Tech Mahindra approached Satyam for merger - report

MUMBAI (Reuters) - Indian software services firm Tech Mahindra Ltd has approached embattled rival Satyam Computer Services for an all-share merger, the Economic Times reported on Tuesday, sending shares in both companies higher. Tech Mahindra, a unit of Indian tractor and utility vehicle maker Mahindra & Mahindra, is looking for a deal that could involve gaining control of the combined entity, the newspaper said, citing an unnamed person with knowledge of the development. "Anything that offers strategic value to Tech Mahindra would be of interest to the group," it quoted an unnamed executive of Mahindra & Mahindra as saying. The paper also reported a fund manager had said Tech Mahindra was in touch with Satyam's bankers Merrill Lynch. Analysts said a merger would help Tech Mahindra, which is now focused on the telecoms sector. "It would mean a broadening of its business model," said a technology analyst at brokerage Pioneer Intermediaries. Shares in Tech Mahindra rose 9.6 percent to 310.80 rupees by 0500 GMT, while shares in Satyam were trading up 4.25 percent at 174 rupees on hopes of deal, despite a denial from Tech Mahindra. The vice chairman and managing director of Tech Mahindra said the company had not approached Satyam or its merchant bankers with a merger proposal. "It is pure fiction at this point in time," Vineet Nayyar told Reuters.

Wipro buys Citi Tech for $127m

BANGALORE: Wipro, the country's third largest IT company, on Tuesday announced that it is acquiring Citi Technology Services (CTS) for $127 million (about Rs 600 crore) in an all cash deal. This is Wipro's 16th acquisition since 2002. All of these have been in the IT space, except one Unza in the consumer goods business. CTS, started in 2005, is Citi's India-based captive provider of IT services and solutions to the bank's entities in 32 countries. It has facilities in Mumbai and Chennai, with an employee strength of about 1,650. The company is expected to end this calendar year with a revenue of $80 mn, up from $53 mn in 2007. As part of the deal, Wipro will deliver IT services and solutions to Citi for a period of six years. This agreement, the companies said, will see the delivery of at least $500 mn in service revenues over the period of the contract. Wipro said the CTS acquisition will help in enhancing its remote infrastructure management capabilities and domain expertise. "The application development and maintenance services strengths will help us grow in investment and retail banking," said Girish Paranjpe, joint CEO of Wipro's IT business, at a media conference here. For Citi, the sale of CTS means an exit from all technology related services in India. In October this year, the troubled bank sold its Mumbai-based BPO business, Citigroup Global Services, to TCS for $505 million. Wipro's takeover of Citi Technology Services (CTS) comes at a time when the financial sector across the world has seen a literal meltdown. Girish Paranjpe, joint CEO of Wipro's IT business, said the markets are volatile now, but will give more visibility by mid next year. "In the last 12 to 18 months, the BFSI (banking, financial services and insurance) sector has been the worst hit and will be the first to recover. It will start to recover in 2009," he predicted. As with most other IT companies, Wipro gets the largest proportion of revenues (27%) from the BFSI sector, and this segment has been under severe pressure. Wipro said that apart from providing services to Citi, it will use CTS to look at newer opportunities. "This will add to our recent BPO deal win in Citi's institutional clients group (ICG)," said Soumitro Ghosh, senior VP for finance solutions in Wipro. Analysts say the deal has been reasonably priced and will help the company in its growth and expansion plans. "This is a good decision. Wipro has paid a reasonable amount. They have utilised their cash, which will positively affect their topline and bottomline. And in the expansion mode, this will help the company in vertical growth," said Nilesh Kotak, CEO of financial services firm Dhanvarshaindia.com. Harit Shah, IT and telecom analyst at Angel Broking, agrees the price is not too expensive as CTS is a profitable company. "Also, with the additional agreement Wipro has signed, they have an assured stream of revenue. The area of expertise of CTS -- managed services -- is a growing area and has scope for future opportunities," he said. Last year, Wipro had acquired IT infrastructure management company Infocrossing for almost $600 million, a deal that some thought was too expensive. But Shah said the CTS deal cannot be compared with the Infocrossing acquisition since they are in separate verticals and "are reasonable in their own domains both for value and growth opportunities."

