President Kalam chosen for King Charles II Medal: Kalam is only the second head of State after Japanese Emperor Akihito to be honoured with the award given by the Royal Society.

India to be hub of KPO industry: India will be the future hub of KPO sector and competitors – China, Philippines, Russia – will be spokes of the, according to a report, ‘India’s Knowledge Process Outsourcing Sector: Origin, Current State, and Future Direction’. In India, KPOs employed 75,400 generating $3.05 billion in 2006-07.

INDIA’S UPSURGE: The number of Indian companies that made it into the BW 50 doubled from 2005. Bharti Airtel at No. 13 is the India’s largest mobile operator with nearly 26 million subscribers, or about 22% of the market, and is adding new ones at the rate of 1 million a month; it will spend $2 billion on network expansions and marketing to reach underserved markets in rural areas. Even the 2006 BW Asian 150 Scoreboard shows that.

Asia’s Most Admired Companies: This year’s winners include Toyota, Lenovo, and Infosys- have been pushing to build their businesses globally. Wipro is also a class in itself.
IOC, RIL advance in Fortune 500: Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) and Reliance Industries (RIL) advanced to the 135th (by 18 places) and 269th (by 75 places) places, respectively, in this year’s Fortune Global 500 rankings.

India added six million Internet users last year: India had 30 million internet users in April, six million more than it had a year ago, according to a survey released on Friday, and 20 million of these users are on the Net daily.

Idea Cellular awards Rs 250 cr contract to IBM: Idea Cellular, the Aditya Birla group company, has awarded a Rs 205-250 crore ($50-55 million) contract to International Business Machines (IBM) to deploy and maintain an interactive voice response (IVR) system for the GSM service provider.

Lucent bags $400 mn RCom network deal: Reliance Communications has awarded a $400 million (Rs 1,600 crore) network expansion contract to global service provider Alcatel-Lucent for expansion of its wireless network to over 20,000 towns and 600,000 villages in the country. Reliance Communications has also awarded $200 million (Rs 800 crore) network expansion contract to Chinese equipment vendor Huawei Technologies.

Aero bridge: Indian civil engineering skills have own a place with GMR having won a bid as part of a three-way consortium to build Istanbul’s new Sabiha Gokcen International airport.

India important for Boeing: Boeing has bagged orders for 68 aircraft from Air India worth over USD 11 billion at list prices. Boeing will invest USD 1.7 billion to buy goods and services from Indian companies and has already agreed to create a Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) facility in Nagpur, besides set up a pilot training programme by funding some existing flying schools.

IT Sector Growth: In fiscal 2007, the ITES-BPO segment grew by 33.5%, contributing $8.4 billion to the total software and services exports of $31.4 billion from across finance and accounting, customer interaction services and human resources administration. The employee base in the segment grew to 550,000 in fiscal 2007 from from 410,000 the previous year.

Indian sugar exports seen doubling: Indian exports of raw sugar could more than double to over 3 million tonnes in 2007-08.

Samsung plans to make India an export hub: India is emerging as a major alternative export hub for Samsung Electronics, South Korea’s largest electronics manufacturer, for colour TVs, home appliances and mobile handsets.

India second in global M&A deals ranking: According to a report compiled by global consultancy firm Dealogic, Australia tops the Asia-Pacific cross-border outflow with over 125 deals worth $30 billion, followed by India with a total of 74 foreign acquisitions in the current year so far.

TVS to roll out bikes from Indonesia plant: Two-wheeler major TVS Motor Company would roll out its bikes from Indonesia plant this month eyeing a first year sales of up to 90,000 units in that market amidst plans to spread its wings in the South East Asian region.

BPOs enter tier-III cities: More and more domestic companies are setting up business process outsourcing (BPO) units in district headquarters, tier-III cities and non-IT clusters to save on real estate costs and stem attrition rates.

