Shape up, or we’ll ship out: India Inc warns UPA

Ranked by Forbes as one of the world’s most powerful women, she is investing about $200 million in a manufacturing plant in Malaysia for her biotechnology firm Biocon to offset unreliable power and water supplies back home. It already makes more than half its sales overseas. Reuters

FP :Sep 9, 2013



After the rapid slide in the rupee this year, the message from the country’s corporate titans to the government is clear: shape up and fix the problems or more companies will expand their business abroad and deprive the economy of investment. 

Many, such as entrepreneur Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, are already doing just that. Ranked by Forbes as one of the world’s most powerful women, she is investing about $200 million in a manufacturing plant in Malaysia for her biotechnology firm Biocon  to offset unreliable power and water supplies back home.

 It already makes more than half its sales overseas. “If India had better infrastructure and more availability of power I may not have gone abroad,” said Shaw, who followed in her father’s footsteps with a master’s degree in brewing in Australia before setting up Biocon in her garage in Bangalore 35 years ago.

 “We don’t have enough power, we don’t have enough water. So some of these projects where we need water and power, I will do it in Malaysia because that’s where it is abundant,” Shaw, who is ranked 92 in India’s rich list with a net worth of $625 million, told Reuters in an interview. 

She is one of many top entrepreneurs voicing frustration that policymakers failed to keep economic reforms rolling over the past decade, which they contend would have prevented India from stumbling into its deepest economic crisis since 1991, when it was forced to pledge the country’s gold reserves in exchange for international loans. 

Economic growth has almost halved in pace to less than 5 percent in the past six years, a flood of cash leaving the country has led to a record current account deficit and combined with a rout of emerging markets, has sent the rupee into a tail spin. 

At its record low of 68.85 per dollar in late August, it was down around 20 percent from the end of 2012, the worst performer among Asia’s currencies. It has since risen slightly to 65.24. 

The lack of reform and infrastructure, painfully slow decision making and red tape are common complaints of corporate India, but this time they could come at a cost as the rupee crisis shows businesses how vulnerable they are. The political cost could hit the Congress-led ruling coalition at national elections that must be called by May. 

An opinion poll on Friday showed nearly three-quarters of Indian business leaders want opposition figure Narendra Modi to run the country after the election. Modi is in the political ascendancy after turning the western state of Gujarat into the country’s economic star with double-digit growth and investor friendly policies. 

The economic cost is underlined by Indian Inc’s overseas direct investment. Including bank guarantees issued to overseas units, it stood at more than $21 billion in the first seven months of this year, up 38 percent from the same period of 2012. 

That is set to increase as Indian companies see the advantages of diversifying globally. 

In a bid to reduce its dependence on a slowing Indian auto market and get a foothold in China and the United States, Apollo Tyres  agreed in June to pay $2.5 billion for U.S.-based Cooper Tire & Rubber Co , which was nearly three times its own market value at that time. Yusuf Hamied, the billionaire chief of drugmaker Cipla , which in July completed the acquisition of South Africa’s Cipla Medpro for about $460 million, is expanding his company’s base in Algeria and Morocco as part of a North Africa thrust. 

Aditya Birla Group, the $40 billion diversified conglomerate that gets more than half its sales from overseas operations, plans to invest $1 billion setting up a chemical plant in the United States, local media reported last month. 

A spokeswoman for the group, whose business interests range from mining and metals to financial services and telecoms, was unavailable to comment. “MORE AND MORE DIFFICULT” The Reserve Bank of India last month reduced companies’ overseas investment limit to 100 percent of their net worth from 400 percent, part of a drive to curb dollar outflows and prop up the rupee.

 While these steps could put a brake on overseas investments in the short term, they might not halt the outbound march in the longer term. “The government has to give us infrastructure – not for a day, not for six months – there has to be long-term infrastructure, policies that are sustainable so that we can then also plan accordingly,” said Cipla’s Hamied.

 “In healthcare there are five ministries involved – chemicals and fertilisers, finance ministry, law ministry, health ministry, commerce ministry – there is no nodal body. Who do you go to for infrastructure or for advice or anything?” 

