India’s Rural Poor Give up on Power Grid, Go Solar

Green Initiatives / Environment, Science & Technology, , , ,

India's rural poor give up on power grid, go solar

<p>In this May 24, 2011 photograph, Pushpa Gowda, center, laughs with her family and neighbors on the evening after they installed solar-powered light in her house in Nada village on the outskirts of Mangalore, India. Across India, thousands of homes are receiving their first light through small companies and aid programs that are bypassing the central electricity grid to deliver solar panels to the rural poor. Those customers could provide the human energy that advocates of solar power have been looking for to fuel a boom in the next decade. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)</p>

source: http://www.journaltimes.com / by Rariq Maqbool / Home >News> Science > Science>  Image / Sunday , Jul 03rd, 2011

He’s Closer to ‘Best Job in the World’

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Uncategorized, , , , , , ,

best job Anjaan Hamilton Island Australia Balgalore Island caretaker tourism queensland

India’s Anjaan is another step closer to securing “the best job in the world” in Australia.

The 28-year-old programme manager / radio DJ fromBangalore has again made the cut to remain in the running for the “Island Caretaker” job for Hamilton Islandin sunny Queensland, Australia.

From an initial shortlist of 50 (out of 34,000), Anjaan is now one of 16 people from around the world shortlisted for final interviews on Hamilton Island early May.

The job requires the successful applicant to look after the island (explore and write a daily blog, clean the pool, feed the fish) for a period of six months – all for a staggering $188,000 (A$150,000).

The high publicity campaign is part of Tourism Queensland’s bid to promote the region. Anjaan RJ likes to swim – a lot, which is a useful skill to have as a shortlisted finalist for the Best Job in the World.

Anjaan 28, describes himself as an entertainer, storyteller and beach bum who is also skilled in Bollywood dancing. His love for connecting to people led him to radio more than a decade ago and in his current role, Anjaan sells creative ideas and concepts every day.

“I paint pictures with my words daily on radio, and have transported people to different worlds with my blogs, photographs and articles,” says Anjaan.

If selected as Island Caretaker, Anjaan plans to bring along his motivation and soul-mate – wife Amrita.

“We were impressed with Anjaan’s exuberant and quirky nature which came across in his many media interviews and well established (and well read) blog,” Tourisn Queensland said.

Kim Jagtiani, from Maharashtra, who was also among the shortlisted 50, did not make the top 16 list.

Other candidates are from New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Germany, Malaysia, Singapore, China, Britain, United States, Ireland, Japan, Netherlands, and Taiwan.

The final 16 will be brought to Hamilton Island May 3-6 for more interviews in the final selection process. The successful candidate will be announced on May 6, and the Island Caretaker starts his/her job on July 1.

Stretching the Queensland coastline, the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef offer visitors a unique chance to live among the single largest living thing in the world. The surface of the Coral Sea divides the Great Barrier Reef into two completely different universes – explore the reefs below the water and experience the life above on the stunning islands.

You, the public, can view the final 16 at www.islandreefjob.com

source: http://www.indianweekender.co.nz / by Arvind Kumar / Friday Apr 03rd, 2009

Fiji bids to host Miss India Pageant

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Green Initiatives / Environment, , , , , , , , ,

Manasvi Mamgai neha hinge nicole faria miss india international world earth. indiansMiss India World Manasvi Mamgai and Miss India International Neha Hinge in Nadi last week.

Three Indian beauty queens graced the shores of Fiji last week as part of Tourism Fiji’s bid to host next year’s Miss India pageant in the South Pacific nation.

The beauty queens included 22-year-old Manasvi Mamgai, a well-known Indian model from Delhi who took out the Miss India World title, software engineer Neha Hinge, 23, who was crowned Miss India International, and Nicole Faria, 20, the Bangalore beauty who won Miss Earth Environmental.

The three winners of the Ms India Pageant 2010 flew Air Pacific from Hong Kong along with a supporting film crew.

They were in Fiji as part of Tourism Fiji’s bid to host Miss India 2011. Their first day was spent at the Shangri-La Fijian Resort and Spa in Sigatoka.

Tourism Fiji chief executive Joe Tuamoto said the industry wanted to showcase Fiji’s products and excursions where arrangements were made with properties in the tourism belt.

