Thursday, April 29, 2010

India among top 10 pharma markets by 2020

New Delhi: India will join the league of top 10 global pharmaceuticals markets in terms of sales by 2020 with the total value reaching $50 billion by then, according to a report. The report by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) said that the country's population is growing rapidly, as is its economy-creating a large middle-class that can to afford western medicines. 



An ageing population together with increase in problems associated with cardio-vascular disorders and central nervous system will lead to higher demand for drugs, the report said. Around $70 billion worth of drugs are expected to go off patent in the U.S. over the next three years and India is capable of manufacturing a substantial share of the products. Several Indian firms have already entered into research partnerships with multinationals - Dr Reddy's Laboratories Torrent have joined hands with Novartis while Ranbaxy has formed alliances with GSK and Schwarz Pharmaceuticals, the report added.

India, which produces more than 20 percent of the world's generics, is likely to become a competitor of global pharma in some key areas, and a potential partner in others. It has a considerable contract manufacturing expertise, the report says. "Global players in the pharmaceutical industry are seeing immense prospects in the Indian market due to its sheer demographic profile. India could be the most populous country in the world by 2050 and is now making its mark as a growing market," Sujay Shetty of PWC said.

Infy to hire 30,000, promotions for 7500

Bangalore: Infosys Technologies, one of India's top software services exporter, is planning to provide promotion to almost 7500 employees in both middle and lower ranks. Talking to the media after the announcement of its quarterly results S.D. Shibulal, Chief Operating Officer and Member of the Board also said the promotions will be topped up by wage hikes. He said, "We have announced a wage hike of around 13-17 percent offshore and 2-3 percent onsite" 



The company also plans to recruit 30,000 people in the upcoming financial year including 19,000 campus hires, 5,500 laterals, 2,000 overseas hires (in China, Manila, the U.S. and Europe) and the rest for Infosys BPO. Last year, Infosys started with 18,000 and ended up with 27,000. The company has already visited 300 campuses while moving towards bringing people in.

Infosys have seen extremely high attrition over the last quarter and most employees attribute it to the new HR initiative. There were reports mentioning the lost of 4000 employees in the month of February alone accounting for three percent of its total strength. Commenting on the flutter caused by iRace, Mohandas Pai, Head - Human Resources, Infosys said that the company believes in the new HR policy. 'iRace' will set a baseline and it will 'fit' people in a particular structure besides all the controversies. "We have addressed all the issues of employees in an open and transparent manner and it should be seen as a forward looking transformation exercise," he added. Pai also claimed that the company also provide several platforms for them to express their opinion on upcoming policies through websites, blogs, and review sites.

The attrition level of the company has also gone up drastically. Currently according to company sources the rate of attrition is around 13.4 percent. Infosys BPO has a major attrition level of 35 percent. Hence the company has decided to spend $134 million in salary hikes this quarter. 

Indian techie builds low cost robot for household chores

Bangalore: A Bangalore based Microsoft techie, Ramaprasad has built robots that can cook, keep the house safe when he is away and help him spend his leisure the way he likes it best. Also, these robots tell him news that interests him, and show him ads of products he would like to buy.

Talking to Bangalore Mirror on the sideline of Microsoft Tech Ed being organized in Bangalore, Ramaprasad said that it is awesome letting smart robots do all the humdrum work at home. What thrills him even more is that he made all the robots, which he calls Buddyhomes. The software, hardware, design and implementation are all his. 




For the past 15 day, Buddyhomes do every work for Ramaprasad. They wake him up with an alarm. If he does not wake up, they pour some water over his head! He goes for his breakfast. He puts the noodles into a pan on the stove. Then he leaves because he wants to read the newspaper. Meanwhile, a buddyhome stirs the noodles. In two minutes, he gets the message that noodles is ready. He scans the newspapers. He is interested in Lalu Prasad Yadav. He smiles. Immediately, the screen on the wall before him shows the latest available news about Lalu.

Building these robots with software including cloud computing, Microsoft.Net, Visual Studio 2010 and Open Computer Vision, Ramaprasad said that the technology to build the robots is 'very simple'. It has three webcams and a screen, gesture-recognising software, and hardware from SP Road near Town Hall. "It costs me just Rs.16,000. It is so reasonable because most parts are from SP Road. The motors, chips, atmega, and H bridges are all from SP Road."

