Entries from September 2003 ↓

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India BioTech Blast

Biotech Industry Set To Grow By 30% In 2003-04: Study:

“The BioSpectrum-ABLE study carries details of over 200 of the country’s most promising companies and lists India’s top 50 biotech companies turnover-wise. The 10 leading biotech companies in terms of turnover are Biocon India, Bangalore (Rs 255 crore), Panacea Biotec, Delhi (Rs 169.88 crore), Wipro HealthScience, Bangalore (Rs 98.55 crore), Wockhardt (Rs 74 crore), Haffkine Bio-Pharmaceutical(Rs 72.90 crore), Eli Lilly (Rs 71.31 crore), Nicholas Piramal (Rs 70.64 crore), Krebs Biochem (Rs 64.16 crore), Bharat Serums (Rs 58 crore) and Indian Immunologicals (Rs 55.31 crore). “…..

Popularity: 7% [?]

India : The most favored BPO nation

This is what cyber-coolies are creating for India, are you listening?….

India: Destination of choice for BPO - Sify.com: “The most popular destinations for the migration of business processing activities found were India (with 24 per cent executives voting in its favour), China (15 per cent), Mexico (13 per cent), Brazil (10 per cent) and Czech Republic (8 per cent). ‘India is clearly the destination of choice for business processing services across all industries. There are tens of thousands of well-educated, English-speaking and highly motivated engineering, IT, and accounting professionals in India with the skills and capabilities auto manufacturers and suppliers need for offshore business processing,’ Nagi Palle, co-author of the research and a principal at AT Kearney said. “

Popularity: 8% [?]

VSNL, the best ISP in ASIA

VSNL third best ISP in Asia: Survey - The Times of India:

UK-based network specialist NetConfigs Ltd has ranked Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd (VSNL) as the third best Internet Service Provider (ISP) in Asia and 29th in the world from among a total of 11,000 ISPs globally.

Popularity: 7% [?]

The Creative Sucessors of Indian Advertising

Gen Next of Indian advertising - The Times of India:

“the 10 people who will rule the creativity charts of Indian advertising after the troika hang up their magic wands.”

* Anuja Chauhan Alva, vice president and senior creative director, JWT

* Mahesh V and Rajiv Rao, creative directors of Ogilvy & Mather

* Naren Multani, national creative director, films, McCann-Erickson

* Nishant Gangadharan, copy supervisor, Orchard Bangalore

* Nitesh Tiwari, creative director, Lowe

* Rahul Sengupta, group creative director, Lowe

* Ramanuj Shastry creative director at McCann-Erickson Mumbai.

* Senthil Kumar creative director of JWT

* Sharon Nayak, unit creative director of Lowe, Bangalore

Popularity: 8% [?]

To MBA or Not to

Perhaps the MBA is the most sought after degree in India today. But is it really worth the trouble? Comments Mahesh Murthy in his Business world column…|| Businessworld - To B-school or not to be||

Popularity: 8% [?]

Cyber coolies ?

In Sunday Times of India you will land up on a debate regarding call centers and cyber coolies, people who have lost their identity, working at odd timings for a firang company and living a shaky life. Some professor from Delhi University points all the black in such lifestyle and critisizes it heavily. What I can understand from all this is that….

(1) We would not care what opportunities we are providing.

(2) But if somebody starts earning from whatever he has from an opportunity offered from outside, he is called a ’slave’ a ‘cyber coolie’.

(3) Do we know that ? The entire IT revolution is result of the ‘Brain Drain’ & excellent performance of ‘code coolism’ during Y2K slavery period.

(4) Mind you nobody in this world cares about India as a nation (not even the indians who show that ‘they care’), the entire progress and revolution is happening due to ‘few indians’ who give positive image of India to rest of the India and the world.

(5) You cannot just become IT super power without stepping on the first step, that you call ‘coolism’. Once we become fully qualified coolies then only we can move up the value chain to become lords of the IT ring.

(6) Can you all critics shut your mouth and give some positivity and energy to the Indian youth. Even porn stars from foreign land provide more energy and motivation than Indian politicians, so called gurus, intellectuals and popular faces.

READ THIS….

Aren’t Indians mostly involved in code writing and are often referred to as ‘cyber-coolies’?

I object to the word cyber-coolie. While it may describe the job, the word coolie has a negative connotation. I want to remind you that for 50 years since the independence, our politicians, intellectuals and scientists did not get us the kind of “respect” in the world what these “cyber-coolies” have got us in a few years time. We need to acknowledge them and their work for making us feel proud to be an Indian.