The trip was offered as part of their prizes and the group was invited by Air Pacific, Tourism Fiji and Tours Managers. The Miss India pageant has a worldwide television audience.

source: http://www.indianweekender.co.nz / Online / Fiji Times / Sunday, Jun 13th, 2010

Indian Reva to be build in NZ ?

Business & Economy, Green Initiatives / Environment, Science & Technology, , , , , , , , , ,

car indian Reva electric cars christchurch

The Reva ……….  could soon be built in Christchurch
An Indian company is eyeing up Christchurch as a manufacturing base for 30,000 electric cars, spurred on by New Zealand’s new free trade agreement with China.
But the deal – understood to be under negotiation – is partially contingent on securing $US20 million private capital from New Zealand investors.
The company, Reva, is a joint venture with a New York based fund, but based in Bangalore. It has the largest deployed fleet of electric cars in 24 countries worldwide, with 3000 EVs (electric vehicles) on the road.
A New Zealand manufacturing base could provide up to 400 jobs and earn the country $100 million in exports.
Investment New Zealand’s manager of clean technology Chris Mulcare said New Zealand’s brand positioning, renewable energy, research and development and FTA with China made the country an attractive option.
“New Zealand is a nexus between India and China,” he said at this week’s New Zealand Private Equity Venture Capital Association conference.
New Zealand had potential to become the nexus between the two countries in other areas of clean technology, Mr Mulcare said.
Christchurch was a good fit, as it already had a manufacturing hub, with many companies already servicing the automotive industry, including hybrid city bus company, Designline, he said.
“It’s a good opportunity to develop a bridge with India and capitalising on the high level of skill we have in engineering and technology services, along with our boutique manufacturing businesses.”
Reva’s NXR and NXG cars are designed to use about 80% fewer parts than a conventional or hybrid car, and are manufactured in different markets using solar power, cleaned with rainwater and in Europe, their lithium ion batteries are recycled.
At the conference, Mr Mulcare was asked about a conflict between EV’s and biofuel. “Biofuels will be challenged by the availability of biomass, until you get marine algae into the play, but you’re not going to have electric airplanes either.
“There are multiple options and they can both sit alongside each other.”
Retaining ownership?
New Zealand does not have the capital needed to develop clean-tech plants and a licensing play is a better model, according to The Warehouse founder Stephen Tindall.
Speaking at the conference, Mr Tindall endorsed biofuel company LanzaTech, one of the most promising clean-tech investments for his K1W1 angel investor company.
LanzaTech is targeting China’s steel mill industry, using its proprietary microbe to produce ethanol and high value chemicals from industry off-gas, reformed methane and syngas.
Ethanol had potential to grow to a $113 billion industry by 2020, he said.
Asked how to retain ownership and a dividend flow for New Zealand investors, Mr Tindall said the goal was to have as much ownership as possible, while following a licensing model that took a percentage per litre.
“Let the steel companies put in plants and we take as much as we can.”
In the last week, Mr Tindall said two other technologies with even bigger potential had approached the company.
After the meeting, he said he was bound by non-disclosure agreements and K1W1 was undertaking due diligence.
This would include taking New Zealand based technology and IP and licensing it around the world, he said.

“There is nowhere near enough New Zealand capital to fund these [manufacturing and production plants] in different countries.”

* National Business Review

source: http://www.indianweekender.co.nz / Andrea Deuchrass* / Friday Nov 09h, 2009 / National Business Review

 

All the Raj: Christopher Smith’s Range of Homemade Chutneys

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Nri's / Pio's

A childhood in India and a book of family recipes lie behind Christopher Smith’s range of homemade chutneys and sauces. Rose Prince watches him whip up a batch of brinjal pickle.

Christopher Smith in his kitchen 

Christopher Smith in his kitchen Photo: CHRIS SCOTT

Christopher Smith spent his 13th birthday on a ship. The boat, which docked at Tilbury, Essex, on December 17 1964, had sailed from India. ‘My mum gave me a pair of long johns,’ Smith remembers. It was his first sight of England. ‘As we came up the Thames, I saw a frost on the ground. It looked like snow.’

Somewhere in the ship’s hold, buried deep in the family’s luggage, was a notebook filled with recipes, belonging to Dolly, Christopher’s mother. The gold words on its cloth cover read: indu indexed diary. compliments of the india united mills. Inside the feint-lined pages are a record of the family’s Anglo-Indian meals, handwritten in pen and ink. Next to the recipes for rock cakes, lemon curd and cheese straws is a recipe for mysoor pak, a crumbly sweet made with sugar, ghee and nutmeg. After the roly-poly, roast beef and cheese soufflé is a recipe for ‘stick curry’. ‘That was a family favourite,’ Smith says. ‘Like a curry with kebabs in it; meat alternating with ginger and onion on the skewers.’