Now Ramaprasad is trying to finetune the robots to do wet mops of the floor, and do more sophisticated cooking. In particular, he wants to pursue gesture-reading robots because he sees great potential in it for the hearing- and speech-impaired. "I think it is possible to interpret gestures, and turn that into voice. Think how it can help those who cannot speak," said Ramaprasad, who studied in College of Engineering, Guindy, Chennai, and has a BE in computer science and engineering from Anna University.

Interact with your walls: 23 yr old Indian innovates

Bangalore: Anup Tapadia, a 23-year old Indian, has launched a digital technology company 'TouchMagix', which specializes in converting ordinary surfaces into three-dimensional interactive environments.

"The idea behind TouchMagix was to bring the interactive experience a step closer to reality," says 23-year-old Tapadia. The first technology we developed was called MotionMagix, and it allows any projection screen to be made interactive. Imagine walking up to a real wall, projecting a picture on it, and interacting with the objects in the picture," said Tapadia. 




He also said that he was inspired by origami in many ways. It taught him the importance of scaling designs in 3-D. Tapadia, who bagged two master degrees in Computer Science at the age of 21, is an alumnus of University of California, San Diego. At age of 14, he became the world youngest professional to pass the Microsoft Certifications (MCSD, MCSE, MCDBA). Bill gates, Azim Premji, Raghunath Mashalkar and many others have written and appreciated his achievements in the field of technology and science. Also, he worked for a year with Qualcomm in San Diego, U.S, where he developed two products in distributed mobile computing, which were patented. Later on he joined the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) to pursue a PhD in communication theory and systems.

Explaining about the latest version of the MotionMagix system, Tapadia said that the latest version allows surfaces like LCD and plasma screens, LED floors and walls to be made interactive, so one can project a football field on the floor of a mall and start chasing the ball. "It has extensive applications in retail, malls, advertising, events, promotions and gaming. At a cost of Rs.3.5 lakh upwards, the technology is limited to installations in shopping malls and multiplexes, but it is only a matter of time before people start using the walls, tables and floors in their homes as convenient surfaces for entertainment," said Tapadia. 

Indian-American to transform U.S. power grid

Washington: Although the U.S. power industry is one of the greatest engineering marvels, ageing technology and an increase in demand are creating problems for the power grid that needs fixing. Now, an Indian-American engineer is set to transform the way power is generated.

Venkat Selvamanickam, professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Houston, is developing a technology with high temperature superconducting wires that is revolutionising the way power is generated, transported and used. 




It is estimated that high-temperature superconducting wires could eliminate 131 million tonnes of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere and offset the emission of the equivalent of 40 conventional power-generating plants.

"The country's electric transmission grid currently consists of about 160,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines, with forecasters predicting an additional 12,900 miles needed over the next five years to meet increasing demand," said Selvamanickam.

"Superconducting power cables can transmit up to 10 times more power than traditional copper cables without the significant losses of traditional cables and are considered environmentally friendly," he added.

"The goal of my research is to modernise the power grid with high temperature superconducting wires to improve efficiency and reliability."

"Almost anything in the power grid -- cables, transformers, motors, generators -- can be more efficient if you use high temperature superconducting wires."

"Superconducting fault current limiters can enable uninterrupted power transmission when conventional circuits will otherwise succumb to outages in events such as lightning storms," said Selvamanickam, who did his B.E. (Honours) from Regional Engineering college, Tiruchi, India.

The applications for superconducting wires range from advanced medical imaging techniques like magnetic resonance imaging (MRIs) to large-scale applications replacing existing copper wires with superconducting wires to raise reliability and cut costs.

"High temperature superconductivity has the potential to revolutionise the way we use electricity, just like the way fiber-optics revolutionised the way we communicate," he said.

"Our research pays immediate returns to the industry. It's not like something that may be useful 10 years down the line," Selvamanickam added. 

DC most googled team, Tendulkar player

Bangalore: Google India announced its second IPL Zeitgeist for 2010 - an insight into the most searched teams and players during the third season of the Indian Premier League. Sachin Tendulkar emerged as the most searched Indian cricketer, followed by Sourav Ganguly. Shane Warne continued to be the most searched international player at the IPL, for the second year running. 