Hamied is particularly concerned about the impact on the domestic pharmaceutical business of a new pricing policy that has increased the number of drugs deemed essential that are subject to price caps. 

Many industrialists complain that delays in approving projects due to differences among various government departments and red tape make it tougher for India Inc to set up manufacturing operations in the country than overseas. “It is becoming more and more difficult, in any sector. 

Look at the real estate sector, the amount of commissions, the amount of bureaucracy that is there is too much,” said billionaire Ajay Piramal, chairman of the healthcare-to-real estate conglomerate Piramal Group.

 “We need to have clear rules of business … unfortunately that’s not happening.” With the prospect of a populist spending splurge ahead of the national elections, industrialists like billionaire Rahul Bajaj, chairman of motorcycles and three-wheeler maker Bajaj Auto, are not betting on any changes soon.

 “I believe the government will keep taking short-term measures, which will have limited effect,” Bajaj said.

 “The way things are going, the earlier the elections the better.” 

Reuter

How 54-year old CEO TK Kurien has put Wipro back on track to regain its lost ground

Lison Joseph, ET Bureau | 9 Sep, 2013, 05.57AM IST23 


BANGALORE: Within the last few days,Wipro has been announcing a flurry of large deals worth over $100 million (Rs 650 crore), a sign of its improving prospects and rising confidence. While these contracts are by no means conclusive evidence that the company is returning to the pink of health, they nevertheless demonstrate that Chief Executive TK Kurien has been implementing a turnaround plan that has earned him a reputation within the company and without as a CEO who is made of stern stuff.

Two-and-a-half years after taking over as CEO, the 54-year old is aware that the initial expectations of a swift turnaround were too optimistic. But Kurien also believes the time has been well spent in laying the foundation for strong, sustainable growth in a rapidly-changing industry. "The hardest one (job) I have ever done," Kurien told ET.

Wipro is still underperforming the industry, but on the brighter side, the company has signalled a silver lining ahead — robust growth forecast for the July-September quarter, which is the highest in nearly two years. While Kurien has not engineered a spectacular turnaround, he did not inherit a garden variety problem either. He took charge from two company veterans, Suresh Vaswani and Girish Paranjpe, under whose watch Wipro's performance turned dismal, forcing the hand of founder Azim Premji.

The job description did not capture the scope of the challenge at the company that employs 135,000. In February 2011, the former GE executive was handed a disillusioned organisation that was bleeding talent and was staring at potential customer desertions. And the outsourcing market's dynamics were changing fast.

Scarred by the 2008-09 financial crisis, clients in the US and Europe demanded tangible value and not just pieces of software or hardware. They also pushed more risk on to service providers. "I didn't plan for the ground shifting beneath my feet," remarked Kurien.

He had to change the organisation internally, banish cynicism and find the right talent to help Wipro get in sync with external realities. His reputation as a ruthless taskmaster did not help matters, but Kurien was not prepared to put up with people who did not believe in Wipro's ability to fight back. His biggest challenge was to be able to work with long-time colleagues and friends without letting familiarity get in the way of taking tough and necessary decisions. "You get comfortable with each other and tend to avoid conflicts. In the process, you forget the customer," he said.

As Kurien started shaking things up, employee churn peaked to as much as 30 per cent in some divisions. "The biggest thing was putting your arm around people and making sure that the good ones didn't go away." It appears to be working, if the June quarter attrition rate of around 13 per cent is anything to go by. In fact, Kurien considers the "touchy feely" side of people management as one of his biggest lessons.

  
Even as he was getting the employee side of things right, Kurien did not take his eyes off customers and pushed sales staff to get bigger share of clients' technology spending.

 "Kurien knows when to go out of the way to entertain clients' demands and where to draw the line without putting them off," said Sid Pai, president for Asia-Pacific at TPI, one of the largest technology sourcing advisories.

"TK has made Wipro a more customer-centric organisation," said Rishad Premji, Wipro's chief strategy officer and the elder son of chairman Premji. "His boundless energy, no-nonsense style, openness to take risks and strong execution rigour have been instrumental in setting us on our transformation journey and also carrying people along."