Mulligatawny soup, ginger pop and instructions for ‘Mrs Reddy’s vegetable curry’ hint more clearly at the Smiths’ former life among India’s post-war Anglo-Indian community; a family who, like the characters in a Paul Scott novel, ‘stayed on’ after independence. ‘Mrs Reddy was the mother of one of the boys in the boarding school where my dad was a teacher,’ Smith says. His paternal grandmother and both his father and mother were born in India, but in 1964 his father took the decision to leave, with his wife and four sons. ‘Dad said we should back out, so we left, and came to live in west London.’

Even before putting a foot on the steps of the Smith family home in Ealing, you can smell spices in the street outside. When Christopher Smith opens the front door, the aroma becomes stronger still. On the gas cooker is a huge pan, three-quarters full of brinjal (aubergine) pickle. Smith has been making it all morning. In 2002 he launched a range of Indian condiments named after his parents, St John and Dolly, using recipes from Dolly’s book.

I had contacted Smith, intrigued, having discovered his brinjal pickle in Trinity Stores, a south London deli. Inside the jar was a rich, non-oily mix of spices, hand-cut aubergines and onions, and no stinting on the chilli. I had also found other wonderful sauces: a chilli sauce that was fiery, but which retained the lovely fruity flavour of scotch bonnet chillies; a piquant sweet pickle made from chopped lime zest; and a cinnamon-tinted, hot apple chutney. The colours of each sauce are startling, the textures perfect. Smith’s pickles outclass the competition.

‘My pickle business arose from an odd coincidence,’ Smith says. His mother died in 1993, then his father in 1998. Smith continued to live in the family house, surrounded by their possessions. In 1999, having given up running a photography shop in Ealing, he was visiting a friend in a kitchen shop in Southall. ‘A woman came in, asking for a chattie for making appam,’ Smith says, explaining that appam are breakfast pancakes and chatties the pans you make them in. ‘I called out, “I know appam, I was born in Bangalore,” and the woman said, “So was I.”

‘When I told her my name, she said, “You’re not Dolly Smith’s son, are you?” It turned out she was the daughter-in-law of my mother’s best friend in India, and she then said, “Your mother made wonderful pickles.”’

Smith vaguely remembered the pickles; after their arrival in England his mother would occasionally make a few jars for school sales. Smith went home and dug out the cloth-covered book. He had promised the friend he had met in the shop that he would have a go at making them, so he did. Another friend of his parents tasted the pickles, and reported that they were just as good as Dolly’s originals. Once word got around, orders came in. Two years later Smith started the business properly. He put the name of his parents on the jars, on impulse, with faded photos of their faces. ‘It was a tribute, to the parents I love and to whom I owe so much.

‘All kids should have a childhood like mine,’ Smith says. St John Smith taught at a boarding school in the Nilgiri Hills in Tamil Nadu. Most of the children at the school were from Indian families and Smith recalls one tale of adventure when not in classes. ‘The railway station near the school had horse-drawn carts; you could rent the ponies for a few pence. We rode them through the hills, playing cowboys and Indians,’ he says with an ironic grin. ‘There were people sitting on the side of the road, selling sweets; when we told them we had no pocket money, they gave them to us.’

Along with trapping quails, digging caves and climbing trees, there was mischief: he tells of how his brother Stan, caught stealing fruit from a man’s garden, was held prisoner in his captor’s shed. ‘The man was sitting outside, with a gun. My father had to come and negotiate his release. The next day the man sent a large amount of fruit to the school. That’s how it was – no malice.’

At home his mother had help in the kitchen and rarely cooked. ‘When we were in India I could count the times I saw either of my parents cooking,’ he says. ‘I was weaned on lentils and rice, and we mostly ate curries. I have loved chillies ever since I ate my first.’ Brought up in a poor country, Smith was taught never to waste. ‘When we ate lunch at my school in England, I would ask other boys if I could eat their fat; I also like marrow, and will still crunch on a chicken bone.’

