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AUGUST 2004 |
IN THIS ISSUE
MAIN FEATURE The Arsenic Threat : A New Solution By Dr. Rashbihari Ghosh TECHNOLOGY Stealing the Thunder : Top-speed Supercomputer A Siliconeer Report E-BUSINESS Return of the Dotcom Bubble? : Internet Frenzy in India By Siddharth Srivastava Publisher’s Note • Infotech India • HEALTH: Body Mass Index Funds for BPO Leader • India, California Ties • Happy Birthday, India Internet Cash Register • An American in Bangalore • Poetry in Motion: Abhinaya Chanchal in Bay Area • Bollywood Showcase • Britney Does Bollywood? Community News in Brief • Auto Review: 2004 Mercedes E500 Wagon Bollywood • Tamil Cinema • Recipe: Desi Veggie Chowmein • Horoscope |
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Publisher's Note
Like a huge sword of Damocles, the threat of arsenic looms large on the lives of millions of people in West Bengal and Bangladesh. While much has been written about the plight of the poor village folk who are condemned by arsenic-contaminated water, satisfactory remedial measures have been elusive. Dr. Sibdas Bandopadhyay, a researcher at Kolkata’s Central Glass and Ceramic Research Institute, has developed an exciting new technology that not only works, but it has been implemented in several pilot projects in West Bengal. The technology uses a special ceramic membrane through which arsenic contaminated water is passed, and the resulting water meets stringent World Health Organization standards in terms of arsenic and iron content. Bandopadhyay recently attended a seminar in Berkeley, Calif., hosted by the International Institute of Bengal Basin, a California-based NGO run by former Cal EPA environmental scientist Dr. Rashbihari Ghosh. Ghosh is providing assistance in getting this new technology approval from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. IIBB hopes to work with Bandopadhyay and implement this technology as widely as possible to bring succor to millions of people who are struggling with contaminated water. The cover story of this month’s issue presents an overview of the technology by Dr. Ghosh. MAIN FEATURE  The Arsenic Threat:A New Solution Dr. Rashbihari Ghosh Over 220 million people live in the greater Bengal Basin— West Bengal and Bangladesh. Arsenic contamination in groundwater beyond the permissible limit of WHO (0.01 ppm) poses a serious public health problem in 9 (out of 17) districts of West Bengal, India and 59 (out of 64) districts of Bangladesh. Dr. Sibdas Bandopadhyay and his associates at the Central Glass and Ceramic Research Institute in Kolkata have developed a technology package that achieves a purification level as per WHO recommended limits for arsenic (<0.01 ppm) and iron (<0.3 ppm) in drinking water which can not be achieved by the currently available techniques for arsenic removal, writes Dr. Rashbihari Ghosh. Over 220 million people live in the greater Bengal Basin, which is divided into two geographic areas and two political entities—West Bengal and Bangladesh. Residents in both parts of the Bengal Basin suffer the poisonous consequences of toxin-contaminated drinking water. It is reported that about 100 million people in India along the river Ganga are also exposed to arsenic poisoning and many more are also suffering from other toxic poisoning throughout the Indo Bangla subcontinent. The Bengal Basin lies in a part of India and covers a substantial portion of Bangladesh. It is endowed with unique geographical features and a challenging terrain. It has one of the world’s largest alluvial deltaic plains, allowing the flow of three big rivers - the Ganga, the Brahmaputra, and the Meghna. In 1993, studies detected the first patient suffering from arsenic-contaminated groundwater. The Bangladesh government began to face a very difficult and serious water problem. Arsenic is a known carcinogen and is highly toxic. It has gradually affected people in the Bengal Basin. Triggered by the installation of tube wells without careful scientific investigation, arsenic dissolved into the drinking water. People did not realize that arsenic was present in the drinking water since it is colorless, tasteless and odorless. Moreover, people didn’t even know what arsenic was, and could not recognize the outward manifestation of its poisoning. Now this disaster is widespread in the Bengal Basin. About one-third of the population of the Bengal Basin suffers from various diseases, such as warts, skin lesions, and cancers, a substantial part of it caused by arsenic poisoning. This serious water problem can be attributed to the combination of ineffective water resource management, industrialization and the rapid increase of population Arsenic contamination in groundwater beyond the permissible limit of WHO (0.01 ppm) has posed a serious public health problem in 9 (out of 17) districts of West Bengal, India and 59 (out