A senior headhunter who has worked with Wipro closely for many years, said Premji, has told Kurien not to get bogged down by what the press writes about Wipro or its pilgrim's progress. For his part, Kurien says Wipro being a promoter-driven organisation is a blessing. "It is surprising, the level of risk I have been able to take. I would have been fired 100 times over in a market-driven company," said Kurien.

On why he thinks Premji chose him for the top job, Kurien said "I have no clue. Probably (because I) happened to be around!" Kurien has no qualms in admitting that Wipro is still work in progress, with plenty to be done still. But beyond the metrics and data points, he said he is working towards more long-term goals.

"My success is in being able to hand over something to my successor that is better than what I inherited," said Kurien, who is also candid about the job being a mixed bag of things he loves and aspects he can do without. "A leader has to live with both the hopes and the nightmares of an organisation, every day. You can't choose just one."

No need to visit a bank to get cash...Part...2

 Suman Layak, ET Bureau | 8 Sep, 2013, 10.42AM IST26

Salary on Cards

The tags can be stuck to phones or Icards or any other convenient object. In the first two weeks, since the 2,000 tags were activated this year, around Rs 2 lakh was loaded onto them by students and of that 70% spent, says Das. Naveen Surya, managing director of ITZ Cash, says the NFC tag is a variation of what the company has been offering for a few years now as prepaid payment cards. ITZ Cash is the second largest player among prepaid cards and is targeting its offerings largely at people who make small transactions.

Currently ITZ Cash is participating in a pilot in partnership with HDFC Bank in Adhaar-linked prepaid cards. Surya says: "The goal is to see if direct benefit transfer payments can go into pre-paid cards instead of bank accounts. It will reduce the burden of opening so many bank accounts for the government and the banking system."

An ICICI Bank spokesperson adds: "The ICICI Bank Saral Money Prepaid Card is fully equipped for direct benefit transfers. Also it provides the customers with an access to the entire VISA-enabled ATM network creating an inter-operable direct benefit transfer solution." There is a whole list of non-banks like ITZ Cash and Hermes that have launched pre-paid cards taking advantage of the RBI's guidelines on pre-paid instruments and the easier norms for identification and documentation that these cards have compared to bank accounts.

ITZ Cash has managed to sell its pre-paid cards for salary payments to corporate clients. Consider Aniket Saxena, director of Spic and Span Housekeepers that operates in the National Capital Region. Saxena's men are mostly migrant workers and do not report to duty in an office but at different places where they are assigned housekeeping duties. Paying out salaries in cash was a nightmare, Saxena says.

"Disbursing salary by cash would take four to five hours. A pre-paid card on the other hand needs less documentation and I can easily upload the salaries." The cost of the card — around Rs 55 — is being borne by the employees who are happy to have an instrument that allows them to withdraw cash from any ATM.

Vipin Gurang, director of Delhi-based Proficient Retail and Agrotech, has also gone in for about 40 salary pre-paid cards for his employees, who are happy as they all get their salaries at the same time. Sevan Rai, 37, an employee who hails from Darjeeling, says: "This is better, the money remains safe even if I lose my purse. I am allowed to withdraw money from IDBI Bank ATMs for free."

Joining in the Fun

Migrant workers, especially, find it difficult to go to a bank as they often do not have address proof at their workplace. However, if they would not go to a bank, a bank can surely come to them, what with most of them hitching on to the pre-paid cards bandwagon.

Axis Bank was the largest player in pre-paid cards last year. However, this year ICICI Bank has taken the lead in pre-paid cards with 40% of the market. Western Union has been the largest player in remittances from abroad into India and now it has also entered the domestic transfers business. Kiran Shetty, MD of Western Union, says with a presence in 1 lakh locations in India, the company is ideally placed to offer domestic money transfers and is targeting rural customers.

"Of the 1.2 billion people in India at least half do not have access to banking instruments. This is a great opportunity for us," he says. Western Union is using the banking correspondent (BC) route; it is a BC for Kotak Bank and offers money transfers through the National Electronics Funds Transfer System — which takes longer than IMPS. Shetty says Western Union is working to launch IMPS-based services soon. ICICI Bank is one of the five banks participating in the Saral Money Pre-paid Card and is also offering pre-paid cards with Western Union.