Google cutting contractor workforce

Google is in the process of paring back a contractor workforce that numbers about 10,000, the company confirmed Monday. The news, though, isn't as fresh as it might appear at first blush. The contractor cut story made the rounds Monday after publication of a Silicon Valley WebGuild story with the alarming headline of "Google Layoffs - 10,000 Workers Affected." The 10,000 number and Google's efforts to reduce it, though, emerged in October in a San Jose Mercury News story, and it's not clear exactly how many will lose a job. In that article, Google co-founder Sergey Brin revealed the 10,000 number and said, "It's really high." According to the story, "He said Google began looking at the number six months ago and has a plan to significantly reduce that number through vendor management, converting some contractors to regular employees, and other approaches." Google spokeswoman Jane Penner didn't share too many details Monday, such as how many contractors are affected, whether contracts are being canceled or just not renewed, how many contractors Google will hire, and over what time frame the changes will take place. "We have 10,000, and we have had a plan in place for awhile to significantly reduce that number," she said. "This is something we've been thinking about for awhile--six or seven months. It predates the most acute phase of the (present economic) crisis." Google has been slowing hiring and reportedly had 20,123 of its own employees at the end of September. The company has been working to increase revenue from YouTube and other properties, and has shut down projects such as the Lively virtual world and SearchMash experimental search site, which "has gone the way of the dinosaur" according to the page. Layoffs are of course spreading across the world, including at direct Google competitors such as Yahoo, but Google gets more attention than most. For one thing, Google is a high-profile company with lavish benefits such as "20 percent time" in which engineers can work on projects of their own choosing. For another, the company has been relatively bullish about the extent to which its primary source of revenue, search advertising, is recession-proof.

Google's New SearchWiki Tool Lets Users Give Their Two Bits

Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) has released a new search editing tool that gives users more control over their results. SearchWiki enables users to customize their searches by re-ranking, deleting, adding and even commenting on their search results. Users will also be able to see how others have edited their searches; however, the edits will only apply to their personal searches. "It will enable the end-user by contributing to the Wiki and the community aggregation to give Google more input on how the relevancy of search engine results," Gene Alavarez, a Gartner (NYSE: IT) Research analyst, told TechNewsWorld. Alvarez likens the new tool to those ubiquitous product reviews and the "report this reviewer" feedback option. "Now in the wiki environment, if I take my search results and start to play around with it, they get to take a look at how the aggregate has done that. And I'm sure over time they will be able to garner patterns from that which will help strengthen the relevancy ranking of all of the search results returned," he said.

HP Authorized Service Centres and Service Partners

There are a lot of HP Service Centers in India , so here's a page with all the locations: http://216.198.210.216/(S(rqrbqi45swqmp245baq5ncfv))/HP/Service_Locator/service_search.aspx

ICICI Bank’s financial position - Press Release by K V Kamath

ICICI Bank’s financial position sound; rumours baseless and malicious: K. V. Kamath, Managing Director & CEO ICICI Bank Limited (NYSE: IBN) is aware that rumours are being repeatedly circulated in certain centres regarding the financial strength of the Bank. The Bank states that these rumours are baseless and malicious. As these rumours could create concern among the Bank’s customers, the Bank reiterates that: • ICICI Bank has a very strong capital position, having proactively raised Rs. 20,000 crore (about US$ 5 billion) in June 2007, almost doubling its capital base. It has a networth of over Rs. 47,000 crore (i.e. over US$ 10 billion) and a capital adequacy ratio of 13.4% at June 30, 2008, as against the regulatory requirement of 9.0%. This is among the highest levels of capital adequacy in large Indian banks. This reflects the healthy capital position and comfortable level of leverage. Its banking and non-banking subsidiaries are also well-capitalised. • ICICI Bank has consolidated total assets of over Rs. 484,000 crore (over US$ 105 billion), which is diversified across a wide range of asset classes in India and overseas. • ICICI Bank is profitable. It made a profit after tax of Rs. 4,158 crore (over US$ 900 million) in FY2008 and Rs. 728 crore (over US$ 155 million) in the first quarter of this year. This was due to the strong core performance, which more than offset the impact of adverse debt and equity market conditions in India and globally since the second half of FY2008. ICICI Bank’s wholly-owned subsidiary, ICICI Bank UK PLC has, as part of its normal treasury operations, a diversified investment portfolio. ICICI Bank UK PLC has zero exposure to US sub-prime credit, and zero non-performing loans. About 98% of its non-India investment book of US$ 3.5 billion is rated investment grade and above, with about 89% rated A- and above. In addition, ICICI Bank UK PLC holds cash equivalent instruments (inter-bank placements and certificates of deposit) of USD 1.1 billion. As on the last balance sheet date of June 30, 2008, ICICI Bank UK PLC had a capital adequacy ratio of 17.4%. • The absorption of the impact of current market conditions on investment portfolio valuation will not pose any challenge to ICICI Bank’s capital position.

