India’s voracious appetite for gold — the biggest in the world — is threatening the health of its foreign trade balance, trade association Assocham said in a new report. It noted that India imported a whopping 33.8 billion dollars worth of gold last year in...
BUSINESS
Ahead of the budget, CSE raises alarm on ‘dieselization’ of Indian cars
Weeks after Environment minister Jairam Ramesh called for abolition of subsidy to gas-guzzling diesel cars, Sunita Narain’s Centre of Science & Environment has urged the government to introduce new taxes on diesel cars in the upcoming budget. India has low taxes on diesel to keep...
After October lull, hiring returned to full form in November: Naukri
Hiring numbers in India bounced back to their ‘regular’ levels after setting off alarm bells with a steep dip in October, according to the Job Speak Index by Naukri.com. Hiring numbers had fallen more than expected in October as the usual festive lull in hiring...
Al Jazeera targets Indian market with Dish TV tie-up
Al Jazeera targets Indian market with Dish TV tie-up Al Jazeera, the news channel known as the voice of Middle East, has entered the Indian market through a tie-up with one of India’s biggest DTH platforms, Dish TV. The company had earlier announced its intention...
Kingfisher beats Spice, Go Air to become highest occupied airline in January
The number of domestic air travelers dipped 5.3% in January to 49.4 lakhs, primarily due to the absence of festival and holiday travel witnessed in December 2010. However, Vijay Mallya’s Kingfisher Airlines was the only domestic airline that did not see a decline in its...
More Tablets on Indian Table this year
Indians would end up buying five times as many media tablets this year as they did during the last, consultant and research firm Frost & Sullivan said. According to the firm, which conducts regular market surveys on products, Indians bought around 60,000 tablets in 2010....
Enterprise security market to grow 8.7% in 2012: Canalys
Worldwide spending on enterprise security software and services will grow 8.7% in 2012, technology market research firm Canalys said. The total enterprise market will be $22.9 billion in 2012, even smaller vendors such as Kaspersky Lab, Panda Security, F-Secure, ESET and AVG make gains in...
Nasscom expresses disappointment over re-emergence of outsourcing politics
Nasscom, India’s national association of IT and BPO companies, has expressed worry over what it sees efforts to tap anti-outsourcing sentiment ahead of the US Presidential election next year. Nasscom’s comments came in the context of a bill in the US House of Representatives that...
Internet now has 220 million domain names (website addresses)
The Internet now has 220 million (22 crore) domain names (web site addresses), according to the latest ‘Domain Name Industry Brief’ published by VeriSign, an online authentication and Internet services provider. That is about one domain for every 32 individuals on this planet, or about...
GDP growth slowed in second half : Economic Review 2011
The government released the Review of the Economy 2010-11 that predicted a slower economic growth in the second half of the current year. Against 8.9% in the first half, it predicts full year growth to be around 8.6%, indicating a 8.3% growth during the second...
CSE takes government to task over draft emission and efficiency norms for cars
The Centre for Science and Environment or CSE, the most vocal of India’s homegrown environmental organizations, has punched holes in a government move to set fuel efficiency and emission norms for cars. It accused the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE), the Government body that came...
Hiring dips to a year-low in October: Naukri
Thanks to the combined effect of the festival season and overall caution about India’s slowing economic growth, hiring dipped to a year-low in October this year. According to the Job Speak Index compiled by India’s largest recruitment site Naukri.com, recruitment activity levels were at 921...
IAN invites applications for funding from mobile and Internet start-ups
India’s largest and oldest angel investor group, Indian Angel Network (IAN), has announced a program to fund 24 start ups in the mobile and Internet space with up to Rs 75 lakhs each. An ‘angel’ network is one that typically comes in even before the...
US e-commerce continued to growth through the third quarter: comScore
Americans continued to buy more online during the September quarter despite the economic uncertainty and high unemployment rate, latest data from digital tracking agency comScore suggested. Total spending by American consumers online was $36.3 billion, up a healthy 13% compared to the same quarter of...
FDI in Indian retail a bad idea, UNI Global Union
One of the world’s biggest trade unions, the Switzerland-based UNI Global Union has called the Indian government’s decision to allow foreign retail majors into the country a ‘sell out’. The Union, which has around 20 million (2 crore) members, said it is ‘appalled’ by the...
Nirodh maker to launch new ‘bead-based’ contraceptive
HLL Lifecare, India’s largest contraceptive maker and the firm behind Nirodh, Moods and Mala D, has launched a new product based only on the female reproductive cycle. Called CycleBeads, the product is comprised simply of a string of coloured beads. As the beads are moved...
China emerging as India’s biggest trade partner
China may emerge as India’s largest trading partner this year, going by a 20% jump in trade numbers in the first eight months. India’s northern neighbour was in the second place according to the numbers for the year-ended March 2011 — the latest full year...
Finally, DTH operators taking the lead in offering IPTV-like services in India
After a string of failures to successfully launch IPTV and true video-on-demand services by telecom players, it seems to be the DTH operators who are taking the lead in India. Tata Sky, one of India’s biggest DTH operators, announced it had launched a true video-on-demand...
BP could invest a total of $20 billion in all in India Reliance deal
Reliance Industries Limited and BP announced BP taking a 30% stake in 23 oil and gas production sharing contracts that Reliance operates in India, including the producing KG D6 block, and the formation of a 50:50 joint venture between the two companies for the sourcing...
Wikileaks traces changes in Indo-Bangladesh relationship after Sheikh Hasina’s entry
Bangladesh’s attitude towards terrorists underwent a sea-change after the Mumbai attacks, according to the evidences of the US diplomatic cables leaked by Wikileaks. While India had to bear with a poisonous neighbour from where terrorists could walk into India almost at will for several years,...