Reliance Industries has slipped around 2% following a decline in Q2 profits.
The stock opened at Rs 2,010, touched a high of Rs 2,020 and slipped to a low of Rs 1,966. The scrip is now trading at Rs 1,972, down 1.5% from the previous close. The counter has clocked volumes of 229,481 shares on the BSE.
Reliance Industries (RIL),
Direct to Home (DTH) television can be accessed now with a DVD player. For the first time in the country, D2H, the DTH service from the Videocon Group, is offering DTH via three alternate platforms to the traditional connections — by DTH-enabled satellite DVD, DTH-enabled LCD TV, and DTH-enabled TV sets.
The company recently rolled out its DTH services and hopes to corner at least two million subscribers by offering differentiated services, says Anil Khera, CEO. The D2H DTH brand is the sixth private DTH player in the market, that recently crossed 16 million subscribers.
“Our research shows that consumers owning TV sets also have a DVD player, a cable or a DTH box, all packed one above the other due to space constraint. Through our DTH-enabled DVD player, a consumer can not only access the DTH service, but can also watch movies on DVD,” says Khera.
Industry estimates suggest there are 45-50 million homes in India that currently own a DVD player and the size of the business is estimated to be around Rs 900 crore. “A DVD player that can access a DTH service, too, will only boost the DVD market,” says a senior executive of a leading movie rental company.
The D2H DTH has set a target of acquiring at least two million subscribers within a year through its various offerings. It has outlined an annual spending of around Rs 1,000 crore for this purpose, sources say.
“Annually, around 15 million new colour television sets are sold in India. With our differentiated DTH service integrated with television sets and LCD TVs, we should get two million subscribers in the first year,” Khera told Business Standard. D2H DTH service is owned by Bharat Business Channels, a Videocon-promoted company, and it is now competing for business with other DTH brands like Dish TV (6 million subscribers), Tata Sky (4.5 million), Sun Direct (4.3 million), Big TV (2 million) and Airtel Digital TV (numbers not announced).
D2H is also offering DTH-enabled TV sets (Rs 8,190) and LCDs (Rs 13,490) and only a DTH box for Rs 1,790 (with free installation). Other players offer a DTH connection for Rs 1,600, plus installation charges (Rs 300-1,000).
Addressing reporters after a meeting of the IIT Council — the highest decision making body of the institution — Union Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal said this was done to ensure that students took their Class XII exams seriously and also to check the growth of coaching centres, which were thriving on imparting coaching to IIT aspirants.
Mr. Sibal said the present eligibility of 60 per cent marks for appearing in the IIT-JEE was not acceptable. “The minimum marks required could be raised up to 80 per cent,” he said.
Voith Turbo, a unit of German engineering giant Voith AG, is in talks with Tata Motors for setting up a diesel locomotive manufacturing unit in India.
“We are looking for a partner in India for developing an alternative source for diesel engines and for that, we are in talks with the Tata Motors to set up a manufacturing unit in the country,” Voith Turbo Lokomotivetechnik Managing Director Hinrich Krey told PTI.
The company has already completed one round of negotiation with the Tata Group last year and is going to initiate the next round of talks by the end of the current year, Krey said, adding, “If every thing goes according to the schedule, the company might start working on plant in India by the 2011.”
He, however, declined to divulge details regarding the company’s proposed plant in India, citing confidentiality, but said, “The proposed plant would also cater to the need of Indian Railways besides supplying engines to the German parent company”.
On choosing Tata as a potential partner in India, he said Voith locomotive engines generate power up to 4,500 horsepower. Tata Motors has the capacity to produce engines up to 800 horsepower, which can be increased with the help of Voith’s expertise to suit requirements.
Besides this, the company is also looking for partners in other geographical locations such as China and Russia to expand its locomotive operations there.
The company’s locomotive business is controlled by the rail division of Voith Turbo and it has the capacity to manufacture around 80 units per annum.
German engineering firm Voith AG, have around 43,000 employees and has reported sales of over ¤4.9 billion in the last financial year.
