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Latest India News: Petrol price hike, Bharti Airtel Results, TRAI M&A guidelines, Internet Policy Gaps, Oct Auto Sales

Viral Dholakia — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 09:28:48 +0000

While India Q2 FY12 earning’s season is in full swing, crucial data on festive October automobile sales have trickled in with not-so-encouraging signs. The past week was also spent in worries over Greek economy in disarray; and to determine whether the leaders of the world’s 20 most powerful economies, in G20 summit, can arrive at plan in order to soothe global nerves.

Petrol prices Hiked by Rs.1.82 per litre

Even as the common people reel under the pressure of high double-digit food inflation and exorbitant cost of living, oil companies have yet again hiked petrol prices by Rs.1.82 per litre from midnight. While this is the fourth instance of petrol price hike in 2011, the Manmohan Singh government has administered a fuel hike for a whopping 13^th time since June 2010.

Bharti Airtel Q2 FY12 Profit down by 38%

India’s largest telecom operator Bharti Airtel posted lower than expected Q2 net profit of Rs.1027 crore, down 38% from that of July-Sept quarter last year. Total sales for the company’s second quarter stood at Rs.17270 crore, up 13.38% from Rs.15231 crore during a year-ago period. Bharti Airtel continued to expand its footprint across Africa with a strong 23% growth rate in its revenues from African operations.

Furthermore, India’s top mobile phone carrier Bharti Airtel will launch its wireless broadband services in India in the fiscal ending March 2012.

TRAI proposes New M&A Guidelines

Major telecom operators had hiked their tariff rates by 20% in July 2011. Now, its time to fasten up the mergers and acquisition guidelines in the industry, to bolster the sector marred by over-crowded 12-13 service providers and ease intense price war prevailing between them.

The new proposal from the TRAI is a step in right direction that would allow a liberal norm of up to 35% market share as safe harbour for M&A landscape in the Indian telecom sector. Earlier, the M&A threshold limit for the resultant entity was capped at 30%. Further, the telecom regulator has also set a limit of 25% for spectrum holding for any merged entity in any service area.

Internet Policy Gaps: India proposes new UN body

The Indian government has proposed for creation of a new United Nations body for internet-related policies which would help in developing internet policies, oversee all internet standard bodies and policy organizations and plays an arbitrator in all the disputes related to internet.

The intent behind proposing this new multilateral mechanism is to disallow various governments from controlling the world of internet and pronouncing their own set of regulations on the same; while fostering the growth of internet universally in an open and democratic way to promote stable and constantly evolving internet to common people.

Telstra enters Indian Telecom market

In a joint venture with Microland, global telecom major Telstra International is all set to enter Indian consumer telecom landscape with three licenses to operate in international and national long-distance telecommunications and ISP services to Indian customers.

The company is expected to kick-off with its operations in the first quarter of 2012 from cities like Banguluru, Kolkata, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Delhi and Hyderabad.

Automobile sales in October 2011

The month of October has traditionally been the festive season for both two-wheeler and four-wheeler car makers. However, there was no shopping frenzy this time around with interest rates and car loan EMIs at their peak levels.

While Bajaj Auto’s motorcycle sales for October 2011 grew by 6% to 3.51 lakh units, its rival auto giant Hero MotoCorp chipped in with a tepid 1.32% jump in two-wheeler sales at 5.12 lakh units. The sales of car-to-truck manufacturer Tata Motors stood higher by 5% at 68009 vehicles in October. Tractor major M&M sold a total of 41506 units, up 20.32% from last year period.

Lastly, the strike-hit Maruti Suzuki’s October sales dipped by 53% to 55,595 units as compared to 11809 units for the same month during last year. The auto-maker lost production of over 40,000 units in the peak festive month of October.