Arjun Mehrotra chairman of Techspan in India Today

Popularity: 8% [?]

DO-NOT-CALL

Do not call is a mobile and telephone spam prevention list, if somebody call on the numbers in the list is penalized heavily.

Call centres forced to close : HindustanTimes.com: “US ‘DO-NOT-CALL’ lists—which include names of Americans who don’t want to receive telemarketing calls—have put many Indian call centres in a spot, forcing some to shut down.”

However…..

Court Rules Against USA Do-Not-Call Registry | on NewsDay : : But Bob Corn-Revere, an attorney for the American Teleservices Association, a trade group, hailed the ruling as “a good start.” Corn-Revere said that consumers already have the right to tell telemarketers not to call them, and that a federal database is unnecessary. “We don’t object to people saying ‘don’t call me,’” Corn-Revere said. “We object to the big federal database.”

Popularity: 7% [?]

India BPO reputation grows

Motown too bets big on Indian BPO - The Economic Times: “India’s BPO reputation is rubbing off on Motown as well. According to a study by consultancy firm AT Kearney, which sampled opinions from American auto executives, India emerged as the top outsourcing destination with 24% of the respondents giving it the thumbs up. “

Popularity: 8% [?]

Realty BPO hires

Realty BPO to hire 1,000 more by June 2004 - The Economic Times: “Global Realty Outsourcing, a BPO firm with two facilities in Chennai, plans to expand its operations in the country to 1,000 employees by June 2004. Its current workforce of around 350 people — over 50 per cent are CAs or MBAs — crunch numbers from Chennai to help GRO’s clients in the US make million-dollar investments in real estate.”……

Popularity: 7% [?]

Growth in IT Hiring

Indian IT hiring gets a restart, breaks new grounds : HindustanTimes.com: “Number of professionals IT companies will hire in coming months

Wipro 9,000

Infosys 5,000

TCS 5,000

Oracle 3,000

Convergys 3,000

Cognizant 1,700

Satyam 1,000

Sutherland1,500″

Popularity: 8% [?]

India Inside

It’s India inside, we have been leading the IT industry from quite some time now and proved our metal also. Now the need is to make India , the ‘product’ country to create brands like iflex, providing banking software. Even Wipro is trying hard to enter into the consulting space and many are following the same suit. With dedicated promotions and combined efforts of the industry, India will surely become a product supplier also. I hope we don’t miss the hardware industry, we have some cool brains in that area also.

Nasscom to sell country with ‘India Inside’ campaign - The Economic Times: The National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom), is stepping up its efforts to build the “India Inside” brand, projecting the sub-continent as a destination for software product development activity.”…….

Popularity: 8% [?]

Sad Shourie

Mr. Shourie is may be the only person in politics whom you can listen and find intelligence in all his words. But the politics and even the court seems to be against him.

Economist.com | India’s economy: “ARUN SHOURIE, India’s minister for disinvestment (the preferred Indian euphemism for privatisation), did not conceal his frustration at a Supreme Court judgment on September 16th. Collared by the press on a visit to Berlin, he lamented that the ruling, which scuppers for the time being the privatisation of two state-owned oil companies, was “a major setback with huge consequences”.

The court ruled that the sales required explicit parliamentary approval, which the government cannot be certain of securing. These sales were the centrepiece of its privatisation plans for this year (as they were, in fact, last year), and the ruling will also affect some other asset sales. Worse, it helps foster the impression that the system has an institutional bias against economic reform. “This is the difference between India and China,” complained Mr Shourie. “In India everybody has a veto.”” …..

Popularity: 8% [?]

The rise of Call Centers

Although the happenings in the call centre arena are inspiring and towards our side and we are lreading the race, it should be realized that in future if we want to maintain such dominance we need to gear up for good infrastructure support, talent discovery and retaining the same and most importantly incentive to invest in India. English speaking talent can only take us here and that will not be a big advantage in future, all the state CMs are you listening?

India, Philippines, China to enjoy sharp rise in call centres

Manila: India, Philippines and China are expected to enjoy a sharp rise in the number of call centre stations next year, the head of a Sydney-based industry think-tank said.

Martin Conboy, Chief Officer of Callcentres.net said that this was the result of a survey of 824 organizations throughout the region representing call centres in India, China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand……..

Popularity: 7% [?]

