Salarpuria Sattva Employs Native Labours to Keep the Construction Momentum On

In a bid to reiterate its commitment towards quality construction and on-time project handovers, Salarpuria Sattva Group, employed 600+ native labourers’ at their projects across Karnataka to boost the real estate sector, during this COVID breakout. This will not only help in continuum of production, investment, labour and native supply chains in the state, but it will also be instrumental in revival of the real estate sector, sooner than anticipated.

With millions of workers migrating to their hometowns, continuing the momentum at the construction sites has been a constant challenge for the developers. In a grim scenario like this, while Govt. is taking measures to uplift the present economic situation, companies across industries will have to be proactive and  self-sufficient.

Being at the forefront of the real estate industry, Salarpuria Sattva, decided to tap into the indigenous manpower of Karnataka and neighbouring states, by employing labour in the construction sites across their projects.

Commenting on the same, Mr. Bijay Agarwal, MD, Salarpuria Sattva, said, “The pandemic has impacted industries across every domain including real estate. Amidst this major economic slowdown, we feel that the need of the hour should be employment and demand generation. Therefore, we have decided to take charge of the situation and empower our indigenous manpower in order to narrow the project delivery margin as much as possible. We hope this will not only help us in handing over projects on time, but also will help ease the labour shortage in Karnataka and neighbouring states, and help them to survive during this unprecedented time.”

This labour clutter has been divided into different sets, basis their skills in masonry, carpentry and interiors. Considering the present situation, the company is prioritizing projects and engaging native labour for completion and handover. All proactive safety measures like screening, sanitization, social distancing etc., are undertaken at sites for the safety of the workers.

About Salarpuria Sattva Group:

Present over the past 3 decades, Salarpuria Sattva Group has grown into one of the most trusted builders in the country today. Headquartered in Bengaluru, India, it also a well-known name in Hyderabad, Kolkata, Pune, Coimbatore, Jaipur and Goa. The Group will soon be expanding its presence in Mumbai. With 48 million sq.ft spaces completed consisting of world class commercial spaces, cutting edge tech parks and elegant residences, 36 million sq.ft under construction and 32 million sq.ft in the planning stage, Group is one of the leading developers in India today. Salarpuria Sattva’s flagship commercial project and Asia’s Best IT Tech Park- Knowledge City is located in Hitec City, Hyderabad. The Group’s other cutting edge upcoming projects in Hyderabad include: Knowledge Capital, Knowledge Park and Image Towers (a unique project for gaming and animation industry with world class facilities, in P.P.P model with Telangana State  and industrial infrastructure corporation). By further expanding into various ventures such as co-working, co-living, education, aerospace, embedded technology, hotels, facilities management and warehousing, the Group today stands tall as a frontrunner, shaping India’s growth story. The Group’s unwavering adherence to quality has given it the “trusted” tag among builders in the country, renowned for its “A Stable” CRISIL rating.

Rs 700 crore govt business is Wipro's target

Wipro is eyeing about Rs.700 crore from government projects in the current fiscal. It intends to nearly triple this in three years. The move comes at a time when the Centre is clearing the decks for a slew of projects under the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP), reports a media.

"The targets for this year represent a 100-per cent growth over the previous fiscal," said Ranbir Singh, Head, Government, Wipro. The export-oriented Indian IT industry has been facing headwinds in its traditional strongholds such as the US and Europe, and though things seem to be looking up, Nasscom's annual projections have pegged software exports growth at 4-7 percent for FY10.

In contrast, the domestic market is expected to grow at 15-18 percent during the year. Projects such as MCA-21, e-passport and eBiz - which were handed out in the past, have whet the appetite of IT firms that are now looking to leverage opportunities closer home. The Unique Identification (UID) project has created quite a stir among vendors and every IT player; Indian and MNC are hoping to participate in the ambitious effort; the other large projects waiting to take off include eDistrict, eCourt, eOffice, Income-Tax and Central Excise.