News Bytes: Best IT Employer, Most Trusted Brands, Rural Ecommerce Traction growth & more…

Arun Prabhudesai — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 09:08:23 +0000

Best IT Employer in India

According to the survey – IT Best Employer Survey 2011 – conducted by Dataquest, in association with CyberMedia Research (CMR), HCL Infosystems has emerged as the BEST IT Employer in India. Mumbai-based Rolta has taken the second spot followed by iGATE-Patni. A new entrant SAP Labs came in at fourth spot, while Tavant has emerged as the fifth best IT employer in India. [source]

Brand Equity’s Most Trusted Brands in India

Nokia, which has always been at the top of the charts when it comes to most trusted brand has taken quite a hit this year. As it is Nokia’s market share has been falling over last 2-3 years and so is there trust value. In this years Brand Equity List, Colgate takes the top position followed by lux and Airtel. Nokia has dropped to 5th position. Here are the top 10 most trusted brands in India [Source]

2011Rank	Top Trusted Brands
1	Colgate
2	Lux
3	Airtel
4	Lifebuoy
5	Nokia
6	Dettol
7	Britannia
8	Vodafone
9	Maggi
10	Closeup

Ecommerce gaining traction in Tier II & Tier III cities in India

According to recently released Ebay Census, Online buying is becoming popular in rural India and women are increasingly getting active in shopping online. Lifestyle & Electronic Items are the most sought after items on Ebay. Amongst the cities, Delhi leads on online buying followed by Mumbai, Bangalore, Jaipur, Chennai, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Pune and Chandigarh – in that order. Currently Metros hold 51% share of all online purchases, but comparative to cities rural growth is much higher in rural areas. [source]

IIT-B to go completely Cashless using UIDAI Authentication Mechanism

This pilot test by UIDAI at IIT Bombay campus may set the tone for things to come. According to Livemint, IIT-B campus will go completely cashless and all students will be issued Aadhar Cards, which will act as identification and authentication mechanism for all IIT students. So, students can transact anywhere inside IIT campus just by flashing their UIDAI card. [source]

With UIDAI, people have an option to open new bank account or link existing ones at the time of enrolment. So, any purchases or transactions that happen at the campus will be directly debited or credited into the student’s bank account!

Buzzing News of the Week – BWA Auction, World’s Tallest Residential Tower, Anil’s defamation suit, Bhopal Gas & more…

Viral Dholakia — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 07:46:21 +0000

Haven’t Touched Newspaper this Week? Here’s Summarized News At a Glance…

This specific post is dedicated to those who have not been able to be in touch with the daily newspapers and missed some of the important buzzing news across this week.

The week kicked-off with the expectations of fuel price hike (which did not materialize), BWA spectrum auctions has already reached dizzying heights, Apple has stormed with its all new 4th edition of iPhone and the Centre has come out with the law of mandatory 25% public float for the listed companies.

Lodha Group to Erect World’s Tallest Residential Tower

The 17.5-acre plot at the defunct Shrinivas Mill at Lower Parel (Mumbai) is all set to be the construction ground for a 117-storey tower, World One, touted as the world’s tallest residential tower, to be ready by 2014.

Going by the area where it is being constructed, there would be no points for guessing that this residential tower is targeted at ultra-rich Indians, where the minimum price per flat is expected to be in the range of Rs. 7.5 crore. The site would have 2 lakh sq.ft. of landscape area for the residents, including a 80,000 sq.ft. sports club at 175 ft above ground.

Any plans to book a flat?;)

Bharti Airtel Closes $10.7 billion Zain Acquisition

Some of you might be feeling as to why am I repeating this good old news of Bharti-Zain acquisition now? But, the fact remains that the official announcement that Bharti Airtel has completed the acquisition of Kuwait’s Zain, at an enterprise value of $10.7 billion, arrives as late as Tuesday, June 8, 2010.

The combined revenues of Bharti and Zain will be around $12.4 billion, while the combined operating profits are expected to be in the region of $4.7 billion.

With Zain acquisition, the deal paves the way for Bharti Airtel to expand its footprint across the 15 African markets where Zain has strong presence. With this deal, Bharti vaults onto global rankings as the world’s 5^th largest telecom company.