Yes Bank for instance has tied up with at least 13 players, including ITZ Cash and Hermes, as its BCs who offer money transfer facilities using Yes Bank's network and the IMPS facility of NPCIL. Then there are the telecom operators who can offer a mobile wallet to subscribers. Airtel, Vodafone andTata Teleservices offer the mobile money transfer facility to its subscribers.

Vodafone launched M Pesa money transfer service in collaboration with ICICI Bank in Agra on September 4. Suresh Sethi, business head for M Pesa, said Vodafone's subsidiary company MComm Solutions has an RBI licence to offer a semiclosed wallet(see Instruments of Change) to subscribers. With cash loaded onto these wallets, subscribers are now able to send money to any bank account anywhere in India as well as to other M Pesa account holders. M Pesa account holders get a mobile wallet issued by MComm and a linked Mobile Money Account with ICICI Bank.

"Our tie-up with ICICI Bank comes into play when we offer to cash out the money from our outlets instead of transferring it to a bank account. So after ICICI Bank does the KYC, we are able to send an SMS pass code to the receiver and then he can walk into one of our outlets and take the cash, without the need to go into the bank at all," Sethi explains.

Innovation is the Key

He adds that while India has about 100,000 bank branches there are 900 million mobile phones and enabling these is the key. "We have 7,800 Vodafone outlets and 25,000 agent outlets and my network is 65% rural. We will enable our agents to be BCs of the bank and provide cash out to the receiver," Sethi says.

In money transfers, eliminating the need to go to the bank to receive cash is one step that will be a big boost. While many of the money transfer agents are BCs, Jaiswal (the franchisee for Hermes quoted at the beginning of this feature) is not. BCs are representatives of the bank while Jaiswal is working as a representative of Hermes. Innovation, clearly, is ruling the day.

Talking of innovations, Yes Bank has developed a mobile card swiping device that allows companies to take a payment at the doorstep of a customer. Blue Dart has already launched a service for cash-on-delivery that can now also be card-payment-on delivery.

Anand Kumar Bajaj, president and chief innovation officer of Yes Bank, says: "The mobile POS works with any touch screen phone that the vendor will carry, on which the customer has to sign with a pen or a stylus or even his finger. One can also get the image of the charge slip on the phone." Then there is a cash-note acceptor machine that Yes Bank is set to launch. It will be housed in malls and markets and retailers can deposit their cash in the machine and it will be credited to their bank accounts.

Bajaj has an interesting pilot to talk about that Yes Bank worked on with Pepsi's largest bottler in India, Pearl Drinks. The bottler's truck would drop soft drink bottles with retailers and bring back almost Rs 70,000 cash at the end of the day. With each truck returning with that kind of cash every evening, the logistics can be complex.

Yes Bank already had BCs along the routes, which started accepting the cash. So a truck driver would visit around 10 retailers and drop the cash with a BC, and then move on to the next 10 retailers — so by the time he returned to the bottler's premises he had also submitted most of the cash with BCs that went straight into the bottler's bank accounts.

The key here again has been the IMPS service NPCIL. In the first full year after its launch in November 2010, IMPS saw 95,000 transactions (2011-12). In 2012-13 that figure went up to 12.28 lakh transactions. In the first five months of 2013-14 the number of transactions has already crossed 25 lakh. There are worries with IMPS too.

On July 4, for instance, a bunch of transactions went through but the confirmation SMSes never landed and there was confusion all around. Sources say 4,000 transactions were affected. However, NPCIL insists that all were sorted out by end of day.

AP Hota, managing director of NPCIL, says: "There are new emerging payment systems and we are trying to become a less-cash society, even if we cannot be a cashless one." He speaks about interesting possibilities like cash at POS where people can withdraw cash from retailers. With M Pesa for instance one can even pay for sweets at Shrinathji and Birdy's.

That is the kind of sweet ending Raghuram Rajan would surely like.

