65% of Indian Consumers Express Positive Buying Sentiment in Diwali’20: TRA Whitepaper

 TRA Research, India’s leading consumer insights and brand analytics company, today released a whitepaper titled TRA’s Diwali 2020 Buying Propensity Report gauging the changing buying mindsets and sentiments for the upcoming Diwali in November 2020. 65% of all consumers expressed a Positive Buying Sentiment as compared to now, and 28% felt it would remain the same. The Apparels category was a positive outlier and had the Highest Buying Priority at 3.11 times the average of all other categories. Mobile Phones, Consumer Electronics and Two-wheelers were on Very High Consumer Buying Priority, followed by Home Furniture, Jewellery and TVs, which were on High Priority. The survey was conducted with 503 consumer-influencers across 16 cities between 9th June and 15th July 2020. 

Speaking about report N. Chandramouli, CEO, TRA Research, said that, "Diwali has traditionally been a period of consumption boom as consumers tend to increase spends, and brands scramble to catch their attention. This Diwali will be a deciding factor for many brands, as they prepare trepidatiously for the festive season. This report gives a very good view on which will be the preferred categories for Diwali buying."

"This is good news of course, but the pre-Covid consumer spends were already lower on account of a depressed and strained economy, and a comparison between the consumer household spends between the two Diwalis of 2019 and 2020, show that this year is likely to see 5.1% lesser spends than the previous one,” Chandramouli added. 

‘Medium Consumer Buying Priority’ included Personal Accessories, Cars, Laptops and Kitchen Appliances, while ‘Low Consumer Buying Priority Zone’ includes Travel, Health Insurance and Home Renovation.

The survey results also revealed that online shopping is set to see an unprecedented boom in a post-Covid-19 world. Also, kirana stores or small standalone store, close-by neighbourhood stores, local groceries are the preferred places to shop. Big formats stores like Supermarkets, Hypermarkets, Branded outlets are unlikely to see many visitors, and Malls carry a negative sentiment due to tremendous consumer reluctance despite relaxed norms and promise of better safety. 

Nearly 95% consumers rated Product Quality as the most important influence when making purchases for Diwali 2020 followed by product usefulness (89%), Product Price (88%), Buying Convenience (87%) and Brand Name (86%). Advertising at 71% remains the lowest choice driver for Diwali shopping.

About TRA Research

TRA Research, a Comniscient Group company, is a consumer insights and brand intelligence Company dedicated to understanding and analyzing stakeholder behavior through two globally acclaimed proprietary matrices of Brand Trust and Brand Desire. TRA Research conducts primary research with consumers and stakeholders to assist brands with their business decisions based on Consumer Behaviour insights.

TRA Research is consulting brands on transitioning during and after the Covid-19 crisis, to help them be more aligned to consumer and client expectations. TRA Research is the also the publisher of TRA’s Brand Trust Report and of TRA’s Most Desired Brands.

For more information, please visit www.trustadvisory.info

It’s official; Microsoft buys Skype for $8.5 billion

After rumors that first Facebook and then Microsoft were in talks to acquire Skype, the latter announced that it has acquired the VoIP giant for $8.5 billion in cash.

Skype will be integrated into Microsoft devices and systems such as Xbox and Kinect, Xbox Live, the Windows Phone, Lync and Outlook, Microsoft said in a report. The company has pledged to continue supporting and developing Skype clients on non-Microsoft platforms as well.

The deal, which was spearheaded by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer with assistance from Charles Songhurst, the company’s head of corporate strategy, was completed Monday evening,

The acquisition is an expensive one for Microsoft. Not only is it the largest price Microsoft has paid for a company in decades, Skype is not yet profitable. Despite revenues totaling $860 million last year and operating profits of $264 million, the company lost $6.9 million overall, according to documents filed with the SEC. And the company carries $686 million in debt.

Much of the company’s appeal rests in its largest user base of 663 million, 145 million of which use Skype monthly (Update: Microsoft says Skype has 170 million regular users), and 8.8 million of which are paying customers.

There is one clear set of winners here: Skype’s investors. A group including Silver Lake, Index Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) Investment Board purchased the company from eBay for $2.75 billion in September 2009.

In August, Skype filed for an IPO but put plans on hold after Tony Bates joined the company as CEO in October. Bates will take on the title of president of the Microsoft Skype Division and report directly to Ballmer.