As per latest news, S&P has lowered the long-term corporate rating on Bharti to BB+ from BBB-.

Anil Withdraws Defamation Suit against Elder Brother

According to a latest development, Anil Ambani has dropped a Rs.10000-crore defamation suit against Mukesh Ambani in the Bombay High Court. The defamation case was filed by Anil in September 2008 on allegation that the elder Ambani had defamed him in an interview to the New York Times.

The leading American publication had said,

“What most distinguishes Reliance from its rivals is what Ambani’s friends and associates describe as his ‘intelligence agency’ a network of lobbyists and spies in New Delhi who they say collect data about the vulnerabilities of the powerful, about the minutiae of bureaucrats’ schedules, about the activities of their competitors.”

Govt Revenues from BWA auctions Soars past Rs.1 L cr.

The all-India bid price for BWA rises to Rs.11518 crore at the end of Day 13. With this the government revenues from BWA auction process soars to Rs.34554 crore. Once again it’s Mumbai and Delhi circles that are leading the race with highest bid prices of Rs.1993 crore and Rs.1943 crore respectively.

Interestingly, the combined revenues for the government from the auction process of both 3G and BWA have reached Rs.102000 crore, way above the targeted Rs.35000 crore. From here it’s carry forward to our finance minister…

The Judgment of Bhopal Gas Tragedy

The verdict for an unfortunate gas leak tragedy that occurred in Bhopal during 1985 has consumed 25 years to arrive at a judgment. For all those new generation geeks unaware about the infamous Bhopal tragedy, the leak was all about the spread of toxic methyl isocyanite from the Union Carbide plant across the slums which killed about 20000 people and impaired a generation of life.

The verdict has been stamped by many as not just justice delayed but also justice not delivered. The judgment has convicted eight people involved in the industrial disaster and sentenced to years in prison. Keshub Mahindra, who was the non-executive chairman of the Indian arm of Union Carbide then, is also convicted in the criminal case arising from the Bhopal tragedy.

Auto Sales zooms in May

The domestic passenger car sales rose for the month of May rose from 113810 units last year to 148481, an up-tick of robust 30%. On the other hand, two-wheeler sales increased from 727933 units previous year to 936555 units in the month of May 2010.

The auto sales of M&M, India’s largest tractor maker by sales, rose a whooping 69% to 28486 units for the month of May. Total sales of Maruti surged to 102175 units, 28% higher than the numbers clocked during the same month previous year. Tata Motors reported 41% growth in vehicle sales at 56779 units during the scorching month of May.

Any news which you would like to add which I may have missed mentioning above?

October Popular Posts Wrap-up

Arun Prabhudesai — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 07:20:41 +0000

October has been a bit slow as compared to previous few months, but we did have slew of articles that attracted quite a bit of discussion and traffic. This month was also festive month, so overall blog traffic was low as well.

This is the round-up of most popular and discussed article trak.in saw in the month of October.

Hope you guys are having a great weekend :)

Telecom Tuesday: India News Digest

Arun Prabhudesai — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 04:56:48 +0000

If you are not aware what is Telecom Tuesday, please read this first. This will be the first weekly News digest for Telecom Tuesday.

Indian Mobile Subscriber growth: From 10 million to 500 Million in 8 years

I remember writing an article about Indian Telecom growth 2 years back. I was a little sceptical about it that time. But, it has grown way beyond what I was expecting and now ready to touch 500 million subscriber mark within next year itself.

According to the Economic Survey 2009, at the pace with which the Indian telecoms market is growing, the target of 500 million fixed and mobile phone connections by 2010 seems to be taking shape.

As per the latest report, India has already crossed 450 million subscriber mark for for fixed and mobile connections. The mobile sector is itself adding more than 10 million connections month on month.

If the growth continues at same pace, and there is a very strong chance it will, 500 million subscriber mark may be reached before the middle of next year !