Conspicuous by their absence were popular names such as M.S. Dhoni, Virender Sehwag and 'the Fake IPL Player', who moved off the top 10 this year. Adam Gilchrist, Ryan Harris and Praveen Kumar made their debut on the list at number 7, 8 and 9 respectively. Among the teams, Deccan Chargers ousted the Mumbai Indians from the top slot, who emerged as a close second. Chennai Super Kings rounded up the top 3 teams, as Kolkata Knight Riders dropped to number four this year.

'Super Over' emerged as the most searched IPL related query on YouTube followed by Chennai Super Kings. Yusuf Pathan, who did not make it to the IPL Zeitgeist on Google Search, emerged as the most searched player on YouTube.

To compile the 2010 IPL Zeitgeist, Google studied the aggregation of queries pertaining to IPL that people typed into Google search during the IPL season 3. It used data from multiple sources, including Insights for Search, Google Trends and internal data tools. It also filtered out spam and repeat queries to arrive to a list which captured the essence of the series. Google said that the entire search queries studied was anonymous - no personal information was used. 

TCS plans wage hike across the board

Bangalore: After cancelling the wage hike last year due to global slowdown, Indian IT major Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) plans to offer wage hike of 8-10 percent across the board. Even other IT giants such as Infosys, Wipro and HCL are on track with a wage hike plan.

Sources say that Infosys plans to offer a hike of 6-10 percent, whereas Wipro plans to offer hikes of 5-7 percent. The wage hikes for Wipro employees is to be effective from April 1, reports Moneycontrol.com. According to IT companies, the wage hike will have a nil to marginal impact on margins. 



In the current fiscal, TCS plans to hire 30,000 employees. When contacted, TCS said that in the current situation it would be difficult to provide details post results. 

Infy employees vent anger on HR policies in forums

Bangalore: In the last few months, it has not been smooth ride for Infosys leadership, as the employees of the company are not happy with the new HR issues. These employees have been putting thousands of negative reactions to HR head's blog postings in the company's intranet 'Sparsh'.

Talking to Business Standrad, Nandita Gurjar, who is HR Head at Infosys, said that she receives many negative blogs on daily basis. She said, "We realize that they should not take names and make personal attacks. But sometimes, from their perspective, they are in so much pain that they need your attention and which is why they make personal attacks. You can't react to it, because I don't think they are talking personally about you, as long as they are talking about a position. It's part of the game." 




Earlier, these employees used to show their anger on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Later on company provided them blogging platform on its intranet. Now with seeing the number of comments increasing drastically on daily basis, the company has set up a team of six people to moderate the blogs and 'My voice', the dedicated website the company has developed to seek the opinion of employees on important policy matters.

Basically the extremism started after the company launched its new changed management system christened 'iRace', to remap the technology skills of the employees. This initiative, which aimed at "improving the technology depth" of the software professionals, reportedly had affected over 4,000 employees, who felt it was blocking their career growth.

Since iRace was introduced in the company, Gurjar writes blogs and changes topics every Friday. The employees are free to participate and give their comments. Every day, the blog is getting around 30,000 hits. 

Wharton management guru using India's success mantra

Washington: A uniquely 'India way of doing business', which has fuelled an economy that even in perilous global times remains a dynamo, is essentially based on a simple philosophy - "think in English and act in Indian", say four U.S. professors.

The professors of management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania have made the suggestion after a two-year study of some of India's largest firms, of businesses that have played a leading role in the country's rapid development. 




The essence of the India way is best expressed by those business leaders themselves, say Peter Cappelli, Harbir Singh, Jitendra Singh and Michael Useem, co-authors of "The India Way: How India's Top Business Leaders Are Revolutionizing Management".

"We 'think in English and act in Indian'," R. Gopalakrishnan, the executive director of Tata Sons, the holding company of the Tata Group, is quoted as saying in an article drawn from the book by Forbes.com.

"For the Indian manager," Gopalakrishnan explained, "his intellectual tradition, his y-axis is Anglo-American, and his action vector, his x-axis, is in the Indian ethos.

"Many foreigners come to India, they talk to Indian managers and they find them very articulate, very analytical, very smart, very intelligent - and they can't for the life of them figure out why the Indian manager can't do what is prescribed by the analysis," he told the four.