2 NRIs among top 100 who wield most power in UK media sector: Two Non-Resident Indians, Arun Sarin, Vodafone chief executive, and Zarin Patel, group finance director of BBC, are among the top 100 people who wield most power in the British media industry.

Bihar to help Indo-Mauritians trace ancestral roots: State Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s government would collaborate with Mauritius to prepare a comprehensive database of all Biharis who had migrated to the Indian Ocean country in an effort to help them track their roots.

India Inc sits on cash pile of Rs 3.5 lakh cr: India Inc (excluding financial services companies) is sitting on a cash mountain of Rs 3,50,000 crore, nearly three times higher than Rs 1,25,000 crore at the end of March 2006. In 2006-07, industry has declared a total dividend of Rs 40,000 crore and declarations are still coming in. In 2005-06, the dividend payout was Rs 42,300 crore.

Srei to e-link Bengal villages: SREI Infrastructure Finance Limited plans to introduce e-commerce exchange portal by 2008 under its ‘Sahaj e-Village’ programme, in an attempt to create close to 100,000 jobs for people living in rural areas with an initial investment of Rs 100 crore with a typical breakeven time of two and a half years. Srei also plans to roll out its online job portal by October this year for villagers to submit applications and resume.. Each of the kiosks or common service centres (CSCs) would be owned and managed by a village level entrepreneur (VLE).

More than 750 screens have gone digital in India with the advantages of total elimination of print costs and hence, widespread release of all movies at no extra cost, protection of the content end to end against all forms of piracy by means of a 192-bit encryption technology, good quality at every run of the movie to name just a handful.

India’s largest nuclear power station in Orissa: The Nuclear Power Corp of India (NPCIL) is planning to set up the country’s largest nuclear power station in Orissa. It has submitted a proposal to the state government for a 6000mw station with an investment of Rs 36,000 crore.

BSNL slashes intl roaming rates for global visitors: State-run BSNL has reduced international roaming tariff for foreigners using its network in the country by up to 40 per cent, a relief for tourists who often complain of high telephone charges while on move in India.

A British Acquisition: A British company Sauer-Danfoss has been purchased by the Bangalore-based Dynamatic Technologies Ltd. Dynamatic Technologies Ltd manufactures highly engineered products in the automotive and defence sectors as well as the agricultural and construction equipment industries.

Tirupur-based group takes over European company: Tirupur-based Mehala Group has taken over Sanmarco, a well known group of companies from Europe, manufacturing textile machinery, situated in Sulur.

Indians prefer buying cars: Domestic passenger car sales in June grew by 16.36 per cent at 94,002 units as against 80,784 units in the same month a year ago. According to figures released by Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM), domestic motorcycle sales during the month were at 4,37,776 units as against 5,28,499 units in June 2006, down by 17.17 per cent.

Flowserve Corp. opens R&D facility in B’lore: Flowserve Corporation, a global provider of fluid motion and control products and services, has opened a new research and development facility in Bangalore.

All villages to have telephones by Nov: Telephone connectivity is likely to be provided to all the 66,822 villages by November under the Bharat Nirman programme-two years ahead of schedule. The final goal is to create five crore rural connections by 2007 and increase this to eight crore connections by 2010 and provide broadband connections in every village by 2012. On the performance of rural roads, the Prime Minister was informed that around 40,000 km of new link roads have been built and 50,000 km of existing rural roads upgraded in the first two years (2005-07) of Bharat Nirman. Besides, 66,802 villages have got all weather roads and 13,831 other villages have been provided connectivity.

Oxford prof documents India’s math contribution: A BBC crew, led by an Oxford professor, was in the country last week to film a documentary revealing Indians created some of the most fundamental mathematical theories. In The Story of Maths, Dr Marcus Du Sautoy, a professor of mathematics at the University of Oxford, claims Indians made many of these breakthroughs before Newton was born. The Story of Maths, a four-part series, will be screened on BBC Four in 2008.