Source: Linkedin News

New music search from Google

Google stepped onto the internet music stage, unveiling a service for finding, listening to or buying songs online. Google announced an alliance with Lala.com and MySpace-owned iLike at Capitol Records headquarters in Los Angeles that could cut down on the number of mouse clicks it takes to sample or purchase a song on the web.

“We are very excited today to be introducing a music search feature,” Google vice president of search Marissa Mayer said before a demo of the service called OneBox. “The search results will allow you to do a whole song play to verify it is the song you are looking for,” rather than just the 30-second stream typical of most major online music providers.

Agencies

Cisco to strenghten Web security with ScanSafe acquisition

Cisco Systems has announced to buy the privately held Web security company ScanSafe for about $183 million, a move that will intensify its battle with security giants Symantec and McAfee. ScanSafe sells Web-based services that protect business computer networks and PCs from hackers, saving companies the cost of buying and installing software on their own equipment.

The top two security software companies, Symantec and McAfee, already sell such products, which are known as "cloud" services and whose sales are growing at a far faster clip than traditional software. As reported by Reuters, Cisco announced the deal on Tuesday, saying that the transaction is expected to close in its fiscal second quarter that ends in January 2010. The $183 million price tag includes cash and retention-based incentives, as per Cisco.

The deal helps Cisco expand its security portfolio, which includes email and Web security software company IronPort that it bought in 2007. San Jose, California-based Cisco has recently stepped up its pace of acquisitions. It announced deals for wireless equipment maker Starent Networks for $2.9 billion and Norwegian video conferencing maker Tandberg for $3 billion. Chief Executive John Chambers has said that he was looking to do more.

Agencies

Will Kyocera Wireless India be acquired by MindTree

MindTree Ltd said on Tuesday it would buy Bangalore-based Kyocera Wireless India Pvt Ltd and make an upfront payment of $6 million, while
further payments will be linked to revenue in FY11 and FY12.

The IT firm expects the acquisition to contribute about $9 million in revenues for the period Oct 2009 to March 2010, with profit after tax expected to be in the range of 13-15 percent, it said in a statement.

Agencies

Why is Sun Micro losing $100 mn a month?

Oracle Corp Chief Executive Larry Ellison said Sun Microsystems Inc is losing about $100 million a month as European regulators delay approving his company's $7 billion purchase of the struggling hardware maker.

"The longer this takes, the more money Sun is going to lose," Ellison said on Monday evening during a dinner at one of Silicon Valley's most prominent speaker's forums, the Churchill Club.

Sun's revenue has tumbled since April when Oracle agreed to buy the world's No. 4 computer server maker in April as rivals IBM and Hewlett-Packard Co have poached customers amid uncertainty about its future.

Oracle has pledged to boost investment on development of Sun's products, but the hardware company has cut spending prior to the deal's closing as sales have plunged. Last month it reported a quarterly loss of $147 million.

Ellison, the world's fourth-richest man according to Forbes, said he expects the deal will eventually be cleared by European regulators as it was in the United States, without any conditions.

The European Commission is conducting an in-depth probe into whether the competition would be stifled by the combination of Oracle's database, the world's top seller, and Sun's MySQL database, which is widely used to run popular websites.

Legal experts have said Oracle may need to make concessions, including the divestiture of the MySQL software business, and that it is unclear how long European approval would take.

European regulators have until January 19, the deadline set by the Commission, the competition watchdog of the 27-country European Union. That would put Oracle months behind its original plan for closing the deal by the end of August.

Agencies

Will $3.9b Dell acquisition of Perot Systems payoff?

Dell agreed to buy Perot Systems for $3.9 billion, undertaking its biggest purchase ever to compete with International Business Machines and Hewlett-Packard in computer services. Dell, the second-biggest maker of personal computers, offered $30 a share in cash, about 68% more than Perot’s closing price September 18. The acquisition probably will boost profit in fiscal 2012, Round Rock, Texas-based Dell said in a statement on Monday.

Chief executive officer Michael Dell is pushing into computer services as consumers and companies curb PC purchases to cope with the economic slump. Larger services units helped IBM and Hewlett-Packard withstand the recession better than Dell, whose sales slumped 22% last quarter. The new services business would have annual sales of about $8 billion.

“This significantly expands Dell’s enterprise-solutions capabilities,’’ CEO Dell said in the statement. “The acquisition makes such great sense because of the obvious ways our businesses complement each other.’’