of 64) districts of Bangladesh. Chemical treatment has a few constraints: the dosage of chemicals needs to be controlled, ineffective mixing and/or separation of fine particles using sand filter can give unsatisfactory results. The adsorption technique can be constrained by iron content in groundwater forming a coating of iron particles over the adsorbent and minimal contact time for adsorption during the flow of raw water. Dr. Sibdas Bandopadhyay and his associates at the Central Glass and Ceramic Research Institute in Kolkata have developed a technology package with the following basic components: A. Porous ceramic membrane elements in multi-channel tubular configuration. B. Adsorbent media in colloidal form. In the CGCRI technology, contaminated (arsenic and iron) groundwater is pumped to a tank containing the adsorbent media in colloidal form. The raw water is allowed to come in contact with the suspended media for a pre-determined time depending on the concentration of arsenic and iron in the raw water. The contaminated water along with the colloidal media is then re-circulated through tubular ceramic membrane tube under pressure for separation of the media particles in the retentate stream and production of safe drinking water as the permeate. The efficiency of removal is higher due to intimate contact of arsenic with colloidal adsorbent media followed by complete separation of fine particulates of iron and media by ceramic membrane in a cross-flow filtration mode. The process has been patented.
Pilot Projects “In practice, this experiment has succeeded beyond expectation,” a CGCRI report says. “Such an extraordinary success has been possible primarily because the quality of the purified water is far superior than that available from other sources and all the users have experienced a healing effect not only to their arsenic related ailments but also to different kinds of stomach disorder arising from iron contamination.” After field studies, four treatment plants, each with a capacity of 2,500 liters per day, have been designed, fabricated, installed and commissioned at four different locations of North 24 Parganas District of West Bengal for community use. All continue to function without fail with total community acceptance, CGCRI reports. I welcome any suggestions, questions from interested readers. Dr. Rashbihari Ghosh can be reached by email at Bengal_basin@hotmail.com. Interested readers can find out more about IIBB at its Web site at: www.nvo.com/ghosh_research/ - Dr. Rashbihari Ghosh, an environmental scientist formerly with the California Environment Protection Agency, is the founder chairman of the non-profit International Institute for Bengal Basin. |TOP|
INFOTECH INDIA  China Catching Up ... Wipro Profits Up ... Disabled Can Boost IT ... IT Dealers Strike ... Infosys, IDBI Tie-up ... Kalam Against Human Cloning ... Cyber Police Station Soon ... World Tech Award ... Nuclear Power ... Jaguar Accidents — Here is the latest on information technology from India China Catching Up China is only 3-5 years behind India in software development, steadily closing the gap on the strength of better technology and learning from its competitor’s mistakes, says a California-based IT industry expert. China has also made great progress in teaching English to its citizens — an effort that has been increasingly strengthening its challenge to India’s dominance in computer software development and IT services industry, says Dale L. Fuller, president and chief executive of California-based Borland Software, in an interview to Executive Magazine. Fuller compares India and China in terms of their inexhaustible human resources, costs, their IT and IT-enabled services industries, their telecom infrastructure, and the pace of development in these areas. China wins hands down over India in its abilities to attract state-of-the-art technology, to learn quickly from its competitors’ mistakes and to provide infrastructure and train workers for the IT and IT-enabled services. China also has lower costs than India’s, but that advantage is increasingly waning because of the two countries’ inexhaustible human resources, says Fuller. India wins over China in terms of a huge English-speaking workforce that has created a formidable Western-style IT and IT-enabled services industry, but China is catching up so fast that it is now only 3-5 years away. “China has said that every Chinese will be speaking English within 20 years; they have made big strides,” he says. The Bangalore-based Wipro had reported a net profit of Rs.206.1 crore and revenues of Rs.1,198 crore during April to June 2003. “Consistent with our performance in recent quarters, every single vertical, every single geography and key service lines witnessed robust revenue growth,” Wipro chairman Azim Premji told reporters. “While it is too early to claim return to a period of price