Phone Number portability regulations announced by TRAI

The number portability had been announced by Telecom regulatory authority of India long time back, but most telecom operators in India had been waiting for the regulations around this.

The TRAI has finally announced it. Following is the report published by TRAI on number portability guidelines

Budget a no show for Indian Telecom Sector : Telecom stocks get hammered.

Indian Telecom Operators expected a lot from this years budget, but were thoroughly disappointed. Budget did not have anything significant for the telecom sector and hence the Telecom stocks took a hammering at the stock Market.

MTNL, Reliance Communication and Tata Teleservices went down by 10.26%, 7.87% and 6.55% respectively.

Although, the economic survey projected Telecom sector as a huge part of India growth Engine, no actions were taken to boost it further !

Infact, the budget actually reduced the allocation of funds to Telecom sector in terms of percentage GDP. Only 16.21 thousand crores has been allotted to the telecom department, that accounts for 3.6% of total expenditure. Its is a big drop drop from last year’s allocation of 5.14%.

Mobile now more prevalent than Radios among poor households in India

Yes, this is exactly the reason for the humongous growth in Mobile subscriber in India. Even in poor families, more people have mobile phones than they have radios, once the sole& cheap entertainment gadget for a poor man.

LIRNEasia, a Sri Lanka-based Asia-Pacific information and communication technology (ICT) policy and regulation capacity-building organisation, said in India a hundred bottom of the pyramid (BOP) households now had 50 TVs, 38 phones, 28 radios and one computer.

Radio has been displaced from its No.2 position after television in India. In India, and also Pakistan and Bangladesh, at the bottom of the pyramid, the mobile is more prevalent than the radio.

Respective prevalence of TV, phone, radio and computer in South Asia and around is as follows: Bangladesh (52, 41, 13, 0); Pakistan (68, 39, 24, 3); India (50, 38, 28, 1); Sri Lanka (80, 64, 77, 4); the Philippines (63, 50, 52, 1); and Thailand (75, 70, 64, 12).
[Source]

Startup Saturday: India News Digest

Arun Prabhudesai — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 11:21:52 +0000

If you are not aware what is Startup Saturday, please read this first. Today will be the first installment of daily subject wise news digest that we have introduced.

Here it goes:

Proto.in event to be held in Pune on 25th July

India’s premier Startup event Proto will be held in Pune on 25th July. This is by far the must-attend event for every entrepreneur, wanna-be entrepreneur, startups and even for SMB’s looking for investment.

The event is attended by all the notable VC’s in India and many startups have benefitted a lot from this event (including my own startup – hover.in).

Quick Facts:

Event Date: July 25^th, 2009
Venue: Dewang Mehta Auditorium
Address: Persistant Systems, Senapati Bapat Road (Near ICC Towers), Pune
Expected Audience: 400 – 500
Ticket Cost: Rs. 750/-

If you have not registered yourself yet, please do it now.

Online Education seems to be the flavour of the season for Indian startups

Education seems to be the hot favorite right now, not only with entrepreneurs, but also with the VCs and they are betting big on it.

Accentium Web, which is behind SecondShaadi.com and Gaadi.com, has now launched StudyTimes.com, an online education portal that aims to help students know about admission related information such as application deadlines, exam format and exam results about various colleges and courses in India and abroad.

Close behind heels are Malyalam Manorama guys who have launched (and later retracted, I guess) an education portal – ManoramaHorizon – probably an extension to their popular local language portal.

But the biggest of all was the third round funding of Tutorvista. Even a first round funding is rare for an Indian startup, however, Tutorvista has managed to garner whooping $19 million in third round funding from Pearson, Lightspeed Ventures and Manipal Group.

The online education provider raised $12.5 million from the UK based publishing giant Pearson Group and another $6.5 million from the existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners and Manipal Education and Medical Group (MEMG).