On July 4, for instance, a bunch of transactions went through but the confirmation SMSes never landed and there was confusion all around. Sources say 4,000 transactions were affected. However, NPCIL insists that all were sorted out by end of day.

AP Hota, managing director of NPCIL, says: "There are new emerging payment systems and we are trying to become a less-cash society, even if we cannot be a cashless one." He speaks about interesting possibilities like cash at POS where people can withdraw cash from retailers. With M Pesa for instance one can even pay for sweets at Shrinathji and Birdy's.

That is the kind of sweet ending Raghuram Rajan would surely like.

Excerpt from Rajan's first speech as RBI governor, in which he talked about anytime payments:

We want to make payments anywhere anytime a reality. Only banks are currently allowed to deploy Point-of-Sale terminals, and these are largely set up by a few banks in urban areas. As announced in the Annual Monetary Policy statement, we will facilitate the setting up of "white" POS devices and mini ATMs by nonbank entities to cover the country so as to improve access to financial services in rural and remote areas. Currently holders of pre-paid instruments issued by non-bank entities are not allowed to withdraw cash from the outstanding balances in their pre-paid cards or electronic wallets. 

Given the vast potential of such instruments in meeting payments and remittance needs in remote areas, we intend to conduct a pilot enabling cash payments using such instruments and Aadhaar based identification. Finally, there is substantial potential for mobile-based payments. We will set up a Technical Committee to examine the feasibility of using encrypted SMSbased funds transfer using an application that can run on any type of handset. We will also work to get banks and mobile companies to cooperate in rolling out mobile payments. Mobile payments can be a game changer both in the financial sector as well as to mobile companies.

No need to visit a bank to get cash....Part ..1

india’s blue-collar workforce too had its reasons to cheer the RBI governor Raghuram Rajan’s first speech. Here’s why.

By Suman Layak, ET Bureau | 8 Sep, 2013, 10.42AM IST

Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governorRaghuram Rajan would have surely not heard about Bahadur Singh, 45. It's equally unlikely that Singh would have heard about Rajan or his oratory prowess. However, the governor's first ever speech in office on September 4 would have been music to the ears of Singh — especially when Rajan spoke about allowing mini-ATMs by non-banks, cash withdrawals from pre-paid cards issued bynon-banks and encrypted SMS-based money transfers.

Singh works as a watchman in one of the skyscrapers that overlook the sea in Walkeshwar in upmarket Mumbai. Hailing from Mathura, he has been working in Mumbai for 20 years; and sending money home to his wife was always bit of a chore. "I would go to the State Bank of Indi branches on Napean Sea Road or Peddar Road and stand in a queue for an hour or two. Still, I would be at the mercy of the clerks and the security guards would scold us and teach us how to stand," says Singh, recounting his ordeal.

Digital Money

But all that is now history — for Singh now uses The Smart Shop outlet near his shanty in the suburb of Bandra to send money home. "I am a customer and I am treated with izzat at the shop. The money also reaches fast," says Singh.

Singh is just back in Mumbai after his daughter's wedding last month. He sends small amounts every other day to his wife to pay off the halwai and the tentwallah (whose services were used during the wedding celebrations). Tending to him is Pradeep Jaiswal, who had started this Smart Shop in Bandra. Jaiswal also offers ticketing, mobile recharges, but funds transfer is his key business.

"I am from Jaunpur in Uttar Pradesh and had found a job as a network engineer with Hi5 Broadband in Mumbai. Sending money home often meant loss of a work day with long queues at the nearby Union Bank branch. I felt I had to do something to help people like me. I quit my job and started this business," says Jaiswal.

Jaiswal's shop is a franchisee unit for Hermes I Tickets Pvt Ltd. He collects cash from people like Singh, loads it onto a pre-paid card (iCash Card), and then transfers the cash to the bank account of Mrs Singh in Mathura.

Jaiswal offers his services from 8 am to 11 pm seven days a week using the Immediate Payment Service of the National Payments Corporation of India LtdBSE -1.95 % (NPCIL) for transferring money. At Jaiswal's shop, there's also Angad Rajvar who is sending money to his father in Azamgarh. "We all stay in Mumbai but my father has gone to our ancestral place for work and is short of cash. I am sending him Rs 3,000," says Rajvar.