When the family returned to Britain St John sold everything. ‘He arrived here with £300. He went to the local education authority asking for work, but because he obtained his degree in India they would only allow him to teach juniors.’

On the day of my visit Smith had been up before dawn, buying special aubergines for the brinjal pickle from the Western International Market in Southall. ‘I buy chillies from an east London supplier who has a farm in the Dominican Republic. He chooses the reddest ones for me; they make the sauce look good.’

We decide it is time for lunch, and Smith chooses a favourite curry house, the Rajdoot in Ruislip. Smith loves it here, and brings his own pickles to complement the food. ‘The chef, Zak Rahman, never uses ready-made spice mixes or curry pastes, and makes his own chicken stock,’ he says approvingly, as we plough through a fragrant chicken chilli masala and a side dish of sautéed okra, firing it up nicely with a little of Dolly and St John’s chilli pickle, flavoured with tamarind, ginger, garlic and curry leaves. We dip poppadoms into the juicy lime pickle and mop up a spiced dal with hot flatbreads. Smith could be back in the country of his birth. He has not been there since 1998. ‘I tried to find the house in Bangalore where I was brought up, but it had gone,’ he says wistfully. Part of his upbringing is not lost, however. When Dolly Smith packed her cloth-bound notebook in 1964, she was at least taking memories of her kitchen to her new home.

  • St John and Dolly Smith’s pickles: 0797-368 7376; thepickleman.com. Rajdoot, 59 Windmill Hill, Ruislip, west London (01895-634656)

 

source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk / Food and Drink / by Rose Prince / Apr 15th, 2010

The Fall and Rise of a Lake

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

An artist collaborates with a snake rescuer, a farmer-artiste, a new media artiste, a man who loves aquariums and a ‘sparrow man’ to document the transformation of Jakkur lake with an exhibition, Lake Tales, that opens today

 

From left: Deepak R, Kushal Kumar, Deepak D L, Surekha, Chaitra Puthran and Naganagouda Patil

With more than 200 years of history shaping the life of an entire community and eco-system, Jakkur Lake has been dubbed as a ‘birds’ paradise’. In fact, it can be called the North Star of Bangalore.

Located about 15 km from the city’s centre, it is closer to Yelahanka with a township, Jakkur, to its west and a village, Sampigehalli, to its east. Currently undergoing a transformation and restructuring from a natural lake to an artificial one, the water body is in the throes of a larger scheme of things called ‘City Beautification’ and ‘Lake Development Project’, conducted by Bengaluru Development Authority (BDA) as part of the urban development project of Bruhat Bengaluru.

Surekha, an artist, decided to record the happenings in and around the lake through photographs and videos after she heard of the Lake Development Authority (LDA) project. “I have pictures of the lake dating back more than 15 years (her husband is from Jakkur). But in 2009, when I heard of the project, I started interviewing the locals, BDA officials, contractors and, apart from taking pictures, shot extensive video footage of the lake,” says Surekha.
‘Jakkur-Lake’ Project
Surekha’s artistic documentation of the history of the lake is construed through photographic images, video interviews and archives, collecting oral recordings of anecdotes by local dwellers (farmers/activists), environmentalists, ornithologists as well as BDA contractors. Surekha’s fervent hope is that the lake regains its healthy environment along with its flora and fauna.

She says, “This project has been a fantastic learning process for me. In the beginning, I didn’t know much about it, but today I am deeply involved with its progress. Contractors or BDA officials call me when there is something interesting taking place. They alerted me when they had drained the water. I have walked on the lake bed. The feelings are too deep to express. I have seen the authorities taking painstaking steps to develop the lake properly by taking inputs from environmentalists and wildlife experts. I have seen dead fish recovered from the lake. I have seen birds going to other lakes nearby because this one was not ready. I now know how lakes are formed and how there is a chain formation of other lakes nearby. This project is not a commitment for a year or two, but for a lifetime. The lake and its impact on the community are too intense to be taken lightly. In fact, without a water body or a lake, there is no life in the vicinity.”