"While the opportunity is large, it is also important to remember that the lead and the closing timelines tend to be longer for Government contracts. But, clearly, this is a space that every company wants to play in," an industry observer pointed out. Naturally, no one wants to be left behind in the race. Wipro's Joint CEO, Suresh Vaswani, told Business Line recently that the company was 'revisiting' its strategy and game-plan on government business. The company has already clinched a Rs.1,200 crore multiple-year contract floated by the Employees' State Insurance Corporation (ESIC).

The project relates to computerisation of the ESIC and to provide smart cards to around 1.5 crore industrial workers across the country. The contract brought its own share of controversies when rival firm TCS wrote to the Labour Ministry against the procedures adopted in awarding the contract.

Agencies

C-DOT plans rural projects on its 25th anniversary

The Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT), the country's premier telecommunications research and development centre, turned 25 Tuesday.

"In all these years, C-DOT has been in the technology forefront and significantly contributed in the indigenisation of telecom technology, digitilisation, bridging the digital divide between urban and rural, establishing strong telecom manufacturing infrastructure and employment generation," said C-DOT executive director P.V. Acharya.

Added Sam Pitroda, National Knowledge Commission Chairman who founded C-DOT, "C-DOT was established as an independent society to help develop a series of digital switching products to meet Indian requirements. At that time, we had about two million phones for 750 million people."

Maintaining that C-DOT "planted the right seeds" for the an information and communication technology (ICT) revolution a quarter century ago, Pitroda told media, "The spirit of private enterprise helped it grow to a substantial industry."

C-DOT has today realigned efforts and defined its roadmap with a focus on developmental schemes for the 11th five Year Plan period.

The company plans to implement projects of national and strategic importance for rural India through the shared GSM Radio Access Network, which is currently under development and expected to give a definite fillip to business in the hinterland.

In the northeastern region, C-DOT aims to breathe fresh life into the fixed line infrastructure.

C-DOT's focus projects include the Gigabit Optical Passive Network that aims at bringing broadband and next generation network products and services to homes.

"Twenty-five years ago, the system was very resistant to new ideas. C-DOT experiment was seen with a great deal of suspicion and there were many multinational lobbying groups constantly trying to kill the initiative," Pitroda said.

"C-DOT was seen by multinational companies as a direct threat to their business interests in India. It survived due to the political will of the prime minister (the late Rajiv Gandhi) and it got accomplished simply due to the energy of the young."

According to Pitroda, the next big challenge is to benefit from the ICT revolution to improve education, health, agriculture, financial services and governance to bring growth and prosperity to the doorsteps of people at the bottom of the pyramid.

Agencies

Open Source projects dominated by IT vendors

More vendors are getting involved in open source project despite the economic slowdown. Gartner has reported many key findings related to open source in Predicts 2009: The Evolving Open-Source Software Model report. Gartner reports that 50 percent of direct commercial revenue attributed to open-source products or services will come from projects under a single vendor's patronage. Many new projects are being commercialized early in their maturity phases - often by a dot-com startup and before a broad community "network effect" is firmly established. These projects are often under the patronage of a single vendor that employs nearly all key code contributors.

According to Gartner's key findings, driven by expanding mainstream IT adoption, open-source usage profiles are shifting to more-conservative, risk-versus-reward dynamics. As a result, new adopters now place an increasing premium on commercial support channels to establish service-level agreements on par with closed-source alternatives. Gartner recommends that companies should understand the role that a broad and vendor-independent community plays in mature open-source projects. More specifically, keep in mind that intellectual-property warrants and indemnities are strongest when vendors maintain more control over the source code pedigree.

The report also says that through 2011, less than 50 percent of Global 2000 IT organizations would have implemented a formal open-source adoption and management policy as part of an enterprise software asset management strategy. Open Source Software (OSS) has become unavoidable for most IT organizations. Open source is leveraged in virtually all mainstream enterprises. A comprehensive enterprise open-source adoption policy is the most important critical path towards establishing an optimal balance between risk and reward; however, less than 30 percent of IT organizations have such a policy in place.