He pays a fee of Rs 37.50 to Jaiswal and receives an SMS confirming the money being credited to the Azamgarh bank account before leaving the shop. Jaiswal's shop in Bandra is one among an estimated 1.5 lakh such non - bank outlets across the country, and is a snapshot of a new India that is rapidly taking its money digital — and storing it in many different ways without needing to queue up at a bank.
Just Tag It

The best example can be found at IIT Bombay where Ashish Das, professor of statistics, is handholding a pilot to make the institute a cashless campus. In 2012, at a conference in Delhi, Das had discussed the possibility of a cashless village with officers of NPCIL. They figured IIT Bombay — with its population of 20,000 people (10,000 students, teachers, staff and families) and 40-odd retail outlets — would be an ideal stage to run a pilot.

NPCIL is promoted by 10 Indian banks and is housed inside the RBI's offices in the Bandra-Kurla Complex, Mumbai's suburban commercial district. Among other things, NPCIL has launched Rupay, India's answer to Visa and MasterCard. NPCIL also has its game-changing offering — Immediate Payment Service or IMPS that transfers money from different kinds of pre-paid cardsand mobile wallets to similar wallets and bank accounts within minutes and works 24x7 (see Instruments of Change).

NPCIL roped in ITZ Cash, the pre-paid cards venture of Subhash Chandra's Essel Group, and created a small tag — a sticker-like instrument. Around 2,000 IIT students now use it to store cash. It is a small microchip with minute near field communication (NFC) aerials that can talk to other NFC devices. Around 30 of the 40 retailers within IIT have installed machines that can accept payments through the tags.

Instruments of change

Pre-paid cards and wallets The closed-loop instrument is a card from a retail outlet like a CCD or Shoppers Stop that can be used at outlets of the company only. There are three varieties of semi-closed systems that do not allow withdrawal of cash through an ATM but allows the user to use the instruments, be they pre-paid cards or electronic wallets or mobile wallets, at retail outlets and online e-commerce websites that have an arrangement with the issuer. They need identification less rigorous than the KYC norms of a bank. 

Open pre-paid instruments need a proper KYC by a bank and can be issued by a bank or a pre-paid cards player in partnership with a bank. The cards are on Visa, Mastercard or Rupay platforms. The user can withdraw money from ATMs. IMPS The facility that proved to be a game changer is the Inter-bank Mobile Payment Service, now renamed Immediate Payment Service. It allows 24-hour transfers of cash directly into bank accounts. The key here is the immediate transfer of cash and the sender can see the confirmation SMS on his mobile within minutes.

Sukumar Jedda, a second-year MSc student at IIT Bombay, says the tag is a boon. "We do not need to carry our cash around. We don't even need to worry about small change. Yesterday I needed to buy a book that comes for Rs 25. I withdrew cash from the ATM but got two Rs 500 notes. The retailer would have refused me, but luckily I could use the tag." Students can also use the cash on the tag for online payments and railway ticket purchases.


Mirza Askari, who has been operating a dhaba inside the IIT campus for three years now, says he is happy to accept these payments. "Students would sometimes forget to bring their wallets. However, they stick these tags to the back of their phones and they never forget to carry their phones. So I do not have to give them credit. The money goes straight to my bank account and helps me save."

The NFC tags currently work with a Canara Bank account at the branch within IIT where most students receive money from their parents. Then they are able to transfer the cash to their tags online. Money can be received on the tags or can be loaded from machines placed near ATMs.

Over 250 projects worth Rs 11 lakh crore queue up for fast-track clearance by PM-backed cell

They are turning to the special investment acceleration cell set up by the PM for interventions to resurrect their investments, enthused by CCI having already resolved issues holding up projects worth Rs 1.4 lakh crore through this mechanism.

 Vikas Dhoot, ET Bureau | 9 Sep, 2013, 10.20AM IST

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's drive to revive investor sentiment by fast-tracking large stalled projects through the Cabinet Committee on Investments (CCI) and a special cell under it is encouraging Indian companies as well as big foreign investors such as Shell, Cairn India and Dell to knock on the government's door for urgent help.