Surekha tied up with five young artistes who were not the ‘typical artistes but had an ecological connection’. The artists — a snake rescuer, a farmer-artiste, a new media artiste, an aquarium hobbyist and a ‘sparrow man’ — have given an interesting perspective to an urban bane.
SNAKE RESCUER
Chaitra Puthran was once afraid of snakes, but is now called to rescue snakes. In fact, her complaint is that there are fewer calls now than before. “I just hope that people rescue snakes rather than kill them. Except cobras, there is no mercy shown to any other snakes, however harmless they are,” she says. The first snake that she rescued was a rat snake. Since then, she has done intense research on snakes. “Without knowledge of snakes you can’t handle a snake,” she says. “My contribution to the project will be to present the factors causing changes in the snake’s population with respect to the changing face of the lake. There will be a handwritten diary, drawings, illustrations and pictures of snakes. I will be glad to answer any queries about snakes during the course of the exhibition.”
NEW MEDIA ARTISTE
Deepak D L has worked on natural sounds in and around the lake. A keen interest in the environment led to him pairing up with Surekha for the project. He says, “I have collected sound footage from in and around the lake and manipulated it to make a new sound. I have archived the project in sound and made an audio library in a digital format of all sounds related to the project.”
AQUARIUM JUNKIE
In addition to the environment and birds, Deepak R is passionate about fishes and aquariums. A childhood passion for creating ecosystems for fish has led him to create micro-ecosystems with aquatic plants. The largest tank he has created measures 7’ X 4’ X 2’. According to him, after the lake is filled, the ecosystem will get better than before as ‘plenty of work and thought has gone into it’. “I am going to talk to the local authorities and research the types of local fish that can be released into the lake,” he says. He wishes that people won’t release species like the Jalebi fish, Catfish or the American Turtle Red Ear Slider into lakes as these upset the local ecosystem because they breed fast and consume a lot of food.
“I became involved with the project after Surekha told me about the dead fish during the dewatering process. My role is to recreate an ecosystem similar, but not identical to Jakkur lake’s. The tank that I have come up with, which is about 2’ X 2’ X 15”, has an island as well.”


LOVE FOR SPARROWS
Kushal Kumar has been working on the migratory tendencies of sparrows keeping the background of the lake in mind. He finds sparrows in his native Doddaballapur but very few in Bangalore, which has more wireless towers and pollution. “Along with these two factors, global warming has caused sparrows to migrate elsewhere. From about a hundred birds four years ago, the population has halved,” he says. For the lake project, he will display a gigantic 3’ X 4′ nest with a huge mobile phone that will have a monitor to play a seven-minute video on sparrows. “I have used the mobile phone as a symbol to show its impact on the birds,” he says.
FARMER-CUM-ARTISTE
Naganagouda Patil is not from Jakkur, which is why his land is intact. “I have seen the land around the lake. It is very fertile and good for cultivation,” he says. “In my childhood, I used a soft thermocol-like material sourced from the maize stem to make farm equipment similar to what my father and uncles used. We used to play with them. Today, traditional hand-made equipment are vanishing just like the land around the lake. For this project, I have created farm equipment that are slowly becoming obsolete using the same material that I used as a child.”

The Lake – Past, Present and Future
PAST: Until recently, the lake was surrounded by a lush green belt. The livelihood of the villagers and the farming community were dependent on the lake. “A 90-year-old farmer told me how, in the olden days, a girl’s family would give their daughter in marriage to a boy only if his village had a lake,” says Surekha. Birds flocked to the lake. From October to April, migratory birds came from Australia and European countries. A thriving ecosystem made Jakkur lake a paradise for both birds and its watchers. The community around the lake used the water for domestic purposes and farming.

PRESENT: The announcement of the Akravathy Layout changed the lives of an entire community with sites being formed at the edge of the lake. Farmers protested at the poor compensation and took the government to court. With their farmland now under dispute and no other means of support, farmers have now become potters and bricklayers. The natural access to the lake has been fenced. This is to keep encroachers at bay, but is a hindrance to the local community too. During the dewatering process, the entire lake looked like a battlefield with trucks and other vehicles marking the lake from within. The desilting process was monitored by the BDA. Nagarajappa, a farmer-activist from Jakkur, rued the loss of livelihood for a generation of farmers. BDA is engaged in transformation rather than preservation. A sewage treatment plant has been built to treat water coming from Yelahanka before it is released into the lake. Wetlands have been created.