increases, pricing pressures are clearly on the wane,” he said. Wipro also said its thrust on offering high-end work with mixed projects is helping it to realize higher prices with new customers, even as existing clients are reluctant to increase rates during renegotiation. “We are signing new customers at higher rates,” Wipro Vice Chairman Vivek Paul said after the Bangalore-based IT major posted strong first quarter results, driven by higher volumes and better price realization. The NYSE-listed Wipro, he said, had not been able to renegotiate better prices from existing clients, but had seen a surge in business in volume terms. Paul, president of Wipro Technologies, the global IT services division of Wipro, said, the firm registered a double-digit growth from 27 of the existing top 50 clients during the first quarter. “On new accounts, we have been able to realize better prices on three fronts. One, our blended offering of an end-to-end services, the second, more high-end work like chip design and package implementation and third, higher realization from our fixed price projects, through better productivity by improving our processes,” Paul said. Wipro added 35 new customers including 23 from the U.S. The list comprised 13 customers for R&D services, 19 customers in enterprise services and three for Spectramind. “As the IT spending environment stabilizes, customers are increasingly demanding integrated services backed by high quality service delivery. Our early identification of this trend and proactive investments have resulted in record revenue for us,” Wipro chairman Azim Premji said in a statement here. “We in the IT industry should be able to employ more disabled people because it does not involve physical labor as in other industries,” Rao told a consultation on “IT and Social Change” organized by Voices, an NGO in Bangalore. He said he would moot discussions with IT firms and banks to provide services tailored to disabled people, targeting them as profitable customers. Rao said banks could launch a virtual banking service targeted at the visually challenged people and if “they get one million customers, it is good for their business.” Rao, who is also chairman of Mphasis, a software and BPO firm, said his company employs about six visually challenged people who write programs and test software and intends to add more people in the future. “The IT industry can address the high attrition problem with them. There will not only be lower attrition by employing disabled people, you also have increased productivity,” he said. India, Rao said, has about six to 10 percent of its population who are disabled and “if they are employed, we will be able to add so many people into the labor pool, our wage rates would drop and the productivity of the nation can be increased by 6 to 10 percent.” The dealers under the Forum of Association for Information Technology has termed “retrograde and directionless” the budget proposal to increase the taxes to 13.8 percent from the existing 5.75 percent. “The current budget is set to reverse the trend and block the growth of IT in Karnataka,” AIT secretary R. Sridhar said in a statement in Bangalore. The ruling Congress-JD(S) coalition presented its first budget early this week with a “pro-poor and pro-farmer” focus and taxing the “well off.” “When the entire country is getting to move into the VAT regime and tax rates for IT products in the neighboring states are at four percent, this move by the government is retrograde and directionless,” he said. The association is submitting a memorandum to Chief Minister Dharam Singh and Siddaramaiah, who holds the finance portfolio to roll back the tax hikes, and threatened to hold a protest march and go on a indefinite strike if their demands are not met. “The government appears to be very myopic in its vision and is using the budget as a political tool instead of a fiscal exercise,” it said. Finacle will be deployed across 101 locations by March 2005 and will power IDBI’s transformation from a development finance institution into a commercial banking entity, a company statement said July 21. “I don’t want my country to allow cloning of humans,” he said July 23 as he interacted, via satellite, with students of Nasik, Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Belgaum after inaugurating a conference on EDUSAT, an exclusive satellite for educational services in Bangalore. But he said cloning should be allowed with regard to various systems of the body like eye and liver. The president expressed serious concern over peers and parents dissuading students from taking to pure sciences and encouraging them to opt for professional courses, citing employment prospects. He termed pressure from peers and parents in this context as “victimization of science.” Emphasizing that science needs to be grown and “is basic need for any achievement,” Kalam spoke about its role