Daily Excelsior...Business

Kingfisher, Deccan swap to be finalised by April..

M&M signs pact with Sri Lanka to set up USD 100 mn IT centre

Growth in industrial production slips to 7.6 pc in Dec ‘07

Reliance Money launches UAE operations; eyes 1 lakh customers...

GoAir announces ‘Valentine free’ offer for passengers

Excelsior Correspondent

JAMMU, Feb 12: GoAir, India’s smartest airline has announced a unique marketing promotion aimed at combining Valentine Day and forthcoming holiday season.

Branded as GoAir’s Valentine promotion, the offer contains one free ticket for each paid flier, which means the passenger will have to pay for one ticket and his companion would fly free and the said offer was valid on all bookings made from February 9 to14 for travel from February 15 to June 30, 2008.

Commenting on new offer, Jeh Wadia, Managing Director GoAir, said, "The GoAir Valentine offer is our way of gratifying the smart fliers who wish their loved one would be with them this Valentine, even when they are flying out of their home towns"

GoAir’s Valentine offer could be availed by booking through GoAir’s Call Centre on 1800-222-111 and +919223 222 111 and GoAir ticketing counters at the airport.

Go Airlines (India) Private Limited is the aviation foray of Wadia Group, one of the India’s top business houses. The airline operates its services under the brand GoAir, which launched its operation in 2005, as a low fair carrier with the objective of commoditizing airline travel by offering airline seats at marginal premium to first class train fares across India. The airline currently operates across 11 destinations in India including Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Mumbai, Cochin, Delhi, Goa, Hyderabad, Jammu, Jaipur, Chennai and Srinagar.

GoAir is positioned as ‘The smart people’s airline’. Its captivating theme ‘Fly Smart’ is aimed at offering passengers a consistent, quality assured and time efficient service. The airline uses the state of the art Airbus A320 aircraft fleet.

Steep decline in Instanex Skindia DR Index

MUMBAI, Feb 12: The Instanex Skindia DR Index dropped sharply by another 95.44 points or 3.18 per cent to 2,907.72 on February 11 from 3,003.16 previously.

The P/E Ratio also decline to 25.16, Instanex Capital release said here today.

Following are the GDR and ADR rates for Feb 11 in US dollars with differences in percentage from the previous level given in brackets.

Bajaj Auto(GDR) 55.50 (UNCH)

Dr Reddy (ADR) 13.35 (-1.69)

HDFC Bank (ADR) 108.07 (-3.02)

Hindalco (GDR) 4.05 (UNCH)

ICICI Bank (ADR) 54.92 (-0.65)

Infosys Tech (ADR) 41.27 (-1.03)

ITC (GDR) 4.60 (-8.34)

L&T (GDR) 82.50 (-7.82)

MTNL (ADR) 6.30 (-1.41)

Ranbaxy Labs (GDR) 9.24 (-2.74)

Reliance (GDR) 113.64 (-7.19)

Satyam Comp (ADR) 25.65 (+1.58)

SBI (GDR) 108.00 (-5.22)

VSNL (ADR) 24.81 (+9.20)

Wipro (ADR) 11.58 (-1.78)

(PTI)

Netmaging gets Rs 80 crore private equity funding

BANGALORE, Feb 12: Netmagic Solutions, a leading carrier-neutral managed IT services provider based in India, as part of its Rs 100 crore expansion plan, today announced that it has acquired Rs 80 crore in private equity funding.

The funding was led by the Indian proprietary venture and growth capital arm of Fidelity International Limited (FIL) and Nexus India Capital, a leading Indian venture capital firm.

Netmagic said it will use proceeds of the financing to accelerate business growth and expand its footprint in the domestic and international markets and build a nationwide network of data centres.

"Over the last few years, we have built a bluechip client base in the financial, telecom and online trading and travel sectors", CEO and Managing Director of Netmagic, Sharad Sanghi, said.

"This is the right time to invest more aggressively and scale our business to the next level and roll out new locations and services in 2008".

Raj Dugar, Senior Managing Director at FIL's Indian proprietary venture and growth capital arm, said over the past few years, Netmagic has achieved growth rates of over 70 per cent and gained significant marketshare in the fast-growing, highly competitive Indian managed hosting services market.

According to Sandeep Singhal from Nexus India Capital, "Netmagic's leadership position, technology innovation, and high quality delivery has led us to double up on our original investment in the country". (PTI)

Air India plans massive expansion programme

NEW DELHI, Feb 12: Public sector carrier Air India (AI) is planning to connect all major US cities by introducing non-stop flights from the Indian metropolis in the next few years.