FUTURE: It is a wait-and-watch process. Three years after the resurrection of the lake began, only one-tenth of the water has returned. The local and migratory birds are punctual in their arrival though ornithologist Harish R Bhat says that 30 per cent of the birds have left. But, Deepak R says, “I am sure that in about three years, we will see a better ecosystem with plenty of fish and birds in the area.”
EXHIBITION
Lake Tales: Focusing the urban rural margins – Jakkur lake
Dates: June 5-15
Venue: Bar1, 69/3, Mission Road

source: http://www.bangaloremirror.com / Special / by Jayanthi Madhukar / Saturday Jun 04th, 2011

Visiting Card that Sows

Green Initiatives / Environment, Inspiration/ Positive News and Features, , , , , ,


A visiting card that grows into a plant. That’s what an NGO founder hands her clients and expects them to sow and grow them into plants. In what is perhaps one of the most eco-friendly visiting cards, Janet, the founder of city-based NGO, ‘treesforfree’, hopes to drive the green message.
Pongemia (Honge) seeds are used as visiting cards. It contains Janet’s name and telephone number on one side and a message advocating planting of trees on the other. “Thank you in advance for planting this seed and healing the earth,” reads the message. 

FIRST TIME IN INDIA
N Ramesh, the executive creative director of Meridian Communications, came up with this seed-cum-card concept. “The idea was conceptualised and executed in one day. It is the first time in the country that a seed is being used as a visiting card.”

He said treesforfree had so far been carrying out a paper-less campaign for its programmes and it did not want to use paper. That’s how this idea was born.

SURVIVES ON SUNLIGHT
A water-proof CD marker is used to inscribe on the card. “Even if recipient throws the card somewhere, the seed will start growing. All it needs is some sunlight,” said Ramesh.

“When I was young, there were honge trees all around MG Road and OMBR Road. But there are none of these now. I hope this campaign helps bring more trees in the city. This is not a copyrighted idea. Anyone who wants to avoid the use of paper or ordinary visiting cards can embrace the idea,” he said.

Janet said when she handed her first card to the CEO of Harley Davidson, he was taken aback, but he appreciated the idea.

http://www.bangaloremirror.com / Environment / by M K Ashoka / Wednesday Dec 16th, 2009

ISRO Dy Director Cycles to Work

Green Initiatives / Environment, Inspiration/ Positive News and Features, , , , ,

Top space scientist Murthy Remilla cycles to office every day and cajoles others to do the same. We owe it our children, he says

While 163 nations slug it out in Copenhagen about how much carbon each of them won’t emit, closer home, a scientist at ISRO is doing his own mite not to add to the greenhouse effect. Murthy L N Remilla, who is currently the deputy director of business development at ISRO, has been using a bicycle to commute to work for the last 18 months.
STARTING TROUBLE 

Murthy is entitled to an official car and owns a Swift Dzire. At first, he faced ridicule from his own children when he started using a bicycle. For six months, starting March 31, 2008, Murthy travelled between home and office, a distance of five kilometres, on his son’s bicycle “to test myself.”

“My family members were surprised and did not like the idea. My two children thought it was undignified and found it odd, but I persisted. Six months later, I gave back the bicycle to my son when a friend of mine sent me a new one from USA,” Murthy said.

Murthy Remilla on his cycle

GREEN LANE

The tree-covered New BEL Road was the trigger for Murthy to start cycling. After spending three years in Sriharikota and nine years in National Remote Sensing Agency, Hyderabad, Murthy shifted to Bangalore in 2000.

“The road from Sadashivanagar police station to our office is tree covered. It looks like the Nehru Tunnel in Jammu and Kashmir. I had spent time doing my PhD in the IISc campus and it was common for people to use bicycles there. One fine day, I started to use the bicycle and have not stopped since,” the 44-year-old says.

INSPIRING OTHERS

Murthy has inspired other staff in ISRO to follow his lead. Whenever he has a break from marketing ISRO’s remote sensing data across the world, he can be found persuading his colleagues and subordinates to do their bit for the environment. His subordinate Ravindra HS has taken to cycling and so has A S Sudarshan, personal assistant to the ISRO director.

“We used to talk about environmental issues. But when we actually saw the senior scientist doing his bit, we knew our time has come to contribute,” Sudarshan said.

Murthy’s environmental concern does not stop at the office parking lot. He makes sure that printing paper used in the office are printed on both sides and lights are switched off when not needed. “The printing cartridge and electric waste are not bio-degradable. I am rude with people who waste paper, power and petrol. As individuals, we can do what is possible at our level to protect whatever is left of the environment,” said the Electronics and Communications engineer.