Once the transaction is complete, Perot Systems, based in Plano, Texas, will become Dell’s services unit. The purchase price is more than twice what Dell paid last year for EqualLogic, which was the computer maker’s biggest acquisition until now.

Perot Systems jumped as much as $11.89, or 66%, to $29.80 in trading before US exchanges opened. Dell, which ranks second to Hewlett-Packard in PC sales, fell as much as 5.6% to $15.75.

The acquisition of Perot, founded by former presidential candidate H Ross Perot, mirrors Hewlett-Packard’s purchase of Electronic Data Systems for $13.2 billion last year. EDS, the world’s secondlargest computer services provider after IBM, helped Hewlett-Packard increase services revenue 93% last quarter. Sales in the PC unit fell 18%.

Dell has relied on cost reductions to help prop up profit amid the recession. The company, aiming to save $4 billion a year, has farmed out 40% of manufacturing. Still, profit dropped 23% last quarter. Perot, which sells services to industries including health care, reported an 11% drop in sales and a 3% gain in net income last quarter. The company expects to benefit from the US government’s plans for electronic health records, Peter Altabef, CEO of Perot, said in an April interview. IBM’s sales fell 13% last quarter, while Hewlett-Packard’s total revenue dropped about 2%.

The companies have benefited from long-term services contracts to maintain corporations’ computers and networks. The Perot acquisition, while not subject to a financing condition, will need government approvals and the satisfaction of other conditions, Dell said. Dell to acquire x for $3.9bn.

Agencies

Omniture to be acquired by Adobe for $1.8 billion

Adobe Systems Inc plans to pay $1.8 billion for fast-growing business software maker Omniture Inc as the maker of Photoshop and Acrobat looks to turn around declining sales.

Adobe, which announced the deal on Tuesday as it reported lower quarterly sales and profit, has been struggling over the past year as the recession hurt technology spending and customers declined to upgrade older versions of its programs.

The acquisition would give Adobe a new stream of revenue to offset that decline. Omniture charges customers fees based on monthly website traffic, so sales are less sensitive to economic swings than Adobe.

"There is no way Adobe can grow organically. This is a smart move," said Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry.

Advertising agencies and companies use Omniture's software to analyze how consumers use websites. It is the biggest provider of such services, competing with Google Inc and other smaller players. The vast majority of all professional websites are built with Adobe's Creative Suite line of design software.

Janney Montgomery Scott analyst Sasa Zorovic said Adobe's customers will not necessarily choose to subscribe to Omniture's services simply because its technology is embedded into Creative Suite.

"It will require some selling, but I think the opportunity is there," he said.

Adobe, whose software competes with products from Microsoft Corp and Apple Inc, agreed to pay $21.50 per share in cash for Omniture, a 24 percent premium over Omniture's closing price on Tuesday.

Omniture shares soared 25 percent to $21.74 in after-hours trading, while Adobe shares slid 4.5 percent to $34.06.

The deal would be Adobe's second-largest acquisition after its $3.4 billion purchase of Macromedia in December 2005.

Omniture would become a unit of Adobe, headed by its current chief executive, Josh James. Adobe said the deal should close in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2009 and would add to Adobe's per-share earnings in fiscal 2010.

Adobe said it would be paid a fee of $64 million by Omniture if the deal is terminated, according to a regulatory filing.

Adobe also reported on Tuesday that fiscal third-quarter earnings, excluding items, fell to 35 cents per share from 50 cents per share a year ago. That beat Wall Street's average forecast by a penny, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Second-quarter sales fell 21 percent to $697.5 million, but beat analysts' average forecast of $686.2 million. For the fiscal fourth quarter, not counting any effect of the Omniture deal, Adobe forecast revenue and earnings, excluding items broadly in line with analysts' estimates.

Agencies

Infosys set to acquire consulting firm for $200 million

Infosys Technologies Ltd, India’s second-largest provider of computer-services technology, may buy consulting businesses for as much a s $200 million to attract more clients, the finance chief said.

Infosys also may buy similar-sized businesses that process transactions, or information technology companies, Chief Financial Officer V Balakrishnan, 44, said in an interview in New York. The company isn’t in serious discussions with anybody, he said, declining to name potential targets.

“Acquisitions are a lot like love,” he said. “We’re not in love. We haven’t even started dating anybody.”

Infosys, which is projecting it’s first-ever decline in sales this fiscal year, is turning to new services to increase revenue in the worst recession since the 1930s. Building the consulting division will help the Bangalore-based company compete in the US against International Business Machines Corp, the world’s largest computer-services provider.