The Wharton professors say they found from their study of Indian business leaders that their "x-axis" is defined by four distinctive elements of managing:

1. Holistic engagement with employees. Indian business leaders see their firms as organic enterprises, where sustaining employee morale and building company culture are critical obligations and the very foundations of their success. People are viewed as assets to be developed, not costs to be reduced.

2. Improvization and adaptability are also at the heart of the India way. In a complex often volatile environment with few resources and maddening red tape, business leaders learn to rely on their wits to circumvent the innumerable hurdles they recurrently confront.

3. Creative value propositions. Given the enormous and intensely competitive domestic market and the country's discerning customers, most of them of modest means, Indian business leaders have of necessity learned to be highly creative in developing their value propositions, delivering entirely new products and services with extreme efficiency.

4. Broad mission and purpose. Indian business leaders place special emphasis on personal values and on having a vision of growth and strategic thinking. In addition to serving the needs of their stockholders, like CEOs everywhere, they also stress broader purpose.

They take pride in enterprise success but also in family prosperity, regional advancement and national renaissance.

Bundled together, these principles constitute a distinctly Indian way of conducting business, one very different from other countries, especially the US, where the blend centers more on delivering shareholder value, the professsors say.

Company managers in the West can usefully learn from India's example, the professors concluded.

Apple's next-generation stunning iPhone model leaked

Washington: Apple's future generation iPhone model, which was leaked after being mistakenly left at a bar in California, has been put on display by a technology news portal.

The secret version of the next generation iPhone was not expected to be formally unveiled for a couple of months.

But, the technology news site Gizmodo said the gadget was left by an iPhone software engineer at Gourmet Haus Staudt, a German specialty store and beer garden in Redwood City. 




"The person who found the phone peddled it to Gizmodo, which bought it for $5,000," Nick Denton, chief executive of Gawker Media, which owns Gizmodo, said in a blog Monday.

Leaks are rare in Apple which is known as the most secretive in Silicon Valley. But after the phone prototype was left in the bar, photos of the device began appearing in technology blogs, sparking a frenzy of hype among the Apple-obsessed, the New York Times reported.

The phone's authenticity was debated. However, a person with knowledge of Apple's hardware plans, who was not authorised to speak on behalf of the company, confirmed to the New York Times that it was real.

Though, Apple declined to comment.

"It is very stunning," said Tim Bajarin, president of Creative Strategies, who has been following Apple for nearly three decades.

"Apple has such tight control on new products, and they are kept under wraps diligently and religiously until the day of their release. If it is true, it is really a first."

Apple's chief executive Steven P. Jobs had reportedly called Gizmodo to get the device back. Denton declined to comment, saying any conversation between Jobs and Gizmodo would most likely have been off the record.

"We haven't had any formal communication with Apple," he said. Brian Lam, the editor in chief of Gizmodo, said his publication would "probably" return the device to Apple.

Late Monday, Gizmodo said that it received a letter from Bruce Sewell, Apple's senior vice president and general counsel, requesting the phone back.

"It has come to our attention that Gizmodo is currently in possession of a device that belongs to Apple," Sewell wrote in a letter that Gizmodo published. 

iPad fails to attract Indian exec

Bangalore: The tablet mania had started ever since the day Apple announced its mysterious new invention. Since then, a number of companies have tried to make their own product to stay in competition. Companies like IDC and JooJoo have already launched the so called "iPad killer", and many more companies, including Samsung, Nokia, Notion Ink and HP, are ready to launch their own tablet soon. Apple has beamingly revealed that its latest creation has already sold 300,000 units on the first day. 



However, when it comes to India, it is a known fact that Apple never really concentrates on marketing its products aggressively. Apple has still not launched iPad in India, and seeing the recent delay in launch of iPhone 3GS, we are not that hopeful. But you never know, iPad might just come to India faster than 3GS. Considering this, Siliconindia decided to conduct a survey amongst the high level executives of few companies just to check if they would really be interested in buying iPad. What we found out was even worse than what we expected.

Almost 9 of 10 people said they would not be interested in buying iPad. "I haven't really used iPad to comment on it, but going by the features I have seen I would rather go for combination of iPhone and notebook," said M. A. Madhusudan, CEO of Virgin Mobiles. Madhusudan feels that nothing can replace BlackBerry for checking mails and it is more convenient to carry notebook around, which has many more features and power than iPad. iPad uses the same operating system as iPhone. In layman's term, iPad is just a big iPhone (or fat iPhone, as it is called by many experts).

