India’s economic growth is expected to pick up faster than the rest of the world once a global revival begins, though it is difficult to predict when, the country’s central bank governor was quoted as saying.
In an interview with BBC World broadcast on Sunday, taken before he left for a meeting of G20 in London, RBI governor D Subbarao said Asia’s third biggest economy could be an engine for global growth.
“India can be a growth engine. Not that India can recover ahead of the world. But when recovery starts, India’s recovery is going to be sharp and rapid,’’ Subbarao said.
In January, the IMF cut its forecast for global growth in 2009 to a slight 0.5% — the weakest since World War II — from a November estimate of 2.2%.
Even though India’s exports account for 14% of its GDP, much lower than some of its Asian peers, Subbarao said the global crisis has hit the Indian economy through the financial and manufacturing sectors, and said it was difficult to predict the timing of the recovery.
The Indian economy has slowed sharply as exports were hit and consumer sentiment was dented. It is expected to expand at a six-year low of 7.1% from an average rate of around 9% in the last three years.
Subbarao said India’s financial sector remains sound, safe and well capitalized and this was because of prudent policy actions taken by the government and the central bank.
Since the global crisis hit India’s shores in September authorities have rolled out two stimulus packages, duty and rate cuts with the latest rate cut just last week to shore up growth.
G20 finance ministers on Saturday promised the IMF money to help troubled countries and said they would use their full fiscal and monetary firepower to combat the worst economic crisis since the 1930s. Subbarao said India has gained from globalisation and would not turn away from it. “Globalisation is a double edged sword. It comes with benefits and costs so I don’t think pulling out of the global system is an option for any country.’’
Agencies
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Monday, March 16, 2009
India to have more IT professionals than US
Infosys chief and co-founder S Gopalakrishnan has said that the Indian IT industry would tide over the current downturn and may surpass the US in terms of having the largest number of IT professionals in the world in the next three years.
“In the IT revolution, we are at the centre. We are underinvested, but that is an opportunity. A lot of investment is being done in R&D here because of the availability of talent. Our education system provides for that,” Infosys CEO and managing director Gopalakrishnan said.
Last week, India's second-largest software company Infosys said that it will be inducting almost 20,000 engineering graduates this year at over 8.3 per cent higher salary from what was offered last year, even as the company seeks to cope with a lower demand for software services in its top export markets of US and Europe.
According to the company, the offer letters and dates of joining have been sent to the 20,000 freshers (2008-09) and the process of joining the company will start from June this year. Last year, Infosys recruited almost 18,000 (2007-08) engineering graduates.
Agencies
“In the IT revolution, we are at the centre. We are underinvested, but that is an opportunity. A lot of investment is being done in R&D here because of the availability of talent. Our education system provides for that,” Infosys CEO and managing director Gopalakrishnan said.
Last week, India's second-largest software company Infosys said that it will be inducting almost 20,000 engineering graduates this year at over 8.3 per cent higher salary from what was offered last year, even as the company seeks to cope with a lower demand for software services in its top export markets of US and Europe.
According to the company, the offer letters and dates of joining have been sent to the 20,000 freshers (2008-09) and the process of joining the company will start from June this year. Last year, Infosys recruited almost 18,000 (2007-08) engineering graduates.
Agencies
New technology that will allow users to talk to web
Giving a new dimension to the internet, the Indian research arm of the US-based IT giant IBM has developed a technology that will allow users to talk to the web and create voice sites using mobile phones.
"People will talk to the web and the web will respond. The research technology is analogous to the internet. Unlike personal computers it will work on mobile phones where people can simply create their voice sites," IBM India Research Laboratory Associate Director Manish Gupta said.
For this technology, IBM has developed a new protocol -- Hyperspeech Transfer Protocol (HSTP) -- which is similar to the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).
"India now has over 360 million cell phone subscribers. Last month we added 15 million," he said pointing out that the research technology targets ordinary mobile phone users, all of whom may not be literate.
The spoken web is a network of voice sites or interconnected voice and the response the company got in some pilot projects in Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat and the kind of innovations that people came up with were just mind-boggling, Gupta said.
Agencies
"People will talk to the web and the web will respond. The research technology is analogous to the internet. Unlike personal computers it will work on mobile phones where people can simply create their voice sites," IBM India Research Laboratory Associate Director Manish Gupta said.
For this technology, IBM has developed a new protocol -- Hyperspeech Transfer Protocol (HSTP) -- which is similar to the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).
"India now has over 360 million cell phone subscribers. Last month we added 15 million," he said pointing out that the research technology targets ordinary mobile phone users, all of whom may not be literate.
The spoken web is a network of voice sites or interconnected voice and the response the company got in some pilot projects in Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat and the kind of innovations that people came up with were just mind-boggling, Gupta said.
Agencies
Is India back on FDI radar despite recession?