ICICI Bank going bankrupt ??

A strong rumour that ICICI Bank has gone bankrupt sent several depositors rushing for ATMs to withdraw money late on sunday night . People thronged all possible ATMs as rumours of the popular bank going bankrupt got stronger as people gathered to withdraw their savings No one could pinpoint the origin of the rumour but sources said that a mention of the bank going bankrupt had appeared in a vernacular newspaper and that could have triggered the rumour. This needs to confirmed yet for ICICI bank officials

ICICI Bankrupt Latest News

The country’s largest private lender ICICI Bank, On Monday(29th Sept, 2008) said that 98 per cent of its UK arm’s non-India investment book is rated investment grade and above. The bank’s share on Monday fell to a two-year low on the domestic bourses even while other front-line lenders including HDFC Bank and the State Bank of India were trading over 30 per cent above their yearly lows.

icici bankrupt - icici bank news

The rumour that ICICI bank has gone bankrupt has been played around by some rumour mongers for quite some time since the collapse of two of the biggest American financial servies company. The truth is, investor sentiments all around are at their all time low since a long time. It's not only ICICI bank, but the entire economy that grappling with the uncertainties right now. After the stock price fell 12% on monday, it's likely icici bank gets beaten down today as well. what with US exchanges closing deeply in red on monday.

Murders in Chennai give rise to 'psychopath' story

One more person died under mysterious circumstances in Chennai on Thursday as Chennai police groped for clues regarding four similar deaths in the past two weeks amid a scare that a psychopath killer was on the prowl. The body of Basha (50), a security guard with a real estate firm, was found half-burnt with a few liquor bottles in the upmarket Ashok Nagar area near Vadapalani. The incident took place barely 500 metres away from Ashok Nagar police station. Four others including a rag-picker and a security guard, were found dead in similar fashion in the city. The deaths sparked off fears of a psychopath stalking the upmarket neighbourhood. Last week police claimed to have solved the mystery of the deaths with the arrest of one Ekambaram stated to be a mentally unstable person. However, two deaths have been reported after his arrest, taking the overall toll of mysterious deaths to five. So far, two persons were found dead with their heads smashed while the bodies of three others were found burnt while one was left injured. Chennai Police Commissioner R Sekar had termed the killings as "a challenge" to police, and vowed to "put an end to such mysterious deaths in the neighbourhood."

Blast in Bangalore

Bangalore city was struck with seven serial blasts around the busy junctions of the city. Two people are reportedly killed and twenty injured. The areas struck by the blasts are Madiwala, Kormangla, Adugudi, Nayandahalli, Mysore Road and Hosur Road. Crude bombs were used for the blasts and were triggered by timers. The blasts are reported to be of low intensity and fifteen have been injured and taken to local hospitals. Sequence of blasts: 1st blast - 1:20 - Madiwala Bus stop 2nd blast - 1:25 - Mysore Road 3rd blast - 1:40 - Adugudi 4th blast - 2:10 - Koramangla 5th blast - 2:25 - Vittal Mallya Road 6th blast - 2:35 - Langford Town The blasts are reported to have happened around 1:45pm. The blast at Adugudi is reported to have left a crater in the road. Hosur road is a busy road connecting the centre of the city to the suburbs. All the mobile phone networks have been jammed across the Bangalore city. All malls, schools etc have been shut down in the city. Police has requested everyone to maintain calm. The police has confirmed that the blasts look pre-planed. Following the blasts, all metros have been put on high alert

blasts in Bengaluru

One person was killed in seven blasts that rocked Bengaluru and its outskirts on Friday afternoon. While four low-intensity blasts went off at Nayandahalli, Madivala, Adugodi areas on the outskirts, blasts also rocked the tony areas of Mallya hospital, Langford Road and Richmond Circle in Bengaluru city. Two blasts were reported in Madivala. One woman was killed and several have been injured. The blasts took place at 1.30 pm in Nayandahalli, 1.50 pm in Madivala (2 blasts) and 2.10 pm in Adugodi. Gelatin sticks appear to have been used in the blasts.