After the successful launch of direct non-stop flights from Mumbai and Delhi to New York, the Rs 10,000 crore company AI will soon start non-stop flights between Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of India and its US counterpart San Francisco, beside launching non-stop flights from Chennai and Kochi to the US.

AI Executive Director (Corporate Communication) Jitender Bhargav told a team of mediapersons, who travelled to New York on the inaugural flight, that the Indo-US sector is poised to be the airline's largest revenue earner with enormous potential for growth in the coming years.

AI, that has ordered 15 more Long Range Boeing aircrafts, would commence flights to Washington and Texas (Houston or Dallas) among other cities in the US.

''These flights will be operated with an intermediate halt at Munich,'' he said.

AI targets revenue of more than Rs 3,300 crores from the this sector as compared to Rs 2,615.76 crore during the last year.

''This target is set as there has been increase in flights operated by Air India to the US, which has gone to 38 flights per week, though the full impact on revenue would be seen next year,'' Mr Bhargava said.

The growth has been more pronounced in the past five years when the flghts has gone up from 10 to 38 per week.

With the commencement of the daily non-stop Delhi-New York flight, AI now offers 12,536 seats per week on its 38 flights to four destinations in the US-- New York (6,293), Newark (2,394), (Chicago) 2,961) and Los Angels (888).

''While the non-stops flights are being operated with B777-200LRs, which are equipped with all modern passenger amenities like flat beds in First and Executive Class with the state-of-art flight entertaintment system, AI product can be regarded as the finest,'' Mr Bhargava said.

(UNI)

Hindi sidelined in internet: Study

CHENNAI, Feb 12: Hindi, despite figuring in the world’s top five most widely spoken lauguages, has failed to net a place even in the top ten languages on the internet, according to a study by the InternetWorldStats.Com.

Currently, 12 out of 6,000 popular languages spoken globally account for 98 per cent of the web content, with English being most prominent among them.

The digital revolution left Indians behind as most of them do not speak English, the dominant language of the web. It was recognised that the content had to be in a language that was understood by many users. In the internet space, this was highly imbalanced, a release from PIB here said today.

The findings further said dearth of content in Indian languages could limit the growth of the number of internet users in the country as growth was almost saturated among English speaking users.

Between five and ten per cent of the country’s population speak English. (Estimates of the number of English speakers in India vary widely from five per cent of the population or 50 million people, all the way to more than 30 per cent or 350 million people).

Holding that internet proliferation was difficult within the limited domain of English language content, the survey predicted that a multilingual internet would increase local interest in internet content and increase the possibilities of all language groups to share and acces information in their own language.

The survey pointed out that the challenges in increasing local content include standardisation of fonts and internationalised domain names, an issue the Union Government was working on.

There should be relevant content in local languages such as price of crops for farmers and weather conditions for fishermen to use the internet in rural India.

Some small steps were being taken to increase local language content, but is was too early to say whether they have in any way spurred internet usage, the study said.

The study said different internet products in India have different audience. A good portion of Indian net users were still constrained by what the Indian net provided to them.

In the context of entertainment, lifestyle and recreational activities, local language versions have a niche market, it added. (UNI)

Growth in industrial production declines to 7.6 pc in Dec ‘07

NEW DELHI, Feb 12: Dismal performance by manufacturing, mining and electricity sectors has pushed down the industrial growth rate to 7.6 per cent in December 2007 from 13.4 per cent in the corresponding month in 2006.

The decline in the index of industrial production (IIP) in December was mainly on account of the manufacturing sector growth rate, which decelerated to 8.4 per cent from 14.5 per cent in the corresponding period last financial year, showed the quick estimates of IIP released today.

The mining and electricity sectors too performed poorly during the month, recording growth rates of 3 per cent and 3.8 per cent respectively as compared to 6.1 per cent and 9.1 per cent in December 2006.

The cumulative industrial growth rate (April-December 2007) also slipped to 9 per cent from 11.2 per cent a year ago.

The nine-month growth rate for manufacturing sector declined to 9.6 per cent from 12.2 per cent in the previous fiscal.

Similarly, the growth rates for mining and electricity sectors worked out to be 4.9 per cent 6.6 per cent respectively, compared to 4.4 per cent and 7.5 per cent during the corresponding period of 2006-07.

The industrial growth rate for November 2007 has been revised downwards to 5.1 per cent from 5.3 per cent reported earlier. (PTI)

Imports of sensitive items rise by 11 pc

NEW DELHI, Feb 12: India’s imports of sensitive items, including edible oil, have gone up 11.1 per cent to Rs 20,589 crore during April-December period of the current fiscal from Rs 18,532 crore a year ago.

In the edible oil segment, the imports increased to Rs 8,433 crore in the first three quarters of 2007-08 from Rs 7,929 crore in the same period last year.

