revenue from the March quarter, he added.
The Yardley buy will boost profit margins at Wipro’s consumer care business to 13% from 12% now, said Agrawal. “We expect our Middle East turnover to double to nearly $30 million through this acquisition. Overall, we hope to see an increase of 50 basis points in our revenues.” One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.
Another analyst said the acquisition is a good fit for Wipro as it is looking for growth not just in India but also in emerging nations. “West Asia is a high-growth region owing to its high income levels. Also, a price of $45.5 million for a $24 million revenue business..., it is not a large deal,” said Abneesh Roy, senior analyst, FMCG (fast moving consumer goods), Edelweiss Capital Ltd.
Technopak’s Dhir said India may see more such acquisitions of overseas brands by local firms with companies in developed markets still reeling under a liquidity crunch. “It’s a liquidation issue. There will be a lot of M&As (mergers and acquisitions).”
Agrawal said Wipro may next look at adding products such as body washes and roll-ons to plug the gap in its personal care portfolio, which includes perfumes, deodorants and fairness creams.
It also sells lights, switches and modular furniture for offices.
Wipro may also look at shifting production of Yardley soap to Wipro’s manufacturing units in India. The company has four manufacturing facilities currently, said Dipak Kumar Bohra, general manager, finance, Wipro Consumer Care and Lighting.

[winner_iima]

LeT torn between Denmark, India?- Politics/Nation-News-The Economic Times

NEW DELHI: As the details of a fresh Lashkar plot to target India emerge, it appears that a conflict of priorities may have come in the way of its plan to launch another Mumbai-style attack.

Documents submitted by the FBI to the Illinois district court against two US-based LeT terrorists — David Coleman Headley and Tahawwur Hussain Rana — suggest that the duo diverged from the Lashkar leadership on attacking India.

While the Lashkar leader, introduced by FBI to the US court as LeT Member A, wanted them to focus on India, both Headley and Rana were fixated on attacking the Danish newspaper whose decision to print cartoons of Prophet Moha-mmad in 2005 angered Muslims worldwide.

The FBI dossier suggests HuJI commander Ilyas Kashmiri was in agreement with US-based Lashkar terrorists. It also appears LeT went along with the plan initially before deciding to put India — their pet hate — on top of their “to do” list. The switch of priorities surprised Headley, originally Daood Gilani, and Rana but did not distract them from their Danish project.

The divergence came to the fore when Lashkar commander — LeT Member A in the US court’s records — insisted that the mission in India needed to be accomplished first. FBI special agent Lorenzo Benedict told the Illinois court, “In July and August 2009, Headley exchanged a series of emails with LeT Member A including an exchange in which Headley asked if the Denmark project was on hold, and whether a visit to India that LeT Member A had asked him to undertake was for the purpose of surveilling targets for a new terrorist attack. These emails reflect that LeT Member A was placing a higher priority on using Headley to assist in planning a new attack on India than on completing the planned attack in Denmark.”

His puzzlement over the change of plan is reflected in the email Headley wrote to the LeT commander on July 16, “One very important thing I need to know please is that how long do you need me for, meaning how long should it take me to finish my work (on Indian project), in your opinion. And is it really urgent? Before it seemed that the Northern Project (Danish) was really urgent.”

Not convinced, Headley travelled to Copenhagen and other destinations in Europe with help from Rana as part of the plan to attack Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper in question. The dejection of the LeT members comes out clearly in the documents submitted by FBI in the court.

“Futile are my advices, coz you do what you feel like... matter and situation is not clear... your skin is dear to me, more than my own,” LeT Member A wrote to Headley on August 11.

Headley could not have cared less for his disappointment, so intense was his zeal to attack the Danish newspaper. His conviction came through in one of his posts to the Yahoo group called “Abdalians” — named after a military cadet school in Pakistan.

He wrote, “Everything is not a joke... making fun of Islam is making fun of Rasoosallah... call me old fashioned but I feel disposed towards violence for the offending parties, be they cartoonists from Denmark or Sherry Jones (author of Jewel of Medina) or Irshad Manji (liberal Muslim trying to make lesbianism acceptable to Islam amongst other things). Even if God doesn’t give us the opportunity to bring our intentions to fruition, we will claim ajr (a religious award) for it.”

[winner_iima]

Apple's Steve Jobs named CEO of the decade- Jobs-News By Industry-News-The Economic Times

SAN FRANCISCO: He single-handedly saved Apple, wrought a revolution in online music, created a world-beating smartphone and led Pixar to dominate computer animation.

So it's no surprise that Apple chief executive Steve Jobs was named CEO of the decade on Thursday by Fortune magazine, which said that Jobs' success in reordering four industries - computers, music, movies and mobile telephones - was "unheard of."