Strong earthquake hits India's Andaman Islands today(27 jun, 2008)

The Indian Meteorological Department says a 6.7-magnitude earthquake has stuck the Andaman Islands off the east coast of India. The office said the undersea quake struck at 5:40 p.m. Friday. A police officer in Port Blair, the capital of the Andaman Islands, said the quake shook the islands causing panic among people. S. M. Tiwari said there were no reports immediate reports of damage of injuries and that no tsunami alert had been issued. The remote islands were among the many areas devastated by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

Strong winds, mudslides batter Northwest

Hurricane-force winds and heavy rain battered the Northwest for a second day Monday, killing at least two people and leaving entire communities dark and isolated as the storms blocked roads with trees, power lines, high water and mud. Dozens of people stranded by flood waters required rescue as the second of two storms blew through, and Oregon transportation officials warned drivers not to attempt passage through the Coast Range. "This storm is hitting the coast so hard, it's not leaving any road open," Transportation Department spokeswoman Christine Miles said.

Exclusive Screenshots: Spock’s New People Engine

It’s not often we hear about a startup’s venture financing before we see the product, but that is the case with yet-to-launch Spock, located in Silicon Valley. Rumors about their $7 million Series A round of financing from Clearstone Venture Partners and Opus Capital Ventures circulated last December, months before the beta service was planned to launch.

I met with founders Jaideep Singh (CEO) and Jay Bhatti (VP Product) last week to test the service, which they plan to beta launch next week.

People search is a space that went from nowhere to crowded, fast. Wink changed direction and launched a people search product last November. Also in this space is Streakr (yet to launch), ProfileLinker, LinkedIn, ZoomInfo and Upscoop.

Spock’s People Search Engine

Unlike the others (for the most part), Spock goes way beyond searching just social networks for people information. They are positioning themselves specifically against Google for web search and Amazon for product search, saying the third important type of search is information about people, and that 30% of Internet searches are people-related. Wink is Spock’s closest competitor among all of the ones listed above.

In my testing, Spock did a great job of finding information about different kinds of people - bloggers, celebrities, and even lesser known individuals with some web presence. See last screenshot below for an example search results page.

People Profiles and Metadata But part of where Spock really shines is what they do after the search is completed. They are slowly indexing the entire web , which is no small feat, but focusing on important hubs of people information like blogs, wikipedia, photo sites and, of course, social networks. Each person discovered by their search engine is run through a process of de-duping (for people with identical or similar names) and given a permanent profile page (see screenshot of former President Bill Clinton’s profile to right - click for larger view). Spock auto-creates tags for individuals based on the information they find. Prominent tags for Bill Clinton, for example, include “former U.S. President, “Great Leader,” “Womanizer,” “Left Handed,” “Democrat,” and “Saxophonist,” among others. Spock also auto detects other relevant meta data about the individual - age, location and sex.

Users can add new tags and vote on whether existing tags are relevant or correct. Also, individuals can claim their own profile (Spock runs your email through the social networks to see if it is attached to the right profile). Once claimed, that user has additional voting weight with his or her own tags and description. It will be interesting to see prominent individuals fighting the masses as they try to dominate their own identity, and lawsuits will inevitably surface as well.

People Relationships

Spock also finds relationships between people based on an analysis of information obtained in their web index, and based on user added data later on. When looking at a person’s profile, there will be links to others that Spock thinks are related.

Matt Mashall got a very early look at the product last year. See his notes here to see how it has changed since then.

Screenshots (click for larger view):

Viacom Snubs Google Again, Partners With Yahoo On Search Advertising

Viacom hasn’t been gentle with Google this year. In February they slammed Google/YouTube with a massive DMCA take down demand (and an equally massive press outreach). A month later they sued Google for a billion dollars. Between those two events they signed a content deal with Joost, a YouTube competitor in the professional content space. All of this seems to stem from the fact that Google promised Viacom a revenue share deal on YouTube, then failed to table a compelling offer.

Today Viacom snubs Google again, choosing to work with Yahoo on search advertising. There are few details of the deal, but it doesn’t appear that Yahoo is making any revenue guarantees, which are becoming standard in large search advertising deals. Google gave Fox certain guarantees in a $900 million deal announced last year, and Microsoft almost certainly guaranteed revenue to Facebook in order to get access to their search traffic.

In this case at least, YouTube appears to be a liability to Google, and Yahoo gets the benefit of being the next strongest player.

MySpace TrailerPark: Dedicated Movie Trailer Site

I got a chuckle this morning when I saw an email from MySpace that they were launching a new service called “TrailerPark” (I thought perhaps they were targeting an underserved demographic for membership expansion). But their new service has nothing to do with that. Instead, it’s a dedicated site for movie trailers. The service is run through MySpace Video.