Voith is one of the world’s leading family-owned companies and operates under four verticals, Paper, Hydro, Industrial Services and Turbo.
Agarwal is among the first ones in an increasing brigade of IIM graduates who are leaving behind lucrative careers to make a difference to their institutes.
“I wanted to do something meaningful and I knew if I didn't do something now, I would never do it,” says Agarwal, who was the director for global alliances at EMC when she quit her post. As someone who had always been interested in the happenings at IIM-B, the scales tilted towards her new turn of career when she spoke to the director of IIM-B, Pankaj Chandra.
“I was a frequent visitor to the institute and through my discussions I discovered that the student placement process had become tougher due to the economic conditions. Since I have gone through the placement process as a student, the post of heading career development services was offered to me and after some thought I decided to take it up,” she says.
Similar is the case of 28-year-old Kunal Upadhyay. By the time he passed out from the post graduate programme in management (PGPM) at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) in 2005, Upadhyay had bagged a plum job of internal consultant for Europe, Middle East and African (EMEA) regions at Citibank. Yet, what would have been a dream job for many, couldn’t hold back Upadhyay for long.
By 2007, he had bid adieu to Citibank and came back to his alma mater to join its incubation wing, Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) as its CEO. “Eventually it was about satisfaction. While I liked my corporate job, I always wanted to create some value for IIM -A and the society. At the same time, I wanted to be involved in innovative technologies. Also, one of the biggest reasons I am here is that I believe in entrepreneurship and wanted to help others endorse it too,” he says.
A BTech from IIT Madras, Upadhyay found himself staying in touch with some faculty members at IIM -A. “Since I continued to be in touch with some faculty members at IIM-A, they knew about my passions. Soon, they started telling me about this upcoming centre where they intended to develop innovative technologies and support budding entrepreneurs and wanted me to head the centre. So I took the plunge and came back to this campus for a full-time job,” he recalls.
The IIM faculty is undoubtedly thrilled. “The IIMs have found it difficult to hire and retain faculty in the last few years due to salary issues. To have a few ex-students giving up lucrative careers to give back to institute is a major leap of faith,” says Pankaj Chandra, Director of IIM-B.
“The idea of hiring full-time professionals for each of our initiatives is part of the strategic process we envisioned last year. We have been looking for people to add value to our institute. In 99 per cent of the cases, people we identify may not buy my argument but if one per cent of them are inclined towards giving back to the institute, we are behind them in their effort,” explains Chandra.
Nevertheless, it’s a challenge for these bravehearts. Rakesh Godhwani, a passout from IIM-B’s Post Graduate Program in Software Enterprise Management (PGSEM) who quit his highly successful 11-year-old corporate career to join IIM-B full-time as head of the institute’s alumni association, admits that he has had to take a drastic pay cut.
“What I earn now is considerably less than what I used to earn before. I even have a house loan to be paid and a family to support. But I feel I have followed my calling. I was active in the alumni association and when the director of IIM-B proposed a full-time alumni position, I took it up knowing well what I was giving up, says the 33 year old.
Similar views were echoed by Upadhyay. “It (pay) was definitely 6-7 times lower than what I was getting in the corporate world. But pay was not my motivation to come back. As long as my basic needs were taken care of, I was happy undergoing a better learning. I have gained a lot in the past couple of years,” he says.
Another issue faced was convincing family and friends. “My family was supportive about my move knowing that I wanted to move on to a new phase of life but some of my friends were shocked and wanted to know how I would be able to live without the pay I was getting” recalls Agarwal.
And more alumni will follow. At least 3-4 more IIM-A graduates, according to Upadhyay, have left their corporate jobs to come back to join CIIE with him. He concludes, “Our goal now is to produce successful entrepreneurs. We want our activities to benefit students and research activities of IIM-A as well as build its credibility.
IIM-B has been selected to join 178 other leading business schools from 19 countries by the GMAC board of directors.