Majority of our survey respondents confirmed that even if they do buy iPad they will not use it for business purpose. "I will buy it for my mother because it looks very simple to use. But I would not use it for business. I don't think it can replace BlackBerry," said Siddharth A Pai, Partner and Managing Director of TPI Advisory Services. Pai believes that if Apple wants to make iPad successful in India then they would have to reconsider the pricing. "Key to Indian market is value. Pricing has to be low. If Apple brings downs the price to 15K for India, then it will sell like hotcakes," he said.

In India, apart from few Apple fans, and tech enthusiasts, we expect the most number of iPad will be bought by application developers. The flexibility of Apple store has already seen many startups churning out great applications and being successful as well. "I will only buy iPad to try out development on iPad applications," said P. Ravi Kiran, who is Founder and CEO of Golive Gaming Solutions. Apple has been claiming that iPad will change the gaming scenario. So we asked Kiran if he thinks iPad is the next gaming platform to look out for. "No, not exactly. iPad is not for either casual gamers or hard core gamers. It does not support Adobe flash either. I don't think that anyone will buy iPad just for gaming purpose," he said.

However grim the survey might look we are not denying the fact that Apple's iPad is an innovative creation. We are sure it will attract many tech enthusiasts who want to keep themselves updated with the latest gadgets. Samir Bangara, COO of Indiagames says that he will buy but only for entertainment purpose. "The price of the base version is very reasonable, but not that much of 3G version (which is around $800). It is a great netbook and e-reader combined. I personally am buying a kindle and waiting for a while before buying the iPad," he said. Bangara feels that the 10 hour battery life of iPad is very well suited for entertainment.

Apart from all these aspects there is one another reason why iPad might not sell that much in India. iPad will face tough competition from the IITians founded Indian company Notion Ink, which will soon launch its tablet Adam. Powered by NVIDIA TEGRA 2 Dual Core Cortex A-9, Adam has a 3.2 MP Swivel Camera and 10.1" capacitive touch screen. On top of that, it will also support Adobe flash which will give Adam a distinct advantage over iPad. We estimate the price of Adam will be suitable for Indian market and will sell more than iPad. 

Minimum Rs.25,000 Crore revenue from 3G auction for government

New Delhi: India completed 52 rounds of an auction to award radio frequency spectrum for third generation telecom services in the country, with the government expected to get Rs.25,769.82 crore as minimum revenue from the bidding.

At the end of the ninth day of the auction, which began April 9, the provisional winning price for a pan-India licence stood at Rs.6,354.23 crore, up 81.5 percent from Rs.3,500 crore reserve price fixed by the government. 




Delhi continued to attract the highest bid at Rs.733.71 crore, followed by Mumbai receiving a price of Rs.667.77 crore, Tamil Nadu Rs.643.37 crore and Maharashtra Rs.624.75 crore, according to latest data available on the website of the department of telecommunications.

Four states - Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Assam and Jammu and Kashmir- could not attract even a single player.

The 3G services will facilitate much faster connectivity than what is available now and enable applications such as Internet TV, video-on-demand, audio-video calls and high-speed data exchange.

Slots for three to four players are available in each of the 22 circles into which the country has been geographically divided for these services.

The government has already given Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL) spectrum for 3G services on the condition that they will pay the same licence fee as would be levied on private players after the auction.

Along with the fee that will be eventually paid by the two state-run enterprises for the licences, the government will provisionally get Rs.25,769.82 crore from the auction, which is about 85 percent of the projected earning of Rs.30,000 crore from the 3G auction.

This is on the presumption that every available slot gets filled at the provisionally approved price.

Communications Minister A. Raja Monday said he expects the revenue earned to be over Rs.35,000 crore.

Nine telecom companies - Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications, Vodafone Essar, Idea Cellular, Tata Teleservices, Aircel, Etisalat, S Tel and Videocon Telecommunications - are participating in the online auction process.

It is a simultaneous auction for 22 circles over a secure website. At each round, the price is hiked from between 10-1 percent based on demand.

The auction is being held from 9 a.m. to 7.30 p.m. on all days, except Sundays and national holidays. The process will end only when the demand is equal to the number of slots available in each circle.

The bid data, including the winning companies' names, will be made public after the auction's completion and approval by the government. The winning firms will have to deposit the money within 10 days after the auction.