The imports of both crude oil as well as refined oil went up by 5.6 per cent and 13.1 per cent respectively.

"The increase in edible oil import is mainly due to significant growth in import of crude palm oil and its fractions, which has gone up by 11 per cent," an official statement said here today.

Imports of fruits and vegetables (including nuts), foodgrains, cotton and silk, automobiles, rubber, alcoholic beverages and tea and coffee have also shown increase during the period under review.

However, imports of spices, marble and granite, and milk and milk products have shown decline at broad group level during the period.

Imports of sensitive items from Indonesia, Canada, China, US, Russia, Brazil, Sri Lanka, Germany, Thailand, Japan, Guinea Bissau, Ukraine etc have gone up, while those from Argentina, Myanmar, Malaysia, Cote D Ivoire and Australia have shown a decrease.

Import of sensitive items constitute three per cent of the gross imports during last year as well as the current year, the statement added. (PTI)

Kingfisher, Deccan swap to be finalised by April..

KOLKATA, Feb 12: The swap ratio of shares of Kingfisher Airlines Limited and Deccan Aviation Limited will be finalised by April, after which the former will merge with the latter, a Kingfisher official said.

Executive Vice-President of Kingfisher Airlines Rajesh Verma said that approval of the government and SEBI was awaited for the merger of the two airlines.

Verma said that post-merger, Kingfisher would operate as a full service aircraft (FSA), while Deccan would continue to function as a low-cost carrier.

Although Deccan Aviation would cease to exist, the Deccan brand would continue as a brand differentiator, he told.

Based on a report prepared by Accenture, the two airlines had agreed on the merger. Verma said that Accenture was also looking at the management structure of the two companies. Their report would be submitted next month, he said.

While Vijay Mallya was the Chairman of the merged entity, Captain Gopinath was the vice-chairman.

Kingfisher would get delivery of five A340s and five A330s before August for its overseas operations.

During August, Kingfisher plans to start flights to New York and San Francisco by the end of August from Bangalore.

Verma said that since Deccan Aviation was already a listed company, Kingfisher would automatically get listed on the stock exchanges.

"For this, there is no need for Kingfisher to float an IPO", he said. Vijay Mallya, promoter of Kingfisher Airlines, had earlier said that the company would go for an IPO to fund fleet purchase plan.

Asked how would Kingfisher would raise money, Verma said that the company would explore various options ranging from raising through private equity to hitting the capital market.

"Nothing has been finalised as of now", he said.

The merged entity would work on a combined summer schedule. "We will have to optimise schedules and go for route rationalization", he said.

About Deccan, he said that Kingfisher had invested substantially in the low-cost carrier.

"We are looking to improve standards of Deccan in spheres like in-flight services", Verma said.

Mallya controls nearly 49 per cent in Deccan Aviation.

Kingfisher was also looking to fly to other overseas destinations such as Hong Kong and Singapore.

"We have not got the dates yet", he said. (PTI)

M&M signs pact with Sri Lanka to set up USD 100 mn IT centre

COLOMBO, Feb 12: Mahindra and Mahindra today entered into an agreement with the Board of Investments of Sri Lanka to set up a 100 million dollar IT-ITeS centre in the Economic Processing Zone at Katunayake near here.

The MoU was signed between M&M Executive Director Arun Nanda and Sri Lankan Minister of Enterprise and Investment Sarath Amunugama, in the presence of visiting Indian Minister of State for Commerce Jairam Ramesh.

The centre, to be developed on 53 acre land, would generate 25,000 IT jobs in the island country, Nanda said.

Besides the IT unit from M&M, efforts would be made to rope in top national and global clientale of the Indian company into the Sri Lankan facility, he said.

The work for the IT centre will start within the next six months, he said, adding that the job opportunities provided by the centre would also have a spillover effect on employment in other areas.

Board of Investments is a statutory agency responsible for promoting and facilitating foreign investments in Sri Lanka.

Jairam Ramesh announced that besides the IT centre, the Mahindra group has also decided to set up a manufacturing facility over 900 acre of land at Trincomalee in Eastern Sri Lanka.

He said the agreement to this effect will be reached soon.

Speaking on the occasion, Amunugama said while the IT project will provide employment opportunities, the Trincomalee manufacturing base would act as an integrating point for Sri Lankan communities as this eastern province had equal ratio of Tamil, Sinhala and Muslim population. (PTI)

Growth in industrial production slips to 7.6 pc in Dec ‘07

NEW DELHI, Feb 12: Industrial growth slipped to 7.6 per cent in December from 13.4 per cent in the corresponding month of 2006 on account of widespread deceleration in manufacturing, mining and electricity, among other sectors.