At a time when the world economy is facing the worst credit freeze in several decades, India attracted USD 2.7-billion FDI in January, up 58.8 per cent from a year ago, and remained a favourite destination for cross-border investments.
"January numbers are very good...it is an indication of the confidence that the rest of the world has in India," Secretary in the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion Ajay Shankar said.
The foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows for the April-January period aggregated to USD 23.8 billion and is expected to cross the last year's target of USD 25 billion this fiscal.
Though the government had set a target of USD 35-billion FDI for 2008-09, it looked rather ambitious in the wake of the global downturn.
Up to September this fiscal, the monthly inflows were in excess of USD 2 billion. However, the following three months saw a sharp dip in the overseas investments.
The January figures bring a renewed hope that India is back on the radar of global investors.
Agencies
"January numbers are very good...it is an indication of the confidence that the rest of the world has in India," Secretary in the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion Ajay Shankar said.
The foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows for the April-January period aggregated to USD 23.8 billion and is expected to cross the last year's target of USD 25 billion this fiscal.
Though the government had set a target of USD 35-billion FDI for 2008-09, it looked rather ambitious in the wake of the global downturn.
Up to September this fiscal, the monthly inflows were in excess of USD 2 billion. However, the following three months saw a sharp dip in the overseas investments.
The January figures bring a renewed hope that India is back on the radar of global investors.
Agencies
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Will Creative Technology layoff 300 jobs?
Struggling Singaporean digital entertainment products maker Creative Technology is to cut 300 jobs globally, mostly in Europe and the United States, the company said.
It said in a statement the company said that there would be a restructuring charge of 10 million dollars for severance payments and headcount cost reductions in the current third quarter ending March.
The Singapore-listed firm has struggled to make inroads against Apple's iconic iPod in the MP3 or digital music player market despite pumping in massive investments.
In the second quarter ended December 2008, Creative Technology racked up a net loss of 32.4 million dollars compared with a profit of 7.6 million dollars for the same period in the previous financial year.
Agencies
It said in a statement the company said that there would be a restructuring charge of 10 million dollars for severance payments and headcount cost reductions in the current third quarter ending March.
The Singapore-listed firm has struggled to make inroads against Apple's iconic iPod in the MP3 or digital music player market despite pumping in massive investments.
In the second quarter ended December 2008, Creative Technology racked up a net loss of 32.4 million dollars compared with a profit of 7.6 million dollars for the same period in the previous financial year.
Agencies
Cut costs & beat recession with cloud computing
The global recession is taking a toll on every industry and the construction industry is no exception. However, Aurigo Software Technologies, a provider of software and solutions for the construction and real estate, is offering companies its web-based products on a cloud computing model to save on huge IT expenditure.
Established in the US in 2003, Aurigo launched its solution BRIX for the Indian market in early 2008. Aurigo has three customers in India now - RDS Projects, IDEB and Navin Housing. All three companies have opted for the cloud computing model, thereby reducing their burden in managing the IT infrastructure, investing in the server hardware and software components and also on the power that is a huge expenditure.
Talking to CXOtoday, Balaji Sreenivasan, Founder and CEO of Aurigo Software, said, "Cloud computing is becoming a necessary requirement by customers seeking to deploy IT solutions even in the construction and real estate industries and is here to stay for the long haul."
Cloud computing helps companies and end-users access solutions without the hassle of having to invest in the computing power (hardware and software) required to run that solution internally. So if you are using gmail or hotmail to access your email, you are already a cloud computing proponent.
"As customers generally do not own the infrastructure, they merely access or rent, they can avoid capital expenditure and consume resources as a service, paying instead for what they use," said Sreenivasan. Many cloud computing offerings have adopted the utility computing model, which is analogous to how traditional utilities like electricity are consumed, while others are billed on a subscription basis.
Other benefits of time-sharing style approach are low barriers to entry, shared infrastructure and costs, low management overheads and immediate access to a broad range of applications.
In fact, IDEB's cloud computing model is expected to go live within the next six months, while RDS Projects, which has multiple projects spread across six locations in the country is expected to go live in the next 8 weeks. The remotely located and managed servers belong to various server farm providers that are highly secure, ISO 9001:200 certified and are located across India with overseas backup mirror locations with a committed 99.96% uptime.
Since these projects are yet to go live it would take a minimum of six months to one year to assess the actual ROI. However, BRIX is fairly well deployed across the US and at the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT), which is involved in a $3 billion bridge reconstruction, they have experienced a near 40% boost in productivity. This was measured by computing the reduced time to carry out inspections, transmit the data and increased information retrieval speed after deploying BRIX. The solution has been delivered on the cloud computing model with the entire solution being hosted on a central server and accessed by all the stakeholders at ODOT.
CXOtdoday
Established in the US in 2003, Aurigo launched its solution BRIX for the Indian market in early 2008. Aurigo has three customers in India now - RDS Projects, IDEB and Navin Housing. All three companies have opted for the cloud computing model, thereby reducing their burden in managing the IT infrastructure, investing in the server hardware and software components and also on the power that is a huge expenditure.