And now time for some interesting articles written by other startup bloggers:

StartupCentral has written a good article on Why Venture Capitalists turn Entrepreneurs.
Ashish has written about Google launching offline Newspaper print campaign to promote search. Incidentally, it was picked up by Techcrunch..sweet!

That wraps up our first news digest of Startup Saturday . If you have come across any interesting article on startups and want to feature it, do get in touch with us.

India News digest in new Avatar!

Arun Prabhudesai — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 10:22:18 +0000

Last week we announced a new feature on this blog called India News digest, and it has got some great response from readers. Thank you to all the readers who gave us feedback either in form of comments, on twitter or through mail.

Few of our readers requested for subject wise news digest, so that they can only subscribe to their interest areas – We have listened – we will be starting a daily digest based on a pre-decided subject for a particular day every week. This specific subject day wise digest idea was suggested by one of our commentators VJ here – Thank you VJ :)

Here are the details about our Daily Subject wise Digest

Media Monday will cover stories that will cater to Media in general including Blogging, Newspapers, media advertising, trends and surveys and everything that comes under the “Media” umbrella. If you would like to get news only related it to it, make sure you subscribe to Media Monday Feed.

Telecom Tuesday will cover anything and everything related to mobile, Broadband and telecom space in general. If you would like to get news only related it to it, make sure you subscribe to Telecom Tuesday Feed.

Web Wednesday will cover articles/posts related to online Internet news like search engines, Web trends, Internet etc. etc. and 100s of other things that come under the umbrella of “Web”. If you would like to get news only related it to it, make sure you subscribe to Web Wednesday Feed.

Travel Thursday will cover everything from Tourism, Aviation to OTAs etc. If you would like to get news only related it to it, make sure you subscribe to Travel Thursday Feed.

This will cover range of topics from Indian Stock market, Forex, Indian Economy, GDP, budgets etc. etc. This I suppose will be a very long digest :). If you would like to get news only related it to it, make sure you subscribe to Finance Friday Feed.

This will be an important digest for all the Indian startups. I have been keeping away from analyzing and writing about startups since last few months,but now with Startup Saturday, I plan to cover startups and entrepreneurship. This digest will give a brief overview of the startups that have been launched in past week. If you would like to get news only related it to it, make sure you subscribe to Startup Saturday Feed. If you want your startup to be featured here, ensure to send me a mail at arun-at-trak-dot-in.

Okay, Now Sunday is going to be special, because it will absolutely anything and everything that I want to write. Dont be surprised if I share a joke with you in this digest. Guys come on, its a Sunday !! Other than that Sunday will cover subjects that dont fall under any of the above category. If you would like to get news only related it to it, make sure you subscribe to Special Sunday Feed.

Oh, I am excited about this and I hope you guys are excited to. As usual, let us know your feedback and we promise that we will look at it very closely !

India News that you should not miss

Arun Prabhudesai — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 07:22:58 +0000

This is our 3rd edition of India News Digest that brings you news that you should not miss. We will be posting these News snippets frequently for the benefit of readers.

Mobiles number will now start with 8 !

Yeah, this had to happen sooner than later – with the kind of growth that Indian mobile space is seeing, the 10 digit mobile numbers starting with 9 are coming to end !

The new Mobile numbers will now look something like 8XXXXXXXXX instead of 9XXXXXXXXX.

Even the 95 sub-level of telephone numbers, earlier reserved for trunk calls or STD dialling within a telecom circle, has now begun to be allotted to cellular operators.

Further DOT is also planning to move from 10 digit mobile numbers to 11 digits. It surely shows that DOT had never expected this kind of growth in mobile space and now needs to come up with solutions to keep up the pace of growth.

The Indian Real Estate Market is showing signs of recovery

The Stock market is going up, New stable government in rule, low inflation, lower interest rates etc. factors seem to slowly have positive effect on languishing Indian Real Estate sector.