India : Knowledge Power

Again this is talking about private investment in knowledge sectore & technology. What incentive does government offer?. If red tape is cut and speed is introduced in our system we can have thousands of IITs and IIMs. The countries lead by research. CSIR has just realized the importance of patenting the technologies. Dr. Mashelkar may bring some energy in to that, best luck.

India to emerge as knowledge power: Dr Mashelkar

Nearly 80 per cent of India’s spend on science and technology is still done by the government, with private industry participation at barely 20 per cent.

The Indian government spends 1.1 per cent of its gross domestic product on research and development in science and technology.

This figure has gone up compared to 1995-97 when the government’s spend on R&D was just about 0.71 per cent. Most developed countries spend about 3 per cent of their GDP on R&D in science and technology.

Yet Dr R A Mashelkar, director general of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the largest chain of industrial research and development institutions in the world, with 38 laboratories and about 22,000 employees, believes that India is poised to become the largest ‘knowledge producer’ in the world……..

Popularity: 7% [?]

Lloyd to move jobs to India

UK’s Lloyds to move 1,500 jobs to India

Despite protests from a section of trade unions, more British financial services jobs are destined for India with Lloyds TSB announcing that 1,500 jobs will be created in Bangalore and Hyderabad by the end of next year

Popularity: 7% [?]

Extreme Stupidity

In India you can watch obscene politics, die due to negligence of a doctor or government official in train or a road, but you cannot discuss something which some smarty thinks is harmful to you. Does Indian CERT realize how important these groups are? it might be a question of life or death for somebody looking for medical information or a question of future for some aspiring student, but who cares?. Shut all the news channels and politically funded news papers because they throw more shit on us. Relax, this is democrazy.

CIOL : News : India bans Yahoo! Groups

Yahoo! Groups, a well-known discussion and community e-groups service, has been banned in India. Following a directive from the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), a Ministry of IT group formed under the IT Act to provide security advisory and guidelines, the Indian ISPs have blocked the URL of Yahoo! Groups www.groups.yahoo.com. This is said to be the first ban under the CERT-In law…..

Popularity: 6% [?]

Smart Analysis

Microsoft to offer “smart” analysis in India | CNET News.com

Microsoft has teamed with Cap Gemini Ernst & Young and India’s Tata Consultancy Services to offer “smart” data analysis to companies in India.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Call Centers: Outsourcing to India Saves Financial Services Companies $25 Million

DURHAM, N.C., Sept. 24 /PRNewswire/ — Financial service corporations that outsource 1,000 jobs overseas can expect upwards of $25 million in savings, according to business intelligence firm Cutting Edge Information.

India, where the cost of labor is about an eighth of U.S. costs, has become a valuable solution to high turnover and workforce apathy in American call centers. When outsourcing overseas, many financial services companies consider India first. Primarily, Indian call center employees tend to be more enthusiastic and turnover averages only 5%.

“Managing Financial Services Call Centers,” available at http://www.cuttingedgeinfo.com/FS80_Call_Centers/ contains more than 200 metrics and features practices from top financial services companies, such as Merrill Lynch, Fidelity Investments, Citigroup, Capital One, Allstate, Wachovia and MetLife. The report highlights budget and staffing metrics, as

well as strategies and tactics to enhance overall call center efficiency and boost customer satisfaction.

“Customer service has improved drastically when call centers relocate toforeign countries,” says Cutting Edge Information senior analyst Elio Evangelista. “India is an excellent place to outsource because they hold customer service jobs in high esteem and workers tend to care much more about their jobs.”

For example, one financial services company relocated its call center operations overseas, allowing them to cut labor costs by 50%. The company also discovered that the foreign workforce was more skilled than local one had

been.

“Managing Financial Services Call Centers” showcases quantitative metrics and qualitative practices in the following areas:

* Call center agents’ incentive and compensation packages

* Turnover, blocked calls, cost per rep and many other key performance

measurements

* Inbound and outbound call metrics for the financial services industry

* Up-selling and cross-selling strategies

* Offshore outsourcing

* Process efficiency and call center technology

To view the online summary of this 114-page report, visit

http://www.cuttingedgeinfo.com/FS80_Call_Centers/ .

Popularity: 7% [?]

India Outsourcing Watch

Brar Calls For Govt Support For Clinical Research Outsourcing | Fiancial Express

Ranbaxy Laboratories CEO DS Brar feels clinical research outsourcing to India will take off only when regulatory infrastructure and support systems are in place. He added that India occupies a small place in the world scheme of clinical investigation despite the fact that India has quality infrastructure, pool of talents and various ethnicity of diseases….