"It's often noted that he's a showman, a born salesman, a magician who creates a famed reality-distortion field, a tyrannical perfectionist," the report said. "It's totally accurate, of course, and the descriptions contribute to his legend."

Comparing Jobs favourably to Henry Ford, PanAm's Juan Trippe and Conrad Hilton, the report said: "In the past decade, Jobs and Apple have entered and changed the industries of music, movies and cell phones. The company has also remained in the computer business, where it continues to innovate as it has done for decades. Remaking any one business is a career-defining achievement; four is unheard of."

The report surveyed Jobs' achievements since he returned to Apple in 1997, 12 years after being ousted from the company he founded.

It took him several years to get the company back in shape. Even as he introduced his long-term digital lifestyle strategy and the revolutionary iTunes software and music player in 2000, the company was facing bankruptcy.

It now has 34,000 employees and is valued at over $170 billion. During this period he also nurtured computer animation shop Pixar, which he sold to Disney in 2006 for $7.5 billion, making him the largest shareholder in the entertainment conglomerate.

[winner_iima]

The Hindu : Health : ‘Smart-bomb’ to target cancer, evade body’s immune system

‘Smart-bomb’ to target cancer, evade body’s immune system

Scientists have inched closer to a nanotechnology therapy that targets cancer with a “Stealth smart bomb” tuned to dodge the body’s immune system.
BIND 014, which targets tumour cells while evading the body’s immune system, promises to deliver larger and more effective doses of drugs to cancers, while simultaneously sparing patients many of the distressing side—effects of chemotherapy, The Times newspaper said today.
Measuring about 100 nanometres, or one ten-millionth of a metre, a thousand of these nanoparticles could hide behind a human hair.
The drug—filled “warhead” is covered with a “stealth coating” of polyethylene glycol, which helps the particle to hide so that it is not attacked by elements of the body’s immune system such as antibodies and macrophage cells.
“Regular nanoparticles struggle to get through to tumours,” said Professor Robert Langer, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who developed the “special delivery parcel” along with and Omid Farokhzad of Harvard University.
“We’ve created a nanoparticle decorated with two molecules, one of which helps it to dodge the immune system, while the other helps it to target cancer cells,” Professor Langer was quoted as saying by the British daily.
The therapy is to begin patient trials next year in the first clinical test of a pioneering approach to medicine, according to the report. BIND Biosciences, the Massachusetts—based company that developed the technology, said this should be the “first targeted nanoparticle delivering a chemotherapeutic to enter clinical trials“.
“We’re then looking to develop this as a broad platform that could also be used to treat cardiovascular disease, inflammation, even infectious disease,” said Jeff Hrkach, the company’s vice—president of pharmaceutical sciences.
A trial involving about 25 cancer patients is scheduled to start within a year. If successful, it could lead to a licensed drug within five years, said the report in the British daily.
Although the therapy was originally designed for prostate cancer, it is expected to be effective against other solid tumours, such as forms of breast, lung and brain cancer.
Patients with some of these cancers, as well as prostate cancer, may be included in the first trial, it said.
The landmark drug has been successfully tested against human prostate tumours grown under the skin of mice, in studies that have shown both that the drug accumulates around tumours and reduces them in size.
“It’s shrunk tumours in animals essentially to zero,” Professor Langer said.

[vyomb]

The quick and the dead

Something is rotten in the sport of Formula One.
First, the 2009 season ended on a spectacular new circuit, with a new champion from a new—okay, revived—team. And then days later, Toyota announced that it would be withdrawing from the sport for good.
The Toyota team’s inability to place a driver on the podium was only matched by its ability to sink millions of dollars, since its debut in 2002, into a sport that it could simply never get its head around. After persisting with nine drivers over eight seasons, the team managed just 13 podiums without a single win. All after a total investment in Formula One racing, according to some estimates, of at least $4 billion.
And then on Wednesday another team, Renault, convened a board meeting to decide if it should exit from the sport as well.
A decision is awaited.
Formula One racing is proving to be a sport particularly unsuited to a world in economic doldrums. While the sport has a worldwide fan following in the millions—in the 2008 season, the average race had a TV viewership of around 600 million—the costs of running some of the fastest, albeit expensive and fragile, cars in the world is taking a toll on owners and sponsors.
Some of the smaller teams get by with around $100 million in annual expenses, but top teams such as Ferrari and Toyota routinely spent around $500 million each season (half of the money is used to buy engines). But with economies reeling, sponsor funds are beginning to dry up.
The promoters of Formula One now find themselves in a quandary. The larger teams, such as Ferrari, vehemently oppose any attempt at capping budgets and making the sport more viable for the smaller teams.
While there are always entrants eager to join the fray, few are under the illusion that they will be competitive.
Without action on the tracks, fans will abandon the sport—as they are wont to.
A long-term solution is nowhere on the horizon. Unless teams and administrators decide on a way to make competing in Formula One cheaper, we are looking at a future where three teams, or less, compete for the greatest prize in motorsport.
And no one wins in a race like that.