Since March, we have seen movement in the market. Before that, the confidence and sentiments were very low in the real estate market for almost seven months due to global economic slowdown," Global property consultant CB Richard Ellis Chairman and Managing Director (South Asia) Anshuman Magazine said on the sidelines of a CII function. [source]

I had written a article on Indian Real Estate, specifically on Pune which has more than 450 comments till date. What is interesting to see (from comments) is that over last 2 years how sentiments have been seesawing. The most latest comments have mentioned that the market is slowly recovering.

Although 2009 may just see flat growth, 2010 seems to show strong signs of recovery

The sorry state of Indian Airline Sector

India is recovering in almost all sectors except for its Domestic/ International Airlines. All the Major carriers are facing hug losses quarter on quarter.

There is an excellent article written by Daniel Michaels on WSJ on the woes of Indian Airline Sector.

The article takes the case of Jet Airways that was making truck loads of money till last year and then suddenly they have been on a loosing spree.

We will be also shortly publishing a in-depth report on state of Indian Economy (It will be addressed in the parliament today by the President of India) that many of you will want to read.

so stay tuned!

India News that you should not miss

Arun Prabhudesai — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 03:25:59 +0000

Here is the second installment of our Daily digest of India News. For more information on what our India News Digest is, please read here.

Indian DTH Subscriber base rising at scorching pace

As per report “Indian DTH Market Forecast to 2012”, released by RNCOS the number of DTH subscribers is forecasted to grow at a CAGR of around 25% during 2009-2012.

Currently Indian DTH Market has 5 private players – Dish TV, Tata Sky, Sun Direct, Big TV and Airtel’ Digital TV, with a few more in pipeline.

The growth actually does not surprise me at all, especially with the kind of arbitrary and pathetic services, we had to (atleast in my case) endure from Goonda cable operators. Superior quality services (not true in case of all DTH operators) , clear signals, no geographical limitations etc. etc will only help DTH services to grow.

Here is something that may surprise you – DTH subscribers constitutes less than 10% of the total number of TV households, indicating vast future growth potential.

Jaguar Land Rover coming to India – wants to penetrate Indian Defense Market as well

Now JLR coming to India may actually not be a big news anymore, but what I found Interesting was that Land Rover is talking to the Indian government for supply of sophisticated and modern military vehicles to the armed forces.

Land Rover is developing a new model in its research and development centre in the United Kingdom, which will primarily address the defence needs of most countries around the globe, including India.

Just so that you know, Indian government is looking to spend Rs 3,000-4,000 crore for procurement of vehicles for the defence sector this year alone.

Red Hot Chillies of Hand Grenades in India!

[img source]

This is something interesting – I would term it as ORGANIC HAND GRENADES – LOL :)

India’s security forces are planning to mix one of the world’s hottest chilli – Bhut Jolokia – powders in hand grenades to control riots and disperse rioters.

India’s defense scientists will replace explosives in small hand grenades with a Bhut Jolokia red chilli to immobilize a person without killing him. The bhut jolokia chilli is said to generate 1,000,000 heat units on the Scoville scale — a measure of hotness — at least a thousand times more than a common kitchen chilli.

A real innovation indeed !

OK. we dont have to worry of drought – At least thats what meteorological Department tells us!

You know the announcements made by Indian Meteorological department is actually a big farse – They never seem to get it right. They started few months saying we will have normal monsoons, then they said we will have 93% of average monsoon this time around. Then suddenly everyone started talking about drought like situation and finally they retrace back saying the monsoons seem to be normal.

I guess, I can tell you the answer better than them with atleast 50% accuracy – The monsoon WILL be normal (thats 50% accuracy…lol..guess how)

DROP 377 – Gays happy

I am firm believer that being a Gay is not by individual choice, but by birth. They have full right to be what they naturally are and thats why it makes me happy that Indian Government has finally decided to relook at article 377 which prohibits Gay marriages!

Thats it from today News digest. If you prefer to get only the news digest through RSS, you can subscribe by clicking here