China, India remain threats to RP offshore outsourcing | inq7

A PHILIPPINE firm eyeing the offshore business process outsourcing (BPO) market admitted that India and China remain the biggest threats to its business.With China now playing catch-up with its aggressive campaign to teach their people the English language, local system integration firm DTSI is expecting the Chinese to speak English well in the next few years….

Popularity: 7% [?]

BPO Definitions

Business Process Outsourcing is defined as :

“Delegation of one or more IT-intensive business processes to an external provider that, in turn, owns, administrates and manages the selected process(es) based on defined and measurable performance metrics.”

- Gartner, BPO is Asia Pacific (PDF)

“Business process outsourcing (BPO) is the act of giving a third-party the responsibility of running what would otherwise be an internal system or service. For instance, an insurance company might outsource their claims processing program or a bank might outsource their loan processing system.

Typically, companies that are looking at business process outsourcing are hoping to achieve cost savings by handing the work to a third-party that can take advantage of economies of scale by doing the same work for many companies. Or perhaps the cost savings can be achieved because labor costs are lower due to different costs of living in different countries.”

- Mariosalexandrou

“Business process outsourcing (BPO) is the contracting of a specific business task, such as payroll, to a third-party service provider. Usually, BPO is implemented as a cost-saving measure for tasks that a company requires but does not depend upon to maintain their position in the marketplace. BPO is often divided into two categories: back office outsourcing which includes internal business functions such as billing or purchasing, and front office outsourcing which includes customer-related services such as marketing or tech support.

BPO that is contracted outside a company’s own country is sometimes called offshore outsourcing. BPO that is contracted to a company’s neighboring country is sometimes called nearshore outsourcing, and BPO that is contracted with the company’s own county is sometimes called onshore outsourcing.”

- Search CIO @ techtarget

Visit on these above mentioned links to find more about BPO & Outsourcing….

Popularity: 7% [?]

Quote of the Day : TALENT

If you have a talent, use it in every which way possible. Don’t hoard it. Don’t dole it out like a miser. Spend it lavishly like a millionaire intent on going broke. - Brendan Francis

Popularity: 7% [?]

The Definition of Outsourcing

Outsourcing has been defined as:

“A contractual relationship where an external organisation takes responsibility for performing all or part of an agency’s Information Technology functions. This can involve a partial or complete transfer of staff and/or resources.”

“Work done for a company by people other than the company’s full-time employees”.

- InvestorWords

“Outsourcing is when a company purchases a product or process from an outside supplier rather than producing in house. This is different from subcontracting because the customer does not own the raw material or manufacturing process but buys the product based on the specifications offered by the supplier. The customer trains and develops the supplier to form a supply chain partnership.”

- Outsource Solutions, LLC

“Outsourcing is an arrangement in which one company provides services for another company that could also be or usually have been provided in-house. Outsourcing is a trend that is becoming more common in information technology and other industries for services that have usually been regarded as intrinsic to managing a business. In some cases, the entire information management of a company is outsourced, including planning and business analysis as well as the installation, management, and servicing of the network and workstations. Outsourcing can range from the large contract in which a company like IBM manages IT services for a company like Xerox to the practice of hiring contractors and temporary office workers on an individual basis.”

- SearchSAP @ SearchTechTarget.com

Popularity: 7% [?]

Two to Tango

Shahrukh Khan (SRK) and Sachin Tendulkar may team up again for yet another ad-campaign as they have done it previously for Pepsi.

Popularity: 8% [?]

SMS Advertising

I hope this saves us from mobile & sms spamming…

[ The booming mobile phone culture in India has prompted the advertising industry to target the consumers through the popular ‘Short Message Service’ (SMS).

Mumbai-based Indus Mobile Communications has launched ‘www.smsjunction.com‘ to collect data of user groups of mobile phones.

”Knowing the potential of the SMS culture, we have over the last two years collected more than 30 lakh mobile phone numbers across the country with profile of the users,” says Waseem Kazi, the Business Development Manager of the IndusMobile Communications…… ]

- Ad industry set to cash in on SMS boom | Sify

Popularity: 7% [?]