The successful bidders would be allowed to offer 3G services on a commercial basis from Sep 1. 

Do Indian leaders hesitate to make independent decisions?

Bangalore: India might be one of the fastest growing economies in the world, but according to Professor Pawan Budhwar of Aston Business School, Indian leaders still hesitate to delegate and making independent decisions. It is this mindset wherein executive coaching may bring a paradigm shift.

Talking about the need of executive coaching in India, Krishna Kumar, Managing Director, Indian School of Executive Coaching (ISEC) said that India is fast leaping into a new generation of economy, where coaching becomes important for any executive to design their career in better manner. He said, "Executive coaching is still in nascent phase in India, whereas in U.S. and European countries, it is proved to be a powerful tool to improve the quality of leaders." 




It is true that the concept of executive coaching is relatively new in India, but witnessing the success of U.S. firms through coaching mantra, Indian firms are all set to adopt best practices and benchmark themselves them against world class corporations. Kumar said that in the next five years, most of the Indian firms would encourage their executives to take up executive coaching. Currently ISEC is also in talks with few of the IT firms to provide coaching to their executives.

Currently, four levels of coaching are being provided by ISEC, such as Mentor Coach, Personal Coach, Corporate Coach and Master Coach. Kumar said that executive coaching provided by ISEC, covers the complex combination of skills and human capacities that are required of today's executives. Explaining the need of coaching for executives, Srini Rajam, Chairman and CEO, Ittiam Systems said, "There is dire need for executive coaching in India. Also, in India coaching has to be a organizational process. Currently, it is more of personalized kind."

The need for coaching become more important in the current scenario, as firms need new and innovative policies more than ever to succeed in the market place of today. Executive coaching can prime their most important assets to take up that challenge. In the last few years, it is witnessed that even Indian management colleges have come forward to incorporate executive coaching in their curriculum.

Indian IT firms aim Bharti's African outsourcing deal

New Delhi: To repeat its low-cost model of operations in Africa, India's mobile phone firm Bharti Airtel has invited bids for IT-related services, management and maintenance of mobile and landline networks in 15 nations.

Basically, the company has decided to invite bids, as it was not getting better deals from the existing partners. Since 2004, IBM has been handling Bharti's IT requirements in a first-of-its-kind deal globally. 




Talking to Economic Times, an Executive close to this deal, said, "TCS, Infosys and Wipro along with IBM are in the race as the company is looking for the best deal." While another executive said Bharti may be looking to diversify its partner base as "it would not want to risk putting all its eggs in a single basket".

Some of the sources close to the deal also said that, Ericsson and Nokia Siemens, which maintain and manage Bharti Airtel's networks in India through multi-billion-dollar contracts, are not guaranteed similar deals with Zain.

Bharti has also decided to take its partners along with when it goes overseas, it has been open to engaging with new vendors who offer a better deal. It seems that Franco-American telecom gearmaker Alcatel-Lucent may also be a potential bidder for the African deal; it bagged a $500-million contract from Bharti last year to manage its fixedline networks in India. 

India has more cell phones than toilets: UN

New York: India has 545 million working cell phones thanks to its booming emerging economy, a number expected to reach 1 billion by 2015, the UN University said Wednesday.

That number exceeds the number of people who have access to toilet or sanitation facilities - only about 366 million, or 31 percent of the 1-billion strong population. 




India's number of cell phone users soared in just 10 years, from 0.35 per 100 persons in 2000 to 45 per 100 persons this year.

Worldwide, an estimated 1.1 billion people of the world population of 6.7 billion people have no access to toilet facilities. The UN Millennium Development Goals call for access to toilets by all people by 2025,

The UN University, a Canada-based think tank, made a study on cell phone users in developing countries to demonstrate that some countries may lag behind in achieving the goal of providing toilets and sanitation for all the world population by 2025.

"It is a tragic irony to think that in India, a country now wealthy enough that roughly half of the people own phones, half cannot afford the basic necessity and dignity of a toilet," said Zafar Adeel, a director at the UN University.

UN University said it would cost an estimated 358 billion dollars to build toilets for half the world population between now and 2015. Each toilet costs 300 dollars.

The World Health Organisation and the UN Children's Fund said programmes to provide toilets have fallen behind schedule worldwide and the 2015 goal may not be reached.