in discoveries and inventions. “Science should be given its due place,” he stressed. Addressing a meet-the-press here, Tharakan said the radar system to check road accidents caused by overspeeding would be introduced in the state shortly. A total of 57 police stations in the state would be modernized and the duty time for police personnel in them would be limited to eight hours. He said 5,000 police personnel would be imparted special training in traffic rules and management at the police training college. They would undergo three-day course in batches of 100. Tharakan said the crime rate in the state had come down by 2003 when compared to the period from 1999 to 2003. He said no lenience would be shown towards the culprits involved in the violence at the KPCC executive meeting venue two months back. Winners would be announced Oct. 8 at the World Technology Awards ceremony at San Francisco City Hall at the conclusion of the two-day world technology summit. The WTN honors individuals and corporations from 20 technology-related sectors viewed by their peers as being the most innovative and doing the work of the greatest likely long-term significance. Balagurusamy, on hearing the news, said that he is delighted to have been nominated for the education category of the 2004 world technology awards — recognition from one’s peers means so much more than other kinds of honors. Nominees for the 2004 awards were identified based on an intensive global process in which current WN members made their nominations based who they think is doing the innovative work of the greatest likely long term significance within the particular field. After a study carried out in 1999 on the long-term cost-effectiveness of nuclear energy was updated in 2004, the government had given green signal to the projects costing Rs.29,500 crore, Rajya Sabha members Vijay Mallya and Rajeev Shukla said in a written reply. The study also evaluated the cost of electricity production through nuclear power compared to thermal power. It suggested that electricity produced from nuclear power at distances of about 800 km from the coal pitheads is a long-term cost-effective option, they said. During 2003-04, the electricity generated from nuclear power was 17,861 million units which is about 3.2 percent of the electricity generated by the utilities in the country, they added. Replying to a question, Defense Minister Pranab Mukherjee ruled out increasing age or the absence of timely technical assistance and advice by the French company to the Air Force regarding its maintenance being some of the reasons behind such accidents. Jaguars were inducted into Indian Air Force after stringent flight evaluation, he said adding the aircraft has a proven track record and is in front line service with many air forces of the world.
TECHNOLOGY
 Stealing the Thunder: Top-speed Supercomputer - A Siliconeer Report California Digital, founded by C.J. Arun, has deployed Thunder, the most powerful Linux supercomputer ever built. At 19.94 teraflops of sustained performance it’s the most powerful computer in North America and worldwide, second only to the Earth Simulatorin Yokohama, Japan. A Siliconeer report. A plucky Indian American-owned company has walked into the domain of big—read big as in billions of dollars—and come up with the America’s fastest supercomputer. “Thunder,” a 4,096 Itanium(R) 2 processor-based Linux cluster, at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, was adjudged North America’s fastest supercomputer by the Top 500 project, which keeps tabs in the world of supercomputing. In fact, it is second only to NEC’s Earth Simulator in Japan. “We’re proud to have successfully delivered such a ground-breaking Linux cluster with world-record performance and efficiency,” reported California Digital CEO B.J. Arun. “Thunder sets important benchmarks for massively-parallel Linux computing.” What is remarkable about all this is that supercomputing has traditionally been the domain of huge scientific establishments with deep pockets, typically affluent Western nations. California Digital has changed the ball game by using “clusters,” a method of using off-the-shelf servers and hooking them up, thus making supercomputing considerably more affordable and accessible. Japan’s Earth Simulator, for instance, cost $350 million. Thunder, on the other hand, cost $20 million. Supercomputing costs have consequently come down by a factor of 10, California Digital estimates. The Thunder cluster delivers 19.94 teraflops of sustained performance. A teraflop is a trillion floating-point operations per second. Thunder has the largest Itanium 2 processor deployment, as well as the largest implementation of Quadrics’ low-latency QsNet(II) interconnect technology. These technologies allow Thunder to achieve record cluster efficiency of 86.9 percent, an important metric in measuring cluster scalability.