Consumer goods sector, in addition to other segments of the industry like basic goods and capital goods, also witnessed a slowdown in growth during the month, showed the quick estimates of the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) released today.

The slippage in the rise in industrial output in December can be attributed mainly to the manufacturing sector growth rate, which decelerated to 8.4 per cent from 14.5 per cent in the corresponding period of last financial year.

Mining and electricity sectors also performed poorly during the month, recording growth rates of 3 per cent and 3.8 per cent respectively as compared to 6.1 per cent and 9.1 per cent in December 2006.

The cumulative industrial growth rate (April-December 2007) also slipped to 9 per cent from 11.2 per cent a year ago, suggesting that industrial growth rate during the financial year is unlikely to cross the double digit mark.

The nine-month growth rate for manufacturing sector declined to 9.6 per cent from 12.2 per cent in the previous fiscal. Similarly, the growth rates for mining and electricity sectors worked out to be 4.9 per cent 6.6 per cent respectively, compared to 4.4 per cent and 7.5 per cent during the corresponding period of 2006-07.

The industrial growth rate for November 2007 has been revised downwards to 5.1 per cent from 5.3 per cent reported earlier.

The use-based classification of IIP also shows widespread deceleration in growth.

The index for the consumer goods sector fell to 8.7 per cent during December 2007 as compared to 10.7 per cent a year ago.

The growth rate of the consumer non-durables sector declined to 10.6 per cent from 13.5 per cent, while consumer durables segment showed a marginal improvement to 2.2 per cent from 1.8 per cent in December 2006.

The slippage was quite marked in case of basic goods with growth rate sharply declining to 3.1 per cent in December as compared to a high of 12.4 per cent a year ago.

The output of capital goods, however, showed a healthy growth of 16.6 per cent during the month, though down from a high of 26.2 per cent recorded in the year-ago period.

The index of intermediate goods declined to 7.2 per cent in December from 12.7 per cent in the corresponding month in the previous financial year.

The cumulative growth figures (April-December 2007) suggest that output of consumer durables sector declined by 1.3 per cent as compared to a growth of 11.2 per cent during the corresponding period in the previous fiscal.

The only sector that showed improvement during the nine-month period was the capital goods sector, which recorded a higher growth rate of 20.2 per cent as compared to 18.6 per cent during April-December 2006.

In terms of two-digit NIC classification of the industry, 13 out of 17 industry groups showed positive performance during December with ‘Wood and Wood Products, Furniture and Fixtures’ recording the highest growth rate of 31.3 per cent.

The industry segment ‘Metals Products and Parts, except machinery and equipment’ turned out to be the worst performer reporting a decline of 23.6 per cent. (PTI)

Reliance Money launches UAE operations; eyes 1 lakh customers...

DUBAI, Feb 12: Looking to create a customer base of over one lakh customers in the Middle-East, Anil Ambani Group’s financial products distribution arm Reliance Money today announced the launch of its broking and portfolio management services in the United Arab Emirates.

"This is our first initiative to offer financial services outside India and we plan to tap over 20 million NRIs and resident Indians in Middle-East with this initiative. Our business model is to offer cost-effective, secure products and services to a larger section of population and we replicate that model in UAE as well, " Reliance Money Director and CEO Sudip Bandyopadhyay told reporters here.

The brokering firm announced it would start offering its brokering services at ‘competitive rates’, which could start off a rate war in the UAE financial market.

Reliance Money, which had launched its services in India in April last year, had triggered a brokerage rate war by charging a flat fee as against percentage brokerage charged by other players.

This had forced a lot of brokerages to reduce their rates sharply but also led to the expansion the market.

The company has also launched its Portfolio Management Services (PMS) for investment size as low as 50,000 dollars in the UAE and plans to provide these services to the middle class investors as well.

"Usually, PMS services are offered to high net worth investors. We would like to break the entry barrier to this service and reach out to a large number of middle class investors who have been totally ignored so far," Bandyopadhyay said.

The company had recently launched its PMS services in India for investors with Rs five lakh, lowest so far in Indian financial services sector.

Reliance Money has tied-up with Dubai International Securities LLC (DIS), a part of the Al Rostamani Group, with net assets in excess of USD 550 million and ranks amongst the top 10 brokers in Dubai Financial Market (DFM) with a net worth of AED 60 million.

"DIS has a large clientele across its network and with this tie up we would be able to provide a customer with a cost-effective and secure platform to transact in Indian financial instruments with the expertise of Reliance Money," Al-Rostamani group CEO Ernist J Ratnayake said.

DIS is a registered broker in DFM and Abu Dhabi Securities Market (ADSM), licensed by the UAE Central Bank and Securities and Commodities Authority of UAE (ESCA) and is also active in GCC and US. (PTI)