Satyam bags large contracts from FIFA

Satyam Computer Services Ltd said on Tuesday it had signed two multi-million dollar contracts with FIFA to provide technical support for major events of the world soccer body.

"This is the start of long-term relationship that will see Satyam working closely with FIFA over the next few years," FIFA's head of information technology solutions, Michael Kelly, said in a statement issued by Satyam.

Satyam said the contracts with FIFA include development of an event management system। At 0802 GMT Satyam's shares were up 1।2 per cent at Rs 484.50, while the Mumbai market's IT index was up 0.2 per cent. The benchmark index was up 0.9 per cent.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/

IT cos can earn by hiring more

The Indian IT industry’s business model is stuck in the linearity mode. Simply put, IT companies are stuck in a business model where they can earn more revenues only by employing more people. Though many IT companies have realised that it’s a big problem resulting in lower revenue per employee. Others think that linearity will continue as it’s in the nature of business.

Says Infosys HR head TV Mohandas Pai: “It’s in the nature of business where you make money by selling people’s time. The largest IT company in the world, IBM, has about 325,000 employees. The largest IT companies in India still have less than one lakh employees. Clearly there’s more headroom for growth.” However, IBM’s revenue with that headcount is around $90 billion and Indian companies do not come anywhere close in terms of revenues even if we extrapolate their headcount to IBM levels.

Infosys has about 76,000 employee strength as of June 30, 2007. It plans to hire about 26,000 employees this fiscal which may make it over one lakh plus employee company. TCS has about 95,000 employees, Wipro has 68,000 and Satyam’s headcount is about 40,000 employees.

Mid-cap industry players hold a different viewpoint. “Linearity between employees and revenues is an issue,” says 3i chief financial officer and executive director, Amar Chintopanth. “It’s clearly a challenge. One can break the linearity by moving towards more transaction based pricing. But this kind of model works better in software and BPO rather than IT maintenance services. One can build a combination of both transaction based and time and materials billing models. Innovative billing model will break the linearity.”

Very few Indian IT companies operate solely on product business which does not work on linear business models. Voice BPO commands a billing rate of $10-14 per hour. Programming commands rates close to $15-18 per hour which go up to $25 in some cases. Clearly, scaling headcount becomes the only way out for companies operating with such business models.

Coffee may prevent skin cancer

US scientists have said the combination of daily exercise and a cup of coffee may prevent skin cancers.

Past researches have shown that moderate consumption of coffee may offer some health benefits.

Coffee may help manage asthma and even control attacks when medication is unavailable, stop a headache, boost mood and even prevent cavities, the studies had found.

A new study by scientists at Rutgers University in New Jersey shows that a low to moderate intake of caffeine combined with exercise can be good for health and prevent skin damage caused by the sun's ultraviolet rays.

They arrived at this conclusion after conducting a study on mice, reported health portal News Medical.

For the study, the researchers used groups of hairless mice, whose skin is extremely vulnerable to the sun.

One group was given caffeinated water to drink, the equivalent of up to two cups of coffee for humans, another group voluntarily exercised on a running wheel, a third group both drank caffeine and ran, while a fourth group neither ran nor drank caffeine and acted as the control group.

All the mice were then exposed to lamps that generated ultraviolet radiation that damages the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) in their skin cells.

They were then examined for evidence of programmed cell death, also known as apoptosis, which is the process by which cells with badly damaged DNA destroy themselves as a natural defence against illness and infection.

The scientists found that compared to the ultraviolet radiation exposed control group, the caffeine drinkers showed an increase of about 95 percent in ultraviolet radiation induced apoptosis, the exercisers showed a 120 percent increase, while the mice that were both drinking and exercising showed a nearly 400 percent increase.

One of the study's authors Allan Conney said if apoptosis takes place in a sun-damaged cell, its progress towards cancer will be aborted.

The team who reported their findings in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences said drugs that induce apoptosis are currently being researched as a method of preventing different types of cancer but the combination of caffeine and exercise appears to have a similar protective effect.

Via : http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/

RBI hikes CRR by 0.5%, leaves other rates unchanged

The Reserve Bank Governor Dr Yaga Venugopal Reddy has hiked cash reserve ratio by 50 basis points to 7 per cent while the CRR repo and reverse repo rates as well as the bank rates remain unchanged.

Inflation target for 07-08 remain at 5 per cent according to the first quarter credit policy review unveiled on Tuesday.

GDP forecast for FY-08 has been set at 8.5 per cent. The new CRR rate will come into effect from August 04.

The RBI has also removed 3000 crore reverse cap from August 06.

The other highlights of the policy are as follows:

• Hedge funds pose significant risks to the markets says credit policy.

• Financial stability to add to market stance says RBI.

• Inflation targeted at 4 to 4.5 % in the medium term. Holding inflation within 5.0 per cent in 2007-08 assumes priority in the policy hierarchy, while reinforcing the medium-term objective to condition policy and perceptions to reduce inflation to 4.0-4.5 per cent on a sustained basis.

• CRR to be used for managing liquidity.

• Domestic outlook was favourable.

• Monetary stance spelt out in February 2007 continues.

• Credit policy guided by domestic policy.


Courtesy: www.economictimes.com