While NEC’s Earth Simulator in Japan is No. 1 on the prestigious Top 500 list released by the University of Mannheim, the University of Tennessee and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory,. Thunder was second, and Hewlett-Packard’s ASCI Q supercomputer in Los Alamos National Laboratory came in third, followed by IBM’s Blue Gene DD1 at the company’s Thomas Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y. The TOP500 project was started in 1993 to provide a reliable basis for tracking and detecting trends in high-performance computing. Twice a year, a list of the sites operating the 500 most powerful computer systems is assembled and released. Despite the technical sophistication of Thunder and the incorporation of new technologies, California Digital deployed Thunder in five months, speeding delivery of computing solutions to support Lawrence Livermore’s national security and science programs in fields such as materials science, structural mechanics, electromagnetics, atmospheric science, seismology, biology, and inertial confinement fusion. “Thunder represents the next generation of Linux cluster for scientific simulation,” remarked Mark Seager, Livermore’s assistant department head for advanced technology. Thunder uses a number of innovative open-source software tools developed by California Digital and Lawrence Livermore to manage the cluster effectively. The cluster paradigm—independent machines connected with a high-speed network—has been around for more than 15 years, according to Dave Turek, leader of IBM’s “Deep Computing” team. “What’s changed in recent years is that they can be assembled using Linux, Intel or AMD processors and conventional networks instead of exotic, rare or customized technology,” Turek told CNet News. The supercomputing feat has attracted admiring press reports. “Thunder, a supercomputer recently installed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, is possibly the second-most powerful computing machine on the planet—and it was built by a company with about as many employees as a real estate office,” CNet News reporter Michael Kanellos wrote. California Digital was founded in 1994 and initially specialized in relatively generic Intel servers. In June 2001, it bought the hardware unit of VA Linux and refocused itself on the high-performance computing market. The Thunder project came along after Lawrence Livermore researchers were impressed with manageability tools California Digital released to the open-source community. By chance, the company had just completed an Itanium 2 project for a large corporate client — “one of the biggest corporations in the world,” according to California Digital — that required California Digital to build a cluster that could run 21 different applications, an unusually large amount. |TOP| HEALTH  Body Mass IndexAsk Your Doctor – By Deborah Gould, MD. Body Mass Index may be the most important measurement you can ask your pediatrician to do, because obesity is now one of the top 10 health issues for kids, writes Deborah Gould, MD. BMI can save your child’s life. But do you know what BMI is? Do you know your child’s BMI? BMI stands for Body Mass Index, a quick measurement to determine if an individual is overweight by assessing the relationship between weight and height. It may be the most important measurement you can ask your pediatrician to do. Why? Because obesity is now recognized to be one of the top 10 health issues for children in the United States – 15 percent of all American children between the ages of 6-19 are now considered overweight or obese. Consider this: an obese teenager has almost an 80 percent chance that he/she will stay obese as a grown-up. Why does this matter? It matters because we know that being overweight is linked to diabetes, high blood pressure, fatty liver, joint problems, and sleep apnea—all chronic conditions that can seriously decrease the quality of life. Perhaps most painful of all for a youngster is the deep psychological pain and the self-esteem issues that are created by being “fat.” BMI is often a family issue. Not long ago I saw an overweight 11-year-old boy in my office whose father is very obese. Sadly, the boy said the only time he feels good is when he’s eating. I finally got the family to talk about food as their great common comfort. What they weren’t talking about was the boy’s self-esteem. What can you do?
Choosing a healthier lifestyle is a decision anyone can make. I see my patients and their families taking positive steps toward healthier lives with every visit. I encourage you to check Kaiser Permanente’s website for more information on obesity at www.kaiserpermanente.org. But to take the first step toward building a healthy life for you and your children – talk to your doctor. - Dr. Deborah Gould is Chief of Pediatrics at Kaiser Permanente |TOP| VC WORLD  Funds for BPO Leader: $6M for STI Knowledge - A Siliconeer Report Mauritius-based WestBridge Capital Partners has led a $12 million Series B round with a $6 million investment in Atlanta-based STI Knowledge, Inc., a leading provider of integrated business process outsourcing. A Siliconeer report. WestBridge Capital Partners, a Mauritius-based U.S.