Agencies

IBM funds $1 billion for APAC IT Projects

IBM announced up to $3 billion funds to finance IT initiatives in key economic stimulus projects in Europe and Asia-Pacific through IBM Global Financing, the company's lending and leasing business segment.

Specifically, it will make available up to $2 billion in financing in Europe and up to $1 billion in the Asia-Pacific region. IBM Global Financing also will extend its North American coverage to include financing for smart technology projects in Canada, according to a statement.

The stimulus financing will mainly target enterprises and municipalities looking to implement technology projects consisting of a majority portion of IBM hardware, software, and technology services components. Financing also can be applied to non-IBM technology as part of a larger IBM solution.

The financing will help organizations move ahead with IT projects in 2009, while awaiting government funding, to build the technological and environmental infrastructure of the 21st century.

The financing could be in the form of:

* Low rates and flexible financing options

* Deferred payment plans

* Enterprise financing facilities that offer structured lines of credit

* Specialized project financing packages that allow clients to align payment streams to anticipated benefits throughout the project

The recession is going to drive many organizations, public and private, to make transformational changes in their IT environment. However, without access to the correct financing offerings, a significant set of opportunities will be lost and society-wide projects, like smart grid, will be substantially delayed," said David Mitchell, SVP of UK-based IT research firm, Ovum.

It must be recalled here that IBM China Research launched a new industry solution lab in China focusing on the development of healthcare IT solutions and released four software packages that could help hospitals establish electronic patient records at reduced costs, last month. The Chinese government has announced a plan to invest CNY 850 billion over the next three years to provide every village with a medical clinic and at least one hospital for every county by 2011. The plan includes funding for electronic patient records systems that can be shared by different hospitals around the country.

CXOtoday

Have computer sales dipped by 12%; As cos cut IT spends

Personal computer (PC) sales in India fell about 11.7% during the first quarter of the calendar year to about 2.1 million units as enterprises slowed down IT spending, according to research firm Gartner.

Both desktop PC and laptop sales declined about 11% during the period, as both large enterprises and small and medium businesses delayed their IT hardware purchases.

“Cost pressure seems to have kept away enterprises from spending on IT hardware during the first quarter of 2009, while there are signs of some turnaround in the consumer sentiment,” Gartner principal analyst Diptarup Chakraborti said.

Hewlett-Packard continued to lead India’s PC market, selling about 300,000 PCs in the quarter. The PC maker, however, saw an year-on-year decline in both desktop and laptop sales during the period. HCL Infosystems (200,000) and Dell (158,000) were ranked second and third, respectively. Acer was ranked fourth.

Gartner said it expects PC sales in India to decline 3.7% year-on-year to 8.98 million units this year. The firm had projected sales of 11 million units for the calendar year in the beginning of January, but the first quarter made it revise its projection downwards.

“Production of desktops and laptops has come to near a halt in manufacturing destinations such as Taiwan,” Mr Chakraborti said. PC makers say they saw some growth in new categories, such as netbooks and higher retail sales, in the first quarter but the good news is limited to the consumer space.

“Large enterprises and small and medium businesses are not buying. The e-government projects are also in a limbo with the Model Code of Conduct in place,” Acer India chief marketing officer S Rajendran said.

With the slowdown in enterprise spending, corporate buyers are expected to account for 69% of total PC sales in 2009, down from 71% last year.

The economic slowdown has resulted in a slump in PC sales across the globe. Worldwide PC shipments declined 6.5% in the first quarter of 2009 to 67.2 million units. As per Gartner, the decline could have been steeper but for low-priced laptops such as netbooks.

Agencies

Employees of Wipro asked to work 2 days a week

Wipro, the third largest Indian IT service giant has introduced a scheme under which employees in the bench has to come for two days in a week. "We found value in people being given flexibility instead of asking them to come to work when there is no work," said Girish Paranjpe, Joint CEO-IT, Wipro.

The scheme named 'Project Enrich' has also given an alternative to the employees that allows them to work 10 days a month, with a pay that is 50 percent of their cost to company (CTC). They will be absorbed back into projects once deployment opportunities come up. The scheme has already enrolled 1000 of their employees.

