Spencer’s plans a real big box

 Saturday, Feb 9, 2013, 10:30 IST 
By Nupur Anand | Place: Mumbai | Agency: DNA

For name sake, ‘supermarkets’ abound in the country, but world class, full-fledged, sprawling hypermarkets, like the ones in advanced countries that offer the universe, are yet to debut in India.RPG group-led Spencer’s Retail is set to change that, at least in a certain sense.

“In select hypermarkets, we will expand our offerings on the service side, bringing them closer to what is actually offered in the West, in terms of the wide range of products and services,” says Mohit Kampani, CEO of Spencer’s Retail.

Apart from food, apparel and other goods, Spencer’s will offer an array of services like florist, pharmacy, in-store cafe, barber shop, laundry and so on.

Kampani plans to make that list of services longer with small bookstores and quick service restaurants to trigger impulsive purchases among consumers.

Spencer’s Kolkata branch will lead the pack, to be followed by similar hypermarkets elsewhere.
While in-store cafe and bakery have by now become integral to some new-age supermarkets, other offerings like electronics, car accessories and jewellery are slowly making the scene exciting.

But in terms of space, they are still small to be called hypermarkets. Typically, a Western hypermarkettakes up between 1 lakh square feet and 2.6 lakh sq feet. But Spencer’s ‘hypermarkets’ will be spread over just 29,000 square feet.

Spencer’s is aware size does matter, but, in a country where huge urban commercial spaces are hard to come by, it plans to focus on chain expansion instead. So, 56 new Spencer’s marts will open in the next three years.

Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, West Bengal, Delhi NCR, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra are among the states that will host Spencer’s hypermarkets.

Besides state capitals and major cities, Spencer’s will foray into Tier-II and Tier-III towns. Kampani links this move to high double-digit same-store sales growth of some stores in non-metros. (Same-store sales growth refers to sales logged by a retailer’s existing stores during a certain period vis-a-vis the corresponding period a year ago.)

Spencer’s will sharpen focus on private label (or in-house) brands which now account for only 15% of its sales. “The target is 25-30%,” says Kampani.

Private label brands, he says, give hypermarkets control over pricing, which is important in a regime of maximum retail price or MRP. “We are looking at extending our private label brand to frozen foods, bakers and so on.”

India's fastest supercomputer 'Param Yuva II' unveiled

Saturday, Feb 9, 2013, 5:00 IST  By DNA Correspondent | Place: Bangalore | Agency: DNA

Stating that the Union government was committed to ensuring that India was the top destination for research and development globally, secretary of the department of electronics and information technology J Satyanarayana congratulated C-DAC Pune for launching Param Yuva II, the fastest supercomputer in India and 62nd fastest in the world. The supercomputer is expected to be of great help to the scientific community.

Satyanarayana was speaking after unveiling the computer at the C DAC premises in Pune on Friday. Director general of CDAC Rajat Moona and executive director of C-DAC Hemant Darbari was also present on the occasion.

Satyanarayana said "Research and development can be a major thrust area for India going forward. Computational infrastructure like Param Yuva II is necessary to achieve this."

Darbari said that this supercomputer would be of great use to the scientific community. He said "Areas like weather forecasting, seismic data analysis, scientific data processing will all be benefitted due to Param Yuva II. We were doing weather forecasting of over 58,000 villages with param yuva. Now we can double that number at a minimum. Industries like pharmaceuticals, bio informatics, aeronautical engineering will also benefit. Seismic data processing can be done much more efficiently with this new computer."

He said the main users of the supercomputer would be the scientific institutes, research laboratories and universities.

"Through the national knowledge network, the Indian Institutes of Technology and National Institutes of Technology can be linked to this computer. Pharmaceutical companies can use it for drug discovery as can the high performance computing community. The computer has been upgraded at a cost of Rs15 crore.”

This is the first supercomputer that has crossed 500 teraflops in computing power in the country. 

Ratan Tata...

Indian BPO sector outpaces IT services growth

6 FEB, 2013, 12.28PM IST, AKANKSHA PRASAD & N SHIVAPRIYA,ET BUREAU 



BANGALORE | MUMBAI: Along with growing in sophistication, India's business process outsourcing industry is expanding at a rapid clip, a sharp contrast to the information technology services sector which has struggled to recover after the global financial crisis of 2008.

The faster growth is driven by cost pressures at large corporations in Europe and the United States which are now outsourcing entire processes rather than parts of processes they used to earlier. Such a development, while helping reduce costs, also calls for advanced skills and expertise at Indian BPO firms.

"Traditional BPO is changing towards high-end knowledge and skilled-based work. Clients are cutting their IT outsourcing spend and shifting it to BPO budget. This has resulted in a substantial gain in the BPO spend," said Biswajit Banerjee, senior analyst at the Indian arm of European outsourcing advisory Pierre Audoin Consultants.

So, therefore, in the December quarter, while InfosysBSE -0.02 % as a whole clocked about 6% growth in revenues, its BPO arm grew by 41%. In the same period, Tata ConsultancyBSE 0.48 % Services' BPO unit grew by 39% compared to the company's 22 % rate. TCSBSE 0.48 % gets 12.4% of its $10.17 billion revenue from the BPO arm while for Infosys it is about 5% of its $7 billion sales.