Trailers can be found on various websites, but having an easy place to browse and embed them is great. Apple’s is actually one of the best - they include options to download to an iPod or in High Definition format. Other good sites for movie trailers include Yahoo Movies, IMDB, Movie List, iKlipz and the Movie Trailers Blog. YouTube also has many movie trailers, although there is no permanent category for them.

It would be good if MySpace also showed relevant data about the movie as well, such as release date, actors, etc. No word from them if they plan to do that in the future.

Hearst + Fox = YouTube Killer?

Last month Hearst announced their plans for 12 new online video channels to partner with their magazine websites. Now they are partnering with Fox Television Studios for their CosmoGirl and Popular Mechanics video channels, according to MediaPost.

The current plans entail short (<3>Time Magazine, which recently started its own in house online video production.

Is it a YouTube killer? Far from it. While the webisodes will feature a little bit of user-generated content (visitors can contribute plot ideas), Hearst’s proposal is more analogous to television than YouTube—passive entertainment rather than a community of users sharing funny, personal clips.

I find it particularly interesting that Hearst chose to partner with Fox. Their first announcement said they’d be using Maven Networks‘ Internet TV Platform for their video players. Among Maven’s other clients? Fox. Hm…

Google Desktop Leaves Beta, Adds Quick Search

Google has announced the graduation of Google Desktop from “beta”. With the change comes a new feature called “Quick Search“.

As Tomas Gunnarsson, Google Desktop Software Engineer, describes it…

Three months ago, I came up with an idea that makes it easier for users to find what they’re looking for: a search box in the middle of the desktop. It’s very accessible — all you have to do is press your Ctrl key twice.

Things you didn’t know about Google

1. The name Google is a spelling error. The founders of the site, Larry page and Sergey Brin, thought they were going for 'Googol.' Googol is the mathematical term for 1 followed by 100 zeros. The term was coined by Milton Sirotta, nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner, and was popularized in the book, Mathematics and the Imagination by Kasner and James Newman. Google's play on the term reflects the company's mission to organize the immense amount of information available on the web. Initially, Larry and Sergey Brin called their search engine BackRub, named for its analysis of the of the web's "back links." The search for a new name began in 1997, with Larry and his officemates starting a hunt for a number of possible new names for the rapidly improving search technology.

2.The reason the google page is so bare is because the founder didn’t know HTML and just wanted a quick interface. Due to the sparseness of the homepage, in early user tests they noted people just kept sitting staring at the screen, waiting for the rest to appear. To solve the particular problem the Google Copyright message was inserted to act as an end of page marker.

3.Google started as a research project by Larry page and Sergey Brin when they were 24 and 23 years respectively. Google's mission statement is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. The company’s first office was in a garage, in Menlo Park, California. Google’s first employee was Craig Silverstein, now Google's director of technology. The basis of Google's search technology is called PageRank that assigns an "importance" value to each page on the web and gives it a rank to determine how useful it is. However, that is not why it is called PageRank. It is actually named after Google co-founder Larry Page.

4.Google receives about 20 million search queries each day from every part of the world, including Antarctica and Vatican.You can have the Google homepage set up in as many as 116 different languages -- including Urdu, Latin, Cambodia, Tonga, and Yoruba. In fact, Google has the largest network of translators in the world.

5.The Google’s free web mail service Gmail was used internally for nearly two years prior to launch to the public. The researchers found out six types of email users, and Gmail has been designed to accommodate these six. The free e-mail service recently changed its name for new UK users. Following a trademark dispute with a London-based Independent International Investment Research, the mail account has been renamed Google Mail.

6.It would take 5,707 years for a person to search Google's 3 billion pages. The Google software does it in 0.5 seconds. Google Groups comprises more than 845 million Usenet messages, which is the world's largest collection of messages or the equivalent of more than a terabyte of human conversation.

7.The logos that appear on the Google homepage during noteworthy days and dates and important events are called Google Doodle. The company has also created an online museum where it has all the logos it has put on various occasions so far. Dennis Hwang, a Korean computer artist in the United States, is the guy behind these witty Doodles. Hwang has been drawing the face of Google for over two years.

8.You have heard of Google Earth, but not many know there is a site called Google Moon, which maps the Lunar surface. Google Moon is an extension of Google Maps and Google Earth that, courtesy of NASA imagery, enables you to surf the Moon’s surface and check out the exact spots that the Apollo astronauts made their landings