Infosys will look primarily in the US and Europe for purchases, said Balakrishnan. The company gets almost 90 per cent of its sales from North America and Europe. It aims to more than double domestic revenue to 5 per cent of total sales, he said.

‘Niche’ markets

The company’s American depositary receipts advanced 0.8 per cent to $47.21 in Nasdaq Stock Market trading yesterday. The shares have gained 92 per cent this year. Each ADR is equivalent to one ordinary share.

The company plans to invest in “niche” markets, such as health care, Balakrishnan said. Infosys isn’t interested in so- called captive units, processing divisions within a specific company, he said.

Infosys is in talks with five to six clients to buy their technology units, B G Srinivas, a senior vice president who heads the software provider’s operations in Europe, said in June. The company is in discussions with two customers in the US and three to four in Europe, he said at the time.

Sales will range between $4.45 billion and $4.52 billion in the year ending March 31, Infosys said on July 10, marginally increasing the lower end of its annual forecast for at least a 3.1 per cent revenue decline made in April. Infosys won’t be able to predict fiscal 2011 demand until clients complete their budgets in January, Balakrishnan said.

Infosys and top-ranked Tata Consultancy Services Ltd won orders from BP Plc, Europe’s second largest oil company, the Indian software providers said last month, signaling clients may be resuming spending on computer services. Infosys declined to give financial details while Tata Consultancy said it may receive as much as $100 million a year from the BP contract.

Agencies

GM's Hummer now a likely target of Chinese

General Motors may sign an agreement for the sale of the Hummer sport-utility vehicle business to Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Co based in Chengdu, China this week, said two people familiar with negotiations.

The China firm's executives are expected to arrive in Detroit early this week for more negotiations with GM. Meanwhile GM's advisers are recommending the board consider spurning a German-backed sale of its Opel unit to retain a bigger presence in Europe and Russia.

Agencies

Analytics company SPSS Inc to be acquired by IBM

IBM plans to buy technology services company SPSS Inc for about $1.2 billion in cash, the companies said on Tuesday.

SPSS shareholders will receive $50 a share, a 42% premium to Monday's closing price of $35.09 on Nasdaq.

Chicago-based SPSS provides predictive analytics software and services. Predictive analytics are used by companies to forecast future trends and spot shifts in consumer patterns, helping them control costs and use resources more wisely.

IBM said the deal will help expand its Information on Demand software portfolio and business analytics capabilities.

Shares of SPSS jumped 41 per cent in premarket trade to about $49.50. The shares had already enjoyed a gain of about 30 per cent this year.

The deal values SPSS at about 25 times analysts' estimated 2010 earnings per share, and the $50 per share price represents an all-time high for the stock, topping its previous all-time top of $47.87.

The deal is subject to SPSS shareholder approval and regulatory clearances, and is expected to close later in the second half of 2009, the companies said.

Separately, IBM said it has acquired closely-held Ounce Labs Inc, whose software helps companies reduce the risks and costs associated with security and compliance concerns. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Back in May, IBM's chief financial officer, Mark Loughridge, told the Reuters Technology Summit that the valuations of potential acquisition targets were attractive. IBM has spent $20 billion buying more than 100 companies since 2000, paying prices that range from as little as $50 million to as much as $5 billion.

Agencies

Will Hewlett-Packard buy Ibrix?

Hewlett-Packard announced that it will acquire Ibrix, a maker of enterprise-scale file serving software.

Large companies running huge data-heavy applications often bump into bottlenecks with both storage and performance. HP says that Ibrix's software is designed to help such customers manage and store massive amounts of data, scaling to tens of petabytes. (A petabyte is 1,000 terabytes.)

HP wants Ibrix to help strengthen its share of the burgeoning market for high-performance enterprise data storage, cloud storage, and file archiving. HP says this segment is growing 20 percent a year, faster than the markets for network-attached storage (NAS) and external storage.

"Customers need highly scalable storage solutions that efficiently and cost-effectively manage massive amounts of information," said Jeff Hausman, vice president of Unified Storage in HP's StorageWorks division. "This acquisition expands our portfolio to better support the needs of this market segment."

Started in 2000, Ibrix is a privately held company in Massachusetts with 53 employees and more than 175 enterprise customers.