At about Rs 84,800 crore ($16 billion) in export revenue and an employment base of some 9 lakh professionals, India's BPO industry is still much smaller than the IT services sector that earned a little over Rs 2 lakh crore ($40 billion) from exports and employed as many as 13 lakh. Vipul Khanna, who heads BPO operations at Cognizant Technology Solutions, said that Indian BPOs are being called on to do complex work, which has in effect increased the potential basket of services they can offer.

In insurance, for instance, while Cognizant earlier handled policy and claims management tasks, it now also helps insurers take business decisions on new underwriting support and claims adjudications. "Globalisation of businesses, regulatory changes and virtualisaton of business processes through mobility and cloud are driving rapid expansion," Khanna said. Cognizant is scheduled to announce its December quarter results on Thursday.

There is also a shift in the nature of demand, with more clients now asking for more domain-focused skill sets, industry-specific knowledge, and all of it at client locations, said Rahul Singh, president for business services at HCL TechnologiesBSE -0.24 %. HCL turned around its loss-making BPO arm a few quarters ago and recorded a double digit operating margin for the first time in the December quarter.

Revenue from BPO services fetch about 4.4% of HCL Technologies' total sales of $4.4 billion. "Right now in the US there are major changes taking place in healthcare and banking which require an increase in labour to support them," said Cathy Tornbohm, research vice-president for BPO at Gartner. Gartner estimates the global BPO market to be worth $176 billion by 2016.

Sid Pai of ISG, one of the world's largest sourcing advisory firms, believes that there is a fundamental change in buyer behaviour with clients ready to outsource not just noncore functions.

Management Tip of the Day :Don't Let Failure Ruin Your Dreams

HBR :Feb 5,2013

When you start a company, launch a new product, or take on a new job, you, of course, hope to succeed. But that's not always the case. Next time you face failure, here's how to make the most of it:

• Acknowledge sadness. It's disappointing when your dreams don't come to fruition. Take time to grieve. If you sublimate the sadness, you risk losing your passion and getting stuck.
• Jettison shame. Failure shouldn't be a referendum on you. Pull shame out of the picture and label it as the waste that it is.
• Learn the right lesson. Experts say failure is the best teacher but you have to be more specific. Ask yourself: What valuable truth did I discover by failing?

Today's Management Tip was adapted from "Put Failure in Its Place" by Whitney Johnson.

கொஞ்சம் சினிமா கொஞ்சம் பாப்கார்ன் :MOO

TNN | Feb 5, 2013, 09.11 AM IST


Kamal Haasan's next id titled Moo

Even as the buzz around the release of hisVishwaroopam in Tamil Nadu gets bigger,Kamal Haasan has hinted at his next flick. The film will be titled Moo, and is said to be about three lives. 

"I will be registering the title soon," he said in a TV interview, "It denotes three. The Tamil language has this beauty about it - you can tell a word in one syllable, like nee, naan, thee. I'd like to title my next film, post Vishwaroopam 2, as Moo."

Kamal Haasan beats Rajinikanth

The buzz is that the movie will feature the actor playing three roles and might also be made in English, considering the Ulaganayagan's desire to do a film in Hollywood soon. In fact, The Lord of the Rings producer Barrie Osborne had recently voiced his desire to work with the actor. "I am inspired by Kamal Haasan," he said, "We are discussing a project together. I hope it comes true soon." It remains to be seen if Moo (or Triple Impact, the alleged English title) will mark the collaboration between the two. As the Ulaganayagan has already played ten roles in his Dasavatharam, expectations are riding high if he will play the three contrasting roles that are said to be key to the subject of Moo.

When contacted, Kamal's spokesperson said, "There's no official confirmation about Moo yet. Kamal sir is planning to makeVishwaroopam 2 next and he had mentioned that even during the talks with the Muslim groups. He has already shot most of the film and will shoot the remaining portions soon. In fact, when Vishwaroopam ends, there's an indication that the sequel will take place in India."

Harvard University invites 'lecturer' Shah Rukh Khan

SRK giving his Chubb Fellowship lecture. Courtesy: Yale website


Agencies
February 05, 2013:12:23 IS


Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan has already delivered lectures at Yale University. Now, reports suggest that the famous Harvard University has invited Shah Rukh Khan to deliver a lecture. 
Mumbai Mirror reported on Tuesday that the actor has received an invitation to deliver a lecture at Harvard University. Shah Rukh Khan is yet to finalise the dates for the lecture, the report further said.

Shah Rukh Khan, who is an economics graduate and has been an icon of success in the business of making films, is likely to talk about the economics of filmmaking to the students, the Mumbai Mirror report added.
Shah Rukh Khan visited Yale University in Connecticut to deliver a lecture last year.

The visit, however, turned ugly for Shah Rukh Khan. SRK was detained for over two hours at the White Plains airport in New York by immigration authorities

 He was travelling in a private plane and was accompanied by Nita Ambani, wife of Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani.

Shah Rukh Khan recently made it to the cover page of Forbes magazine. The upcoming edition will list out the names of the 100 most powerful people in India.

A source close to the magazine said, “In the four years since Forbes has entered the Indian market, SRK will be the first actor on the cover page.” Shah Rukh Khan will talk about his success, cricket team and lots more in the feature.