[vyomb]

India Restricts Media on Visit by Dalai Lama

NEW DELHI — The Indian government moved Thursday to restrict media coverage of the Dalai Lama’s trip next week to a disputed Himalayan region, a visit that has become a sore point between India and China at a time when diplomatic relations are already fraying between the Asian giants.
On Thursday, several foreign news organizations planning to cover the Dalai Lama’s visit to the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh next week were told that travel permits approved earlier by the state government had been canceled by the central government in New Delhi. They included The New York Times.
The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of South Asia issued a statement saying it was “surprised and disappointed” by the decision and also by the failure of the central government to approve other applications.
“Despite numerous requests over the past few weeks, India’s central government has not granted a single foreign journalist permission to travel to the state of Arunachal Pradesh during the Dalai Lama’s visit,” the press club said in a statement released on Thursday evening.
For weeks, the Dalai Lama’s trip, which is to begin on Sunday, has caused a diplomatic standoff between New Delhi and Beijing. The two countries have a longstanding border dispute, and China has become increasingly outspoken about its claims to sections of Arunachal Pradesh, a center of Tibetan Buddhism.
Indian officials were startled last month when China indirectly criticized the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, for visiting Arunachal during state elections. India swiftly responded that Arunachal was an “integral” part of India and that the visit was standard during elections.
However, the announcement that India would allow the Dalai Lama to visit a Tibetan monastery and christen a new hospital in Arunachal brought a much sharper condemnation from Beijing. Chinese leaders consider the Dalai Lama to be intent on splitting Tibet away from China, charges that the spiritual leader strongly denies. China, regarding the Dalai Lama’s visit to the region as deliberately provocative, called on India to cancel the trip.
After much discussion among opinion leaders, the Indian government restated its permission, calling it a religious, not political, trip. However, the ban on foreign media coverage may be a way of softening the blow for Beijing.
Officials in the spokesman’s office of India’s Ministry of External Affairs did not return repeated telephone calls.

[vyomb]

Does Technology Reduce Social Isolation?

Hundreds of daily updates come from friends on Facebook and Twitter, but do people actually feel closer to each other?
It turns out the size of the average American’s social circle is smaller today than 20 years ago, as measured by the number of self-reported confidants in a person’s life. Yet contrary to popular opinion, use of cellphones and the Internet is not to blame, according to a new study released Wednesday by the Pew Internet and American Life Project.
In fact, people who regularly use digital technologies are more social than the average American and more likely to visit parks and cafes, or volunteer for local organizations, according to the study, which was based on telephone interviews with a national sample of 2,512 adults living in the continental United States.
The study found some less-than-social behavior, however. People who use social networks like Facebook or Linkedin are 30 percent less likely to know their neighbors and 26 percent less likely to provide them companionship.
Pew asked questions that would get at the heart of the link between social isolation in America and use of digital technologies, with an eye toward debunking earlier thinking that suggested technology caused people to hole up in their pajamas or lose some friendships.
Two years ago, a General Society Survey hypothesized that the average American was feeling more socially isolated because of the rise of the Internet and cellphones. That study found that from 1985 to 2004, the number of intimate friendships people reported dropped from three to two.
The Pew report confirmed those findings. But it also deflated other data in the previous study that indicated the number of people saying they had no one to confide in had nearly tripled from 1985 to 2004. Pew reported that only 6 percent of the American population fell into that category of isolation — with no significant change over the last 25 years.
The circle of close friends for mobile phone users tends to be 12 percent larger than for nonusers. People who share online photos or instant messages have 9 percent larger social circles than nonusers.
Pew also confirmed that Americans’ social networks were becoming less diverse, defined as relationships with people from different backgrounds. But on average, the social circles of cellphone and instant-message users were more diverse than those of nonusers.
“We identified Internet use, and especially using social networks, contributes to having more diverse social networks,” said Keith Hampton, lead researcher for the report and an assistant professor of communication at the University of Pennsylvania.
The study also found that people still prefer face-to-face communication as the primary means to stay in touch with friends and family (people see loved ones in person an average of 210 days a year). Respondents said that they were in touch via mobile phone an average of 195 days a year.