-India focused venture capital fund with approximately $140 million under management, announced that it has led a $12 million Series B round with a $6 million investment in STI Knowledge, Inc., a leading provider of integrated business process outsourcing and enterprise support solutions and services, an STI press release said. Satish Sanan, who founded IMRglobal in 1988, led the company’s first round of $14 million in Series A funding. WestBridge will assist the company in developing its India delivery capability and in developing its overall global business strategy. Sumir Chadha of WestBridge Capital Partners will join the other investors on the board of directors of STI. “STI Knowledge, based in Atlanta, Ga., has significant expertise in the U.S. healthcare, insurance, government, and commercial enterprises industries, along with strong technology capabilities,” the release added. “STI has been named as an industry leader and visionary in Gartner Group’s Magic Quadrant and is committed to continuing its position as a leader and visionary as it forays into new market segments and expands its capabilities within its industries of focus.” STI was founded in 1995 and employs approximately 350 professionals throughout the United States. WestBridge had identified outsourced services as a key focus area for their investments and has been actively evaluating companies in the BPO sector. “We are excited to partner with an exceptional entrepreneur like Satish Sanan in addition to the other world-class investors in STI, and the high caliber management team. STI has an innovative approach to address a large market opportunity, particularly in healthcare outsourcing,” said Sumir Chadha, senior managing director, WestBridge Capital Partners. Interested readers can find more information about WestBridge at its Web site at www.wbcp.com and about STI Knowledge at www.stiknowledge.com. |TOP| E-BUSINESS  Return of the Dotcom Bubble? Internet Frenzy in India - By Siddharth Srivastava For the first time since the worldwide dotcom bubble burst five years ago, there is excitement in the Indian e-space, writes Siddharth Srivastava. Two recent acquisitions of Indian dotcoms by global players Ebay and Monster.com has re-focused attention on the still largely untapped business space that exists in the Indian e-market. This is perhaps the first time since the dotcom bubble burst worldwide as well as in India five years ago, that there is some excitement in the Indian e-space, which is not without reason. Online auctioneer Ebay has recently acquired the country’s well-known auction vertical Baazee.com for about $50 million, which is a reflection of the way the Indian Internet space is now beginning to be viewed as a business proposition. A few weeks ago, Indian recruitment portal Jobsahead.com was acquired by Nasdaq-listed online hiring company Monster Inc. for close to $9 million. The figures, of course, pale in comparison to the deals that were struck in the heydays of the dotcom boom. India’s e-poster boy Sabeer Bhatia sold hotmail to Microsoft for $400 million; in November 1999 Indiaworld was bought by Satyam Infoway for $100 million; in the heyday of the tech boom, Bazee.com commanded a steeper valuation of $78 million while today after garnering one million confirmed registered users, profits of $2 million on a net business generation of $20 million, it has been valued almost 36 percent lower. While sanity has returned to the valuations, the interest shown by the global heavyweights in occupying the Indian e-market is an indication of better days ahead. Indeed, Internet business models are stabilizing worldwide, one real signal being the Google initial public offering. Google, pronounced the modern day God by the venerable New York Times, has announced it will go in for a $2.7-billion IPO, thereby allowing people to own a slice of God, which is expected to bring back memories of the days before the dotcom bust when everybody could benefit from the humongous Internet pie. Today, Ebay has a market capitalization of $57 billion. It had a net profit of $200 million on revenues of $766 million for the year ended March 31, 2004, though gross revenues could be close to $ 2 billion. CEO Meg Whitman is among the few women to have made it to the top of a major U.S. company. Ebay has a stunning price-earning ratio of 106. To further add to the good news, U.S. Internet ad revenue is surging at an estimated 39 percent to $2.3 billion in the first quarter from a year ago as advertisers moved more aggressively online to reach consumers, a recent study has said. According to the study by the interactive advertising bureau in association with PriceWaterhouseCoopers, the first-quarter revenue was the highest quarterly sum recorded since it began measuring online ad revenue in 1996. “Internet advertising rebounded in 2003 after a multiyear slump triggered by the dotcom bust. Internet advertising is expected to grow as much as 20 per cent this year. Blue-chip advertisers still spend only a fraction of their budgets online, but they have steadily increased those ad dollars as consumers spend more time on the Web and new technologies make it easier to track the effect of those ads,” the study says. In India too, the mood is turning upbeat. According to Whitman, the attraction for the big players is due to the fact that select Indian dotcoms have gained critical mass. Though she says that “it is early days for e-commerce in India, there is an opportunity over the long term. Ebay expects India’s current internet user base of 17 million to shoot up to almost 30 million by 2006. “For Ebay, the acquisition is a step forward in increasing its