Eight young students represent India in Intel's ISEF

Bangalore: Eight young students who have been successful at the India Initiative for Research & Innovation in Science (IRIS) with their innovative science and technology projects will now represent India in the 2010 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) to be held in San Jose, California from May 9-14, 2010.


The Intel ISEF is a program organized by Society for Science & the Public (SSP). With a gathering of over 1500 young students from more than 50 countries, representing more than 1200 projects, it is an opportunity for the best young minds in the world to come together to share ideas, showcase cutting-edge projects, and compete for more than $4 million in awards and scholarships. The Intel ISEF winners are judged on their creative ability and scientific thought, as well as the thoroughness, skill, and clarity shown in their projects.

At the national level, IRIS encourages only research based science projects. The programme calls for submission of project synopsis by August 31st every year, followed by an evaluation by the Scientific Resource Committee (SRC) for selection. For instance, in 2009, a total of 82 projects across Category I (Stand 5th-8th) and II (Stand 9th - 12th) were selected. These projects then compete at the National Fair of IRIS which is held in November-December. Amongst the winners of this fair, a group of students are then chosen to represent the country at ISEF. This team undergoes three coaching camps and the final team comprising of 4 individuals and two teams of two members each participate at ISEF. Nearly 1200 synopses were received in 2009 and from them, 82 projects were selected to participate at the National Fair, held at Sattva Vikas School, Ahmedabad in November.

Eight students (Four in the individual category and two each in the Team category) with their winning science and engineering projects will now travel to the U.S. to compete against more than 1500 other high school students from over 50 countries around the world. During the week-long Science and Engineering Fair the students will have the opportunity to meet leading scientists and exchange ideas on various evolving topics in Science, Research and Technology.

"The success of these students reveals their scientific aptitude, research acumen and innovation in the country. The finalists from India demonstrate the capability of this country to cultivate the next generation of innovators, scientists and entrepreneurs," said Rahul Bedi, Director, Corporate Affairs, Intel South Asia.

CBay acquires Spheris for $116 Million

Coimbatore: CBay Holdings, a global medical transcription (MT) firm, completed the acquisition of another MT company Spheris for $116.3 million. The deal would boost CBay's revenue by $500 million this year. "With the acquisition of Spheris, our revenues are expected to touch $500 million this year," CBay Holdings' VC and CEO Raman Kumar said. 



In the two-phased acquisition, CBay's subsidiary MedQuist acquired the North American assets of Spheris while CBay bought out the entire stock of Spheris India. Spheris had earlier filed for bankruptcy protection in the U.S. court.

The deal size was originally pegged to be around $75 million when they entered into a stalking horse agreement in February 2010. But, CBay Holdings had to raise the bid amount to $116.3 million.

6 Indians take part in U.S. entrepreneur summit

Washington: The summit organized by U.S. President Barack Obama in an attempt to bridge the gap with the Muslim World saw the participation of six business and social entrepreneurs from India. Prominent among the Indian-Americans who actively worked at the two-day summit were Farah Pandith, Special Representative to Muslim Communities, and Rashid Hussain, Special Envoy to the Organization for the Islamic Countries. 



The two-day 'Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship' was attended by around 250 successful entrepreneurs, majority of whom are from the Muslim community, reports PTI. Rajiv Shah, Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, addressed the summit on "Access to Capital". Shah is the highest ranking Indian-American in the Administration.

Sonal Shah, Director of the White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation, moderated the panel discussion on social entrepreneurship. Pradeep Ramamurthy, Senior Director for Global Engagement, National Security Staff at White House, moderated another session on "Culture of Entrepreneurship", which among others would be attended by Shane Tedjarati, President and CEO of Honeywell China and India.

Indian entrepreneurs invited to the summit are Irfan Alam, Shahnaz Husain, Ramachandran Kavli, Shaffi Mather, Shaheen Mistri and Sirajuddin Qureshi. Irfan Alam is the Founder chairman of Samman Foundation set up in Patna in 2007. Shahnaz Husain is the pioneer of herbal care in India and responsible for taking this traditional medicine system around the world. Ramachandran Kavil is the Thomas Schmidheiny Chair Professor of Family Business and Wealth Management, Clinical Professor at the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad.