“In the recent years, we have had a global approach in hiring faculty and devising our curriculum. Various delegations keep coming into IIM-B to understand the Asian business scenario. Our inclusion into the GMAC committee is a result of the international business education’s growing interest in India,” said Trilochan Sastry, dean (academic) at IIM-B. He added when GMAC would need to engage in Asia, they would look at consulting IIM-B.
Founded by a group of business school deans in 1954, GMAC is a non-profit education organisation constituted by leading graduate business schools around the world dealing with graduate management education. GMAC, which is based in Virginia, also administers the GMAT exam, used as part of the admission process at more than 4,700 graduate management education programmes in almost 2,000 business schools. Even Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad, is a member of GMAC.
“We are pleased to welcome the Indian Institute of Management-Bangalore, under the leadership of director and professor Pankaj Chandra, to our ranks,” said David A Wilson, president and CEO, GMAC. “It is clearly recognised as an institution that is at the forefront of graduate management education around the world, upholding the high standards of excellence and integrity that represent membership in the Council,” he said.
Internet is the logical conglomeration of computer systems that are spread around the world. It has been created with the help of optical cable networks, modem devices, telephone lines, LAN and WAN networks and satellites. Information is displayed on various web sites on Internet. This information is related to almost every area of human endeavor, including environment, space and facts related to the cosmos.
In Internet jargon, if a person opens Internet web sites on his computer (or surfs through the web sites), then he is called Netizen. Presently, there are nearly 45, 00,000 Internet connections in India. But vis-a-vis 1.5 million connections operating in the West, this number is a very timid. Internet is a boon for a nation like India. It helps us exchange vital information and data and our readers know that in the present information technology age, information is everything. Almost all the governments of the world, private firms, non-government organization and professionals either want to get their web sites developed or surf through various Internet web sites. Many of them have got their web sites developed and also, got them uploaded on this wonderful information superhighway. Not only this, there are web sites of many newspapers, magazines and technical journals as well.
This method of information exchange is very efficient and fast. E-mail can used by, Netizens to send information to any part of the world. Voice, data, video information and information in the form of text can be sent from one computer to another with ease. Besides, Internet has put man on the peak of the business world. This concept is called Electronic Commerce (E-com). Electronic Commerce is related to the exchange of goods and services through the Net and in this system, money is not physically transferred. We can buy and sell practically anything through Internet; exchange of data for engineering projects is also included in this system. There are three levels of connectivity of Internet. The first level is TI in which, the user can only see the information/data put on various web sites. The second level is T2 in which, he can create his own web sites as well as collect information loom the Net. The third level is T3 in which, he himself becomes a part of the internet System. Now days, VSNL, Mantra Online and Satyam Online are the three major Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Many other firms are entering the vast markets related to Internet services. VSNL has been privatized now. Internet affects all the areas of human endeavor. It has been successful in earning valuable achievements in fields like education, entertainment, sports and games, science and technology, Electronic Commerce and social interactions (like marriage alliances). This world has already taken the shape of a small village. The prices of Internet services are falling. Internet connectivity can he obtained by paying just Rs. 525 on an annual basis. But in addition to this, we would need a computer (Pentium-800- system), software for running programs of Internet, one telephone line and a modem device. The government has provided local dial-up service in all the districts of the country. A user, who is located within the 100-kilometer radius of an ISP, can use Internet services through a local telephone line. In order to surf through Internet, We have to connect our computer system to the main information gateway of the ISP through a telephone line and modem. We use Internet navigation software to surf through Internet. These programs are provided by Microsoft Corporation (Internet Explorer) or Netscape (Netscape Navigator). Dialing is automatic over the telephone and if a connection is made, then we arrive at the main menu of the ISP. We can surf through any web site if we feed its correct URL on the computer’s screen at the command line. We can surf through various web sites, send and receive E-mail, read magazines and even listen to music.
There is also a lot of garbage—like information on the Net, which is related to obscene photographs and movies. It is sad to note that the youth of today do not use Internet for educational purposes, or for enhancing their professional capabilities. This tendency ought to be given a U-turn. In sum, Internet would become a dominant force in the areas related to professional social, business and entertainment activities of all the people in this century.