Over 250 projects worth Rs 11 lakh crore are now being considered by the PM-backed cell, more than double the 120 cases worth Rs 5 lakh crore it started with in July. TheAditya Birla group, Shell, Vedanta, GMRCairn India, Essar, Jaypee,Reliance Pand ITCare among the many corporates seeking to free big-ticket investments tangled in red tape, and see hope in this mechanism. They are turning to the special investment acceleration cell set up by the PM for interventions to resurrect their investments, enthused by CCI having already resolved issues holding up projects worth Rs 1.4 lakh crore through this mechanism.

"Projects seeking salvation are now coming in thick and fast. Over the last two weeks, corporate India has submitted four-five projects to the special cell on a daily basis as they see it as a ray of hope for their stuttering investment plans," said a senior government official.

This indicates that the scale of stalled plans plaguing investors is much larger than earlier envisaged by the government. When the special cell was mooted in June, Finance MinisterP Chidambaram had said it will try and unlock investments worth over Rs 7 lakh crore by reviving 215 projects that have hit implementation roadblocks. The minister had referred to 341 projects worth Rs 10.5 lakh crore that were stuck across India.

The special cell's workload, in terms of investments at stake, has already crossed that figure. According to an ET analysis of the projects seeking expeditious resolution from CCI, the power and steel sectors account for the largest chunk of stalled projects in terms of value. Investors in 64 power projects worth nearly Rs 4.28 lakh crore have sought help in matters such as land acquisition, environment and forest clearances, and most critically, fuel supplies. Overall, the power ministry is dealing with 122 large power projects that are caught up in procedural and other issues.

The Planning Commission has asked the power ministry to take more such projects to CCI's special cell for the resolution of problems. In the steel sector, 23 projects worth over Rs 2.74 lakh crore, including three large projects by Essar Steel, JSPL and JSW Steewhich together account for Rs 1.05 lakh crore, have sought intervention.

Cairn India leads the pack of 27 oil and gas investors that have sought speedy clearances for investments worth Rs 1.13 lakh crore. It has sought to highlight the "national interest" aspect of its Rs 28,000-crore investment plan in Rajasthan. "This world-class asset (the Rajasthan block) has the potential to support 300,000 barrels of production per day, which would comprise nearly 35 per cent of the current domestic crude oil production.

Consequently, it will add about Rs 30,000 crore to government revenues and reduce our nation's oil import bill by about Rs 57,000 crore every year," the company has told the cabinet secretariat, adding that 80 per cent of the value the block that Cairn is developing with ONGCwill generate "accrues to government stakeholders".

Several large special economic zones such as the Navi Mumbai SEZ and Indiabulls SEZ have also sought CCI help. Mumbai airport has sought the committee's assistance in expediting its Rs 12,000-crore investment plan to develop a new terminal and buildings.

Last week, industry body Assocham said 43 per cent of all investment projects worth Rs 52 lakh crore remained nonstarters as of March 2013. Over 34 per cent of these investments haven't moved after being announced, the industry chamber said.

Is Samsung’s Galaxy Gear the First Truly Smart Watch?

Face time: The home screen of the Galaxy Gear can show the time, local weather, and news headlines.

Computing News : Tim Carmody on September 4, 2013


Samsung’s new smart watch may be the most polished effort yet—but that doesn’t mean it’ll be a hit.

At events held simultaneously in Berlin and New York, Samsung announced three new products, including a smart watch that marks the company’s first foray into wearable computing.

Along with the watch, called the Galaxy Gear, Samsung executives announced an oversized 5.5-inch smartphone (or “phablet”)—the Galaxy Note 3—and a tablet called the Galaxy Note 10.1. All three devices will be available in 149 countries beginning on September 25. 

By far the most intriguing, and most highly anticipated, of the devices is the Galaxy Gear. JK Shin, head of Samsung Mobile, acknowledged as much when, moments into his presentation of the Note 3, a notification alarm went off. “I just got a message,” Shin said, as a graphic teasing the not-yet-shown watch appeared behind him. (“Don’t forget to mention Android,” read the message on the Gear’s mocked-up notification screen.)