Shaffi Mather is the founder of "1298 for Ambulance", a for-profit service with a sliding scale payment system that has revolutionised medical transport in Mumbai and Kerala. Shaheen Mistri is the founder and managing director of Akanksha Foundation, a non-profit organization that educates thousands of children in India. And Sirajuddin Qureshi is a well-known businessman, national leader of the Quresh community and President of India Islamic Cultural Centre.

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Internet banking preferred due to benefits

Washington:People prefer to use internet banking either because of its benefits or because of peer pressure but rarely because of perceived prestige or celebrity endorsement, a new study says.

The research hints at how banks could improve the spread of internet banking simply by improving the services offered.


From a bank's perspective there are many advantages to persuading their customers to adopt internet banking.

Primarily, there is the reduction in staffing, which can reduce overall costs, even if information technology and online security systems must be put in place and the reduction in buildings infrastructure required to service customers.

There is also the potential for increased revenue through increased transactions and customer activity facilitated by the ease with which they can carry out different tasks online without having to visit a bank's premises.

Internet banking is being adopted by customers as a viable alternative to managing their money with approximately 55 million US households routinely using online banking.

Some banks are already internet only and offer preferential interest rates and terms to their customers.

However, there are many people yet to adopt online banking, which represents a significant challenge to banks that would like to increase their virtual customer base.

Understanding what makes people adopt a particular technology could be crucial to the future success of internet banking, say Weihua Shi and Kenneth Zantow of the College of Business, at the University of Southern Mississippi (USM), Long Beach.

They point out that while there are various research models that have attempted to explain the adoption of new technologies, the majority of these assume that people make a rational choice based on a systematic decision process.

In many cases, this may be entirely contrary to how people behave and they suggest that it is more likely that people simply follow the herd, a USM release says.

If large numbers of people are already using a particular technology, once a tipping point is passed, peer pressure causes other people to adopt the innovation too.

But perceived prestige and celebrity endorsement rarely lure people to internet banking.

The findings were published in the International Journal of Banking, Accounting and Finance. 

Nokia launched 3 Qwerty devices

Bangalore: Nokia has launched three new Qwerty devices with keypad similar to a computer keyboard and also introduced a new version of its messaging service with free push e-mail facility. Its e-mail proposition offers different kinds of e-mail options depending on the need of the user. The service is already in use by over 30-lakh people in more than 100 countries. 


Nokia's Executive Vice-President, Anssi Vanjoki, said, "India is among the top five countries for the service and we are confident that with our decision to offer it for free, we will see a significant surge in adoption of e-mail and messaging services in the country."

Similarly, Nokia new messaging service aggregates multiple e-mail accounts through one client and can support and mobilize up to 10 e-mail accounts. This service will be available through all leading operators and consumers will only have to pay the basic data download charges. And as part of the Nokia Messaging Service (NMS) portfolio, it will also offer free Instant Messaging (IM) services, preloaded on select devices.

According to Nokia India Managing Director and Vice-President D. Shivakumar, "People are looking at messaging services as an enhanced business tool. There are 30-lakh mail users on mobile in India.The number is expected to touch 13-crore in 2014. Interestingly, 78 per cent of web e-mail users want to browse their e-mails on their mobile phones, while mobile e-mail users are growing at 96 per cent."

the new mobile handsets are mainly targeted towards youths and executives who are using chat and e-mail services more and more these days and it is Priced between Rs. 5,300 and Rs. 10,600,

Hackers turn employers!! Will pay you to spread more spam!!

Bangalore: After facing stricter rules in the U.S, Spammers over there have started outsourcing the work to in India, Bangladesh, China and other developing countries to tackle the simple tests known as captchas, which ask web users to type in a string of semiobscured characters to prove they are humans and not a spam-generating robot. 



According to online exchanges like Freelancer.com, where dozens of such projects are bid on every week, these spammers are paying 80 cents (Rs.35.43) to $1.20 (Rs 53.14) per 1,000 deciphered boxes.

Luis von Ahn, a Carn egie Mellon computer science professor who was a pioneer in developing captchas, estimates that thousands of people in developing countries, primarily in Asia, are solving these puzzles for pay. But internet firms like Google say that they do not worry a lot about people being paid to decode captchas because they are one of several tools that websites use to secure themselves. Some sites, for instance, might also send confirmation codes as text messages to cellphones, which then have to be entered into a separate verification page before new email accounts are activated.