"Joining forces with HP is a natural fit for our customers, resulting in an enhanced storage solution that scales to meet their data growth," said Milan Shetti, chief executive officer of Ibrix. "The unique combination of Ibrix's file-serving solutions with HP's portfolio of products and services enables customers to lower the cost of scale-out architectures while easing the process of storing, accessing and moving critical data."

HP expects the deal to be completed in the next 30 days, after which Ibrix will become part of the StorageWorks division in HP's Technology Solutions Group.

CNet.com

Will Aegis Buy Australia's UCMS Group?

Essar Group's back office arm Aegis Ltd has agreed to buy Australian business process outsourcing firm UCMS Group Ltd in a cash deal worth about A$54 million, the firms said in a statement on Friday.

Aegis, through affiliate firm Aegis BPO Services Australia Pty Ltd, will pay UCMS stockholders A$0.98 per share, a 133 percent premium over Thursday's closing price of A$0.42 per share, they added in the joint statement.

"Australia and New Zealand logically become a part of our growth strategy and offer an opportunity for Aegis to expand its footprint in this geography," said Aparup Sengupta, global chief executive officer and managing director of Aegis. The transaction is expected to close in in the third quarter and is subject to approvals from shareholders and the Supreme Court of Victoria and other customary closing conditions, they added.

With this acquisition, Aegis will have operations in India, Philippines, the United States, Costa Rica, Kenya and Australia. Last year, Aegis acquired outsourcing firm PeopleSupport Inc.

Agencies

Is IBM in talks to buy Sun Microsystems?

International Business Machines is in talks to acquire Sun Microsystems, the Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter.

IBM is likely to pay at least $6.5 billion in cash to acquire Sun, the people told the paper.

That would translate into a premium of about 100 per cent over Sun's closing price on Tuesday of $4.97 a share on the Nasdaq, the paper said.

In recent months, Sun has approached a number of large tech companies in the hopes of being acquired, the paper said. Hewlett-Packard Co declined the offer, the paper said.

Sun is a maker of software and high-end computers. A spokesman for IBM declined to comment to the paper on questions about any talks with Sun. IBM and Sun could not be immediately be reached for comments.

Agencies

Is IBM also in the race to buy Satyam?

Global IT giant IBM is learned to be leading the list of prospective buyers of beleaguered Satyam Computer Services. If the plan fructifies, IBM would become the largest IT services player in India with a combined employee strength of over 125,000 people.

According to sources close to the development, IBM officials has begun discussions with Satyam board and expressed its desire to acquire a majority stake in the company. Moreover, a team of investment bankers and lawyers from the U.S. and Europe has been brought in to assess the size of the deal and the risks associated with it. It is also believed that IBM has conducted an initial due diligence on some of Satyam's major customers.

Making easy entry for foreign players, Minister of Corporate Affairs P C Gupta had said a week ago that open bids would not be restricted to Indian players. IBM was named one of the hostile bidders for Satyam at the company's meeting in the last December. Apart from IBM, other prominent companies in the race are Larsen & Toubro (L&T), which owns 12 per cent in Satyam, and B K Modi-owned Spice group.

The government-nominated board is expected to invite bids for a 31 per cent stake in the company, but is likely to assure the successful bidder 51 per cent even if it fails to get the additional mandatory 20 per cent from the open offer.

Analysts foresee that if IBM can buy Satyam, that can give IBM the leverage to compete with Indian IT service providers as Satyam has a low-cost structure.

Agencies

Wipro to buy Citi unit for $127 million

Wipro Ltd, India's third-ranked outsourcer, said on Tuesday it had agreed to buy Citi Technology Services Ltd for $127 million in cash and would sign a six-year service agreement worth at least $500 million.

The deal done through Wipro Technologies, the information technology arm of the New York-listed Wipro, is expected to close in March 2009, Wipro said in a statement. Citi Technology Services is the India-based captive technology services unit of Citigroup.

This is the second time that Citi, will sell off its Indian back-office operations. In early October, it had sold its captive BPO Citigroup Global Services (CGSL) to Tata Consultancy Services for $505 million.

In addition to the sale, Citi also signed a $2.5-billion deal through which TCS will provide process oursourcing services to Citi and its affiliates over nine-and-a-half years. This will be provided through CGSL.

The acquisition broadens TCS's portfolio of end-to-end IT and BPO services in the global banking and financial services sector.

CGSL is one of the largest providers of BPO services within the banking and financial services sector, providing end-to-end process management across this spectrum and a broad array of services to Citi's consumers, corporate and global wealth management businesses globally.

Sources: Agencies