Talking to CXOtoday, Balaji Sreenivasan, Founder and CEO of Aurigo Software, said, "Cloud computing is becoming a necessary requirement by customers seeking to deploy IT solutions even in the construction and real estate industries and is here to stay for the long haul."
Cloud computing helps companies and end-users access solutions without the hassle of having to invest in the computing power (hardware and software) required to run that solution internally. So if you are using gmail or hotmail to access your email, you are already a cloud computing proponent.
"As customers generally do not own the infrastructure, they merely access or rent, they can avoid capital expenditure and consume resources as a service, paying instead for what they use," said Sreenivasan. Many cloud computing offerings have adopted the utility computing model, which is analogous to how traditional utilities like electricity are consumed, while others are billed on a subscription basis.
Other benefits of time-sharing style approach are low barriers to entry, shared infrastructure and costs, low management overheads and immediate access to a broad range of applications.
In fact, IDEB's cloud computing model is expected to go live within the next six months, while RDS Projects, which has multiple projects spread across six locations in the country is expected to go live in the next 8 weeks. The remotely located and managed servers belong to various server farm providers that are highly secure, ISO 9001:200 certified and are located across India with overseas backup mirror locations with a committed 99.96% uptime.
Since these projects are yet to go live it would take a minimum of six months to one year to assess the actual ROI. However, BRIX is fairly well deployed across the US and at the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT), which is involved in a $3 billion bridge reconstruction, they have experienced a near 40% boost in productivity. This was measured by computing the reduced time to carry out inspections, transmit the data and increased information retrieval speed after deploying BRIX. The solution has been delivered on the cloud computing model with the entire solution being hosted on a central server and accessed by all the stakeholders at ODOT.
CXOtdoday
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Sanjay Sharma Joins ACME Tele Power As VP
Sanjay Sharma has joined ACME Tele Power Limited as vice president and SBU Head for IT Solutions. In addition, Sharma will also be responsible for the sales and marketing function for the company's IT Solutions business globally.
Prior to this appointment, Sharma was vice president of the IT division at Samsung India.
Talking about his new assignment, Sharma said, "The ACME business is going through an exciting growth phase, where the company is looking at significantly enhancing its presence in India and overseas through Innovative energy solutions. I am happy to be associating with ACME at this time and look forward to an exciting and rewarding experience at ACME."
ACME Tele Power Ltd. (ATPL) provides comprehensive passive infrastructure solutions to wireless telecom players both in India as well as overseas. The company focuses on innovation and R&D. ATPL has developed a range of innovative products that help provide cost-effective, energy-efficient, integrated, passive infrastructure solutions to telecom companies.
Manoj Kumar Upadhyay, managing director, ATPL, said Sharma's appointment will give a fresh impetus and a new direction to the company's IT Solutions business. The company will benefit from his rich experience in India and overseas.
Sharma brings with him over 18 years of experience in the IT industry, of which the last three years were with Samsung and the pervious nine years have been with IBM Global Services. Within IBM he worked on various assignments in the solutions sales and marketing field, for the Indian and Asia-Pacific markets. Prior to his assignment at IBM, he worked with Multi Tech Computers, handling the channel sales function there.
Sharma holds a Bachelor's degree in telecommunications (1989), master of business administration (1991) and is an active member of IEEE and other computer societies. He has undergone professional training at Harvard Business School on strategy, sales and marketing methodologies.
CXOtoday
Prior to this appointment, Sharma was vice president of the IT division at Samsung India.
Talking about his new assignment, Sharma said, "The ACME business is going through an exciting growth phase, where the company is looking at significantly enhancing its presence in India and overseas through Innovative energy solutions. I am happy to be associating with ACME at this time and look forward to an exciting and rewarding experience at ACME."
ACME Tele Power Ltd. (ATPL) provides comprehensive passive infrastructure solutions to wireless telecom players both in India as well as overseas. The company focuses on innovation and R&D. ATPL has developed a range of innovative products that help provide cost-effective, energy-efficient, integrated, passive infrastructure solutions to telecom companies.
Manoj Kumar Upadhyay, managing director, ATPL, said Sharma's appointment will give a fresh impetus and a new direction to the company's IT Solutions business. The company will benefit from his rich experience in India and overseas.
Sharma brings with him over 18 years of experience in the IT industry, of which the last three years were with Samsung and the pervious nine years have been with IBM Global Services. Within IBM he worked on various assignments in the solutions sales and marketing field, for the Indian and Asia-Pacific markets. Prior to his assignment at IBM, he worked with Multi Tech Computers, handling the channel sales function there.
Sharma holds a Bachelor's degree in telecommunications (1989), master of business administration (1991) and is an active member of IEEE and other computer societies. He has undergone professional training at Harvard Business School on strategy, sales and marketing methodologies.
CXOtoday
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