ROOTING FOR METRO RAIL

The scientist is often tempted to take his car to office. “It takes me 20 minutes to cycle the five kilometres from home to office. It takes more in a car most of the times. But sometimes, I am tempted to take the car. But in those few seconds, I steel myself and shut the garage door. We cannot have the kind of roads we have in China or Japan and we cannot do the job for BBMP. But bicycles are good for our health and wealth, even if we don’t think about the country or the world,” Sudarshan said.

“For me, it is the condition I leave behind for my daughter and son that concerns me,” he added. Hoping that the Metro would be a boon, he said, “The Vajra bus system has inspired many to take to public transport. Earlier, travelling by bus was like purchasing tickets to a new movie on Friday. The Metro should also boost public transport,” Sudarshan hopes.

source: http://www.bangaloremirror.com / Environment / by S Shyam Prasad / Wednesday Dec 16th, 2009

Wipro Buys IT unit for $ 150 m

Business & Economy, , ,
Bangalore: 

IT major Wipro Technologies has acquired the oil and gas information technology practice of US-based Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) for $150 million (about Rs 670 crore). It’s Wipro’s second biggest acquisition in the IT space, the largest being its $600 mn takeover of Infocrossing.

SAIC is a $10-billion scientific, engineering, and technology applications company. It has a subsidiary in India that operates in Noida and Bangalore. SAIC’s oil and gas information technology practice provides consulting, system integration and outsourcing services to global oil and gas majors involved in upstream activities. 

The acquisition will be funded through internal cash resources. The acquisition entails the acquisition of SAIC’s assets in the US and equity in its UK and Indian subsidiaries.

SAIC’s oil and gas information technology practice has revenues of around $188 million. It is said to be servicing around six global-500 oil and gas majors. The integration is expected to be complete by the first quarter of next fiscal after which it will start getting reflected on Wipro’s books.

All 1,450 employees of the acquired division will transition to Wipro across North America, Europe, India and the Middle East. Around 450 of them are based in India.

Wipro hopes to combine its IT services capabilities with the consulting expertise and oil and gas domain skills offered by SAIC’s arm to offer more comprehensive solutions. Wipro’s oil and gas business is part of its energy, natural resources and utilities strategic business unit (SBU). Currently around 5% of the oil and gas revenues comes from upstream IT services. However, subsequent to the latest acquisition, this will go up to 17.5%.

Anand Padmanabhan, senior VP of Wipro’s energy, natural resources and utilities SBU, said that upstream work typically involves higher value and margin work as compared to downstream ones.

Upstream work of oil and gas companies typically involves work related to exploration, transportation etc which requires higher elements of innovation. Downstream involves retail and distribution.

“This SAIC practice addresses the IT needs of the upstream segment by offering domain capabilities in the areas of digital oil field, petro-technical data management and petroleum application services,” Padmanabhan said.

He added that IT spend in this sector is expected to grow as customers increasingly look to grow newer streams of revenues, optimize their operational cost and find better ways to become environmentally conscious. The addressable market size in the upstream IT services segment is expected to touch $19 billion by 2013 growing at 10% CAGR.

The energy and utilities sub unit currently contributes around 9% of Wipro’s revenues. With this acquisition, the company expects the sub-unit to contribute 11% of earnings going ahead.

Wipro has made about 17 acquisitions in the past decade. Unlike Infosys, which has sat on huge cash reserves for long, Wipro has been steadily using its reserves to make acquisitions to close technology gaps – a move that company chairman Azim Premji once described as ‘a string of pearls’ strategy.

The latest acquisition is the first one post the recession. The last big one was that of Citi Technology Services for $127 mn in December 2008.

source: http://www.bangaloremirror.com / Business / TNN / Saturday Apr 02nd, 2011

‘I’ve Been the No.1 Factor in Every Step Infy Took’

Amazing Feats, Business & Economy, Leaders, Records, All, Science & Technology, , , , , , , , , ,

Taking his last bow at the Infosys AGM on Saturday, chairman and chief mentor N R Narayana Murthy talks of his 30-year legacy and of what it means to dare to hope

 

There is an almost Jesuit sense in the way N R Narayana Murthy sees the role of luck in life. The man, who has come to personify the phenomenal success story of India Inc, has repeatedly dwelt on how turning points in life are often fortuitous events though, to make the most of it, one’s response to it is anything but.