The company has also introduced Project Rejuvenate, which is though primarily aimed at benched staff, will also be open to some senior employees. The scheme will allow them to take a leave for one to one-and-a-half years, while they will be offered 25 percent of their CTC. Currently, the company has 10-12 percent of overall employees in the bench which will surge as it plans to recruit more 6,000 employees. "They are good resources and we don't want to lose them. We don't want to do anything drastic as well," said Pratik Kumar, Head of Human Resources (HR) at Wipro.

Agencies

Delayed projects hold up over 160,000 job creations

India has lost the opportunity of employing more than 160,000 people with 18 major steel, power and auto projects getting delayed over land acquisition and forest and environment clearance issues, says a study by a business chamber.

According to the study by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Assocham), "the 18 strangled projects of India Inc to the tune of Rs.244,815.5 crore (Rs.2.45 trillion) remained on papers, in the form of memorandum of understanding (MoU) and agreements over the past three-four years".

However, a smooth implementation could have created job opportunities for at least 164,000 people directly and 270,000 people indirectly, it added.

"Assocham Research Bureau has identified 18 major projects announced by India Inc in sectors such as power, steel, automotive, IT, real estate and metals and mining that are just on papers and struggling for government clearances since 2003-04 till 2008," Assocham president Sajjan Jindal said.

The delayed projects include Posco India's proposed 12 million-tonne capacity steel plant in Orissa; it has already obtained in-principle for the special economic zone status needed for getting land in August 2005, and has pumped in some Rs.1.75 billion.

But delay in land acquisition has been a major stumbling block, Assocham said, adding that a green signal could have generated employment for 35,730 people.

Tata Steel's three greenfield projects in Jharkhand, Orissa and Chhattisgarh - on a cumulative investment of Rs.820 billion - are similarly in a state of uncertainty on account of land acquisition procedures. Assocham said the three projects could have created employment for at least 2,000-3,000 people directly.

Similarly, Arcelor-Mittal's steel projects in Orissa and Jharkhand are facing peculiar situation for the past three years.

In Jharkhand, the company has got iron ore mines, but not the land, whereas in Orissa, it has land, but are yet to get mines. The planned investment in both the states are a little over Rs.43,050 crore, and is estimated to have generated direct employment for over 5,000 people and indirect employment for about 20,000.

Some mega greenfield projects in Jharkhand, if implemented, would have created nearly 9,000 jobs, Assocham said, basing its estimates on proposed investments of about Rs.40,900 crore by Essar Steel, Jindal Steel and Power and Jindal South-West.

Likewise, in the automotive sector, M&M's joint venture in Chennai with Renault and Nissan has been deferred following a delay in land acquisition; this would have created work for at least 5,000 people directly, Assocham said.

Agencies

No raise for Hewlett-Packard employees

If you are a Hewlett-Packard employee, you don’t have a raise coming your way. According to an internal memo, the company plans to use the funds meant for raises and bonuses to fund pension plans and other benefits. Interestingly, the memo also indicates that the upper management has nothing to worry.

Employees have been notified by e-mail that they won’t receive a salary increase in fiscal 2009, which began in November. The world’s largest personal-computer maker is freezing salaries as part of Chief Executive Officer Mark Hurd’s efforts to contain costs. The company has already gone ahead and cut jobs, closed offices and merged data centers to lift profit. It is also limiting travel, curtailing hiring and eliminating “favorite science projects” to save on research costs in 2009, Chief Financial Officer Cathie Lesjak said last month on a conference call.

Hewlett-Packard, which has 320,000 employees, declined to confirm the salary freeze. “In this difficult macroeconomic environment, we believe it is prudent and responsible to reduce costs where possible,” said spokeswoman Emma McCulloch. “HP has a longstanding and disciplined approach to managing costs in order to invest in the company’s growth.”

Hewlett-Packard, based in Palo Alto, California, the shares have dropped 34 per cent this year.

Hurd, who became CEO in 2005, received $25.3 million in total compensation in fiscal 2007.

Source: Economic Times