presence around the globe. The online auctioneer has a clear strategy of buying out companies, which are based on its business model, around the world,” she added. Indeed, the growth figures of major Indian web portals such as Indiatimes.com, Rediff.com, offering online shopping give a clear indication of this trend. Most of them have clocked an annual growth of 150 to 200 percent. Just as in the West, Web portals say that it is lower prices and comfort factor that lure people to shop on the Internet. Several portals offer white goods such as air-conditioners available in the market for $500 at $300. Suvir Sujan who headed Bazee.com told the media recently that the portal expects to double business in this financial year. Bidding, as it is worldwide, remains the single most popular mode of purchasing. “Auction is popular among online shoppers as it gives them the feel of buying a product for a price they themselves consider fit,” says Gautam Thakkar, chief marketing officer, Baazee.com. However, observers also warn that the popularity of online shopping remains confined mostly to the urban metros of the country as they account for majority of the transactions. While it is prudent not to get carried away like it happened in the past, there is no denying that the Internet, whether at the global or local levels, is likely to be a factor that will translate to profits. The mantra, it would seem, is going to be (low) price based or without cost. The e-customer will be e-king. - Siddharth Srivastava is a journalist. He lives in New Delhi. |TOP| REPORT:  Ravi Sanwal (l) seen here with California’s Lieutenant Governor Cruz M. Bustamante during his appointment as trade advisor. Ushering Trade: India, California Ties - A Siliconeer Report Real Estate tycoon Ravi Sanwal, appointed by Lieut. Gov. Cruz Busta-mante, will go to India to improve bilateral trade. A Siliconeer report. Ravi Sanwal, who has been appointed trade advisor for the California Economic Development Commission, is planning a trip to India in August. He says trade between California and India is negligible and can be easily increased tenfold. “Japan does almost 29 billion dollars worth of trade with California, Netherlands does $31 billion trade, but India does only a little over $300 million,” says Sanwal. “Our goal is to take this figure to at least $3 billion by 2006.” California Lt. Gov. Cruz M. Bustamante, who plans to develop a stronger trade relationship with India, appointed Sanwal to visit India and identify areas of trade, particularly in the technology, automobile, textile, tourism, entertainment and aerospace sectors. Bustamante will visit India in December along with other Economic Development Commission members and trade advisors including Sanwal. “We will open a trade center in New Delhi in the last quarter of this year, around December,” says Sanwal. “The main focus will be to build a strong trade bond between India and California.” “We have seen tremendous growth in the IT sector and I feel that there is a huge area yet to be uncovered when it comes to exploring the trade opportunities with India,” he adds. A self-made entrepreneur who started as a busboy at a Hyatt hotel, Sanwal is today president and CEO of Sanwal Construction and Property Management, a company based in Sacramento that owns over 600 apartment buildings in and around Sacramento and Stockton. He says increased trade with India will bring benefits to both California businesses and consumers: “What does this mean to a small business owner or a common consumer? Here is an example: You have an expensive car in U.S. which needs a minor repair but a major part replacement is called for by the dealer. The dealer says that in order to fix it, the whole assembly of a particular part needs to be replaced. The cost could be well in the thousands of dollars. The reason being, the automaker itself does not manufacture a small part of the assembly nor do they have ways to outsource it.” Trade with India could change that, he says. “We can help the consumer cut his car repair cost drastically while we provide an excellent trade opportunity for India’s small scale automobile parts industry. The auto part manufacturer in India can make that small missing part of the large assembly at minimal cost to the consumer in U.S. while they themselves make a decent profit in the venture. We will help that Indian manufacturer sell their products which in turn will help the consumer and the automaker as well, because now the automaker can sell to a bigger market that would not have bought the cars that were originally expensive to maintain and repair. This is a win-win situation for everyone,” explains Sanwal. Sanwal, 51, lives in El Dorado Hills, Calif., with his wife, Manita and two sons Rishi and Muni. He has hosted Indian celebrities including veteran actor Dev Anand, ghazal singer Ghulam Ali, actor Dharmendra and is looking forward to host Pandit Jasraj towards the end of this year. Community activist Lahori Ram, a commissioner in the California State’s Commission for Economic Development, introduced Sanwal to Bustamante, who is also the chief commissioner of California’s Department for Economic Development. Sanwal was actively supported by Indus Valley American Chamber of Commerce. Sanwal is scheduled to visit India in August. Interested private sector corporations can reach Sanwal on this fact-finding visit at the following e-mail: scpm1234@aol.com. |