At the 30th Annual General Meeting of Infosys on Saturday, in effect his last working day before he formally retires as chairman of the board on August 20, NRN spoke of his three-decade experience leading his company with a seed capital of $250 to one that generated a revenue of $6.1 billion in 2011, as “both exhilarating and humbling”. In his valedictory speech, he went on to speak of how his story is one of what any average person anywhere is capable of doing, but behind the aspartame phrases, one could detect the grit that made him, over the years, take the life and death decisions his co-founders often shied away from.

Twenty years ago, on a blustery Saturday afternoon not very different from the one yesterday, in a small office in a leafy lane in Bangalore, NRN, by his own account, sat without saying a word for four hours. After nine years of unremitting, often despairing, work Infosys had finally begun to make some money.  The company, defying the doomsayers, had proved that it cannot be written off, and more importantly a foreign investor was willing to shell out a million US dollars to buy it. His six co-founders – including the likes of Nandan Nilekani, Kris Gopalakrishnan and Shibulal – debating the offer in the room, to a man wanted to sell.

Then NRN spoke and he provided an entirely different perspective on the Indian economy’s liberalisation that was just kicking in, of the possibilities it afforded and of which the buy-out offer itself was a small encouraging sign. He spoke passionately but to the point, and in half an hour he had won new converts and the company has since then never looked back. He was the real progenitor of Friedman’s ‘flat world’ though the credit, at least for its conceptualisation, goes to the more articulate Nilekani. On Saturday, at the AGM, NRN, untypically, allowed a little triumphalism to creep into his speech when he pronounced, “I have always been the No 1 actor in every decision this company has made.” It was sharp and unambiguous, and it was fully merited.

As a student in the district headquarters town of Mysore in the mid-1960s, NRN’s dream was to become a “junior engineer in a hydroelectric project in the new temples of Nehru’s India.”  The most he would he concede to his ambition was the “macho” one of building a generator for the power plant. But then, life began to give him chances, unlooked for, unforeseen.

Narayana Murthy’s wife Sudha with son Rohan and daughter-in-law Lakshmi Venu at the Infosys AGM

From Kanpur IIT where a fortuitous meeting with an American academic revealed to him the magic of computers and his stint in IIM-Ahmedabad, to his now mythologized hitchhike from Paris to India, rudely interrupted by 72 hours in a Bulgarian prison that rid him of his Leftist sympathies forever, NRN learnt to see both triumphs and trials as tacit lessons for continuous improvement. “Learning from experience, however, can be complicated. It can be much more difficult to learn from success than from failure. If we fail, we think carefully about the precise cause. Success can indiscriminately reinforce all our prior actions,” he said at a pre-commencement address in 2004 for students of New York University’s Stern School of Business.

It is this relentless rigour that saw him lead the Infosys turnaround in the late nineties and make it the first-ever Indian registered company on the Nasdaq. He was the main architect  when it pioneered such things as stock options for employees, internal transparency, a fun-filled workplace ethic and global delivery model that made Infosys, all of which became the industry norm for corporate governance and, far more importantly, showed the world what was capable with just brain power and sweat equity.

Of late, Infosys has slipped to second place in the IT sector behind main rival TCS in terms of net profits, and its last quarter results were not particularly favourable, a point that came in for some criticism on the part of the shareholders at the AGM. From August 20, when NRN turns 65 and will be divested of all official roles in the company he founded, a new leadership, many of them his trusted protégés, will take over. The jury, as it indeed is in such cases, is out on what they will be able to do the company in the long term, but NRN apparently has ensured that his main legacy that he bequeathed in the form of casually dressed men and women seen loitering in Infosys campuses, often the best and the brightest, who, when confronted with a problem and its even more outrageous solution, retort ‘why not’?

At the AGM towards the end, as the pathos-filled lyrics of Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna livened up a power-point presentation, NRN, seated on the dais, was a study in concentration. In the reticence, and the slightly sagging shoulders, however, one imagined a little pensiveness. But the man, as always, has his future decoded and ready. As he has said: “I believe that we have all at some time eaten the fruit from trees that we did not plant. In the fullness of time, when it is our turn to give, it behooves us in turn to plant gardens that we may never eat the fruit of, which will largely benefit generations to come. I believe this is our sacred responsibility, one that I hope you will shoulder in time.” Those words, like the man’s name, are bound to endure for a long time.

source: http://www.bangaloremirror.com / Cover Story / by Anil Nair / Sunday Jun 12th, 2011