The Galaxy Gear is a full-color Android-based device about the size of an old calculator watch. It runs its own applications and was shown running apps developed by both Samsung and third-party partners. It can take photographs through a camera mounted on the wristband, facing away from the wearer, and has a pedometer that can track the wearer’s activity. 

The Gear is meant to be paired with other Samsung Galaxy devices, whether phones, Notes, or tablets. One way to think about it is as the equivalent of a Bluetooth headset, but for people who communicate largely through text and images. As an alternative user interface for its paired phone or tablet, it delivers notifications, from text messages to news alerts; it can even dial phone numbers and place calls, but only when paired with a phone or tablet hooked up to a wireless phone network. The microphone for phone calls can also be used for voice memos, although there’s a five-minute limit on what can be recorded in a single go.

On stage in Berlin, Samsung director of research Pranav Mistry—a recent addition to Samsung’s in-house Think Tank, who is probably best known for the SixthSense interface he developed as a graduate researcher at MIT’s Media Lab—said that wearable devices are “not just about giving a new [name] or a new form to devices, but about creating new experiences.” 

Over in New York, Samsung’s chief product officer, Kevin Packingham, was more matter-of-fact. He told me that for Samsung wearables are about a return to simplicity, which meant carefully editing the watch’s functions down rather than trying to pack in too much at once.

After the presentations, reporters and photographers were given hands-on access to the new Galaxy Gear and Note devices. The Gear, available with wristbands of six different colors and materials, has a 1.63-inch (or 41.4-millimeter) Super AMOLED display, with a 320-by-320 pixel resolution. For comparison, the sixth-generation square iPod Nano, which had a similar color touch screen, had a 1.5-inch display with 240-by-240 resolution. The Gear has an 800-megahertz processor, 512 megabytes of RAM, and four gigabytes of onboard storage. The first iPhone had four gigabytes of storage, 128 megabytes of RAM, and a 620-megahertz processor.

All that power, plus the sensors and Bluetooth, comes at a cost. The device is expected to cost $299 and has a 315-milliamp-hour lithium-ion battery, which Samsung says lasts about a day. The watch clips into a dock, which then charges using a standard micro-USB cord. None of Samsung’s official materials said whether a day meant 12, 18, or 24 hours, and none of the representatives I asked could clarify. 

The body of the Galaxy Gear is stainless steel, and at about 74 grams, it’s fairly heavy. (Conventional metal wristwatches can run up to 100 grams before weight really becomes a problem, but this weight is usually distributed over the entire watch, which makes it feel more balanced.) There’s a sleep/wake button on the right-hand side, and the watch powers itself down quite quickly.

The wristband on our demo device adjusted to four different lengths, with a bracelet-style metal clasp that snaps shut. Ahead of me, a woman with relatively small wrists found the Gear sliding down with the band at the smallest setting. My arms and wrists are fairly large, and I couldn’t get the same watch to close at all. A Samsung representative assured me that the bands available at launch would be more adjustable.

It’s possible to interact with the Gear using simple gestures: a swipe upward activates the camera, while a swipe down brings up the home screen showing time, weather, and news headlines. A swipe to the right or left lets you scroll through contacts, logs, apps, settings, the pedometer, music, a gallery, voice memos, and notifications. It’s simple and largely works very well.

The third-party applications available at launch include information management tools like Pocket and Evernote, fitness apps like RunKeeper, and more esoteric options like Vivino Wine Scanner, which allows users to take a picture of a bottle of wine and learn more about it. The set of partners is currently limited, but Packingham told me he expects that a software development kit will be released once the kinks with the device’s current API are worked out.

Samsung and other companies trying to create a market for smart watches are betting that these devices can become an attractive new platform for application development. I

t’s not yet clear how well that model will succeed, and who will control the market. But at least the Galaxy Gear gives us a new way to examine those questions.

Happy Vinayagar Chaturthi

BFI : 9 th Sep 2013



Happy Vinayagar Chaturthi 

May the Blesings of The Lord  Vinayaga

Always be upon you

bank finance india