Gururaj on Indian BPO

New US Rules On BPO Are No Cause Of Worry: Deshpande | Finacial Express

The new US rules and guidelines on BPO cannot hamper Indian prospects as economics will ensure that the cheapest mode will survive and with India’s advances in the sector, there was always hope for the country, according to Gururaj Desh Deshpande of Sycamore Networks. Mr Deshpande, who along with a few entrepreneurs from the Silicon Valley are here in connection with the CEO summit as part of the ‘Amritavarsham 50’, told a group of mediapersons the quality of Indian technology had literally left the US ‘scared’. Some of the customer connectivity there was inferior to Indian technology, he added. ….

Popularity: 7% [?]

Accenture to double its manpower

Accenture to double headcount in India by November - The Economic Times

Global management consultancy firm, Accenture, intends to double the number of employees at its Indian business to more than 4,000 by November this year on hopes of a substantial growth in its businesses.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Transforming Mumbai

Rs 2,000 billion is what Mumbai needs to be a Shanghai | Indian Express

Bombay First & McKinsey have submitted a report to Maharashtra government to improve mumbai and roadmap to achieve these goals by 2013…

• Boost economic growth to 8-10 per cent instead of 2.4 presently. That should create half a million new jobs.

• Improve mass and private transport infrastructure through new rail lines, expressways and buses. Eventually, no more than 220 people in a rail coach, compared to the 570 today.

• Reduce the slum population by at least 20 per cent from 60 per cent presently by constructing one million homes.

• Other improvements: reduce air pollution, increase water supply, cut administrative expenses by half, and, the most important, cut red tape.

But I am very sceptical whether these plan or any other plan with similar intentions will ever start. The politics and red tape are the biggest hurdle in its path. The other hurdles are opprotunitic people, pro-poor activists & lazy attitude of all of us. We should realize that problem of our slum city is very serious and must be dealt urgently, otherwise we will have to actually rename mumbai (bombay) to “Slum City”. Politcians would first like to see their name to be attached with the projects, so if congress does it, shiva sena will oppose it and vice-a-versa. The biggest looser in this game would be an avergae “mumbaikar”, the middle-class person who is always screwed first. The prime and public land in the entire mumbai either belongs to rich or poor(slums) and despite paying tax regularly and living a very hard life the mumbaikar ultimately has ‘0′ options available to him. From the start of the day till night an average mumbaikar is fighting, fighting and fighting. We need somebody like Tamil Nadu CM Chandra Babu Naidu to bring life in this city and to have some hope for the working class and stop giving free lunches to ‘rich only’ or to ‘poor only’.

Popularity: 8% [?]

India BPO Watch

Domestic call center pegged @ Rs1,000 cr | CIOL

Apart from telecom and banking sector, the travel industry is emerging as the biggest contributor for the domestic call center industry.

Infy BPO subsidiary plans Czech unit | Times Of India

Progeon, Infosys’ business process outsourcing (BPO) subsidiary, is planning to set up its first overseas centre in the Czech Republic in its journey to become a BPO company with a global footprint.

TeleTech to open second center in Mumbai | CIOL

A 50:50 JV between Bharti Teletech Ltd and TeleTech Holdings Inc.–has zeroed in on Mumbai as the location for its second center

India seen as third largest IT, BPO industry | Keralanext

India’s IT and BPO sectors are predicted to become the world’s third largest by 2008 despite growing resentment against outsourcing in America.

Infinite Eyeing Acquisitions In BPO | Financial Express

Bangalore-based Infinite Computer Solutions is scouting for acquisitions to enter into the business process outsourcing (BPO) business. The Rs 250 crore company is also looking for a mid-sized software services company operating in the banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) sector.

Remote infrastructure services – the next big opportunity | Business Standard

The stage is set for India to cash in on outsourced remote infrastructure management services

Popularity: 7% [?]

Outsourcing Marketing Activities in India

Sumeet Chatterjee writes in Outsourcing of marketing activities to fuel BPO growth in India | Hindustan Times - More and more global companies are looking to outsourcing their sales and marketing activities to India, creating new opportunities for the country’s money-spinning business process outsourcing (BPO) firms.

Popularity: 7% [?]

NeoIT grows by 194%

neoIT Ends FY2003 with 194% Revenue Growth and Marquee Clients

neoIT, the leading offshore advisory and management firm headed by CEO Atual Vashishtha, marks the end of FY2003 with the accomplishment of several major milestones and has issued an upbeat forecast for the remainder of the 2003 calendar year. The company is one of the few advisory firms to specialize exclusively in helping buyers of IT and business process outsourcing (BPO) services manage the offshore outsourcing lifecycle.

Popularity: 6% [?]