The New York Times has an interesting piece today on India’s growing appetite for military weapons.

According to the NYT piece, India wants to spend a humongous amount of money on its military in the near future:

Over the next five years, military analysts expect the country to spend as much as $40 billion on weapons procurement alone, more than its entire annual armaments budget today — upgrading systems as diverse as jet fighters, artillery, submarines and tanks in its largely Soviet-era arsenal.

So what if farmers are committing suicide in the hundreds in the Vidarbha region, starvation deaths are not uncommon and basic infrastructure is abysmal in most parts of the country, India must become a superpower.

At least, that seems to be the mindset these days among many influential decision makers in India today.

And vieing for the $40 billion Indian pie are the Americans, Russians and European defense companies.

India recently called for bids for a $10.2 billion program to upgrade its fighter jets. And you bet, Lockheed, Boeing, Saab and MIG Russian Aircraft are interested.

With a population of 1.2 billion people, India has a lot of mouths to feed.

A lot of mouths, indeed.

India’s total foodgrain production target for 2007-2008 is 221.5 million tonnes, the country’s Minister of State for Agriculture Kanti Lal Bhuria told Rajya Sabha, the Upper House of Parliament on Friday.

For pulses, the production target is 15 million tonnes and for oilseeds, it’s 30 million tonnes.

ArcelorMittal to buy German gas distributor Saar Ferngas AG for $499m

Wadias may buy out Danone stake in Britannia at a discount, according to Business Standard

Dell profits up 46% in Q2; Revenues Rise 4.8%

Microsoft buys group chat software company Parlano

Indian IT services providers Infosys and Wipro are reported to be slugging it out to acquire Bridgewater, New Jersey-based analytics firm MarketRx.

According to ET, the valuation of MarketRx is $150 million-$160 million, about five times the start-up’s revenues.

The 300-man company, which has offices in the U.S., Europe and India, provides analytics, market research and technology services primarily to pharmaceutical and biotech companies.

Founded in 2000, MarketRx’ backers include Sequoia Capital and Andwel Partners.

IIT Delhi alumni Jaswinder Chadha is the CEO of MarketRx.

McGraw Hill has named Deven Sharma president of its tainted financial services division Standard & Poor’s effective immediately.

Sharma replaces Kathleen Corbet, who left to “pursue other opportunities”.

Sharma was previously executive vice president at Standard & Poor’s with responsibility for Investment Services and Global Sales and before that a partner at management consulting firm Booz·Allen & Hamilton.

 
Deven Sharma

The 51-year-old executive, who has been with McGraw Hill since 2002, will have to work hard to repair the tattered reputation of Standard & Poor’s.

Credit rating agencies such as Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch have come under a cloud and are facing strident criticism for failing to adequately discharge their responsibilities in correctly assessing mortgage-backed securities tied to sub-prime loans.

As a recent front-page story in the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) put it:

[C]redit-rating firms also played a role in the subprime-mortgage boom that is now troubling financial markets. S&P, Moody’s Investors Service and Fitch Ratings gave top ratings to many securities built on the questionable loans, making the securities seem as safe as a Treasury bond.

Standard & Poor’s and other rating agencies were bullish on mortgage

Continue Reading…

Whoa, the battle in the digital single lens reflex cameras (DSLR) market sure is heating up.

Less than a fortnight after Canon and Nikon unveiled new DSLR cameras, Panasonic on Thursday rolled out a new 10 megapixel digital SLR camera - DMC-L10.

The second DSLR camera in Panasonic’s portfolio, the DMC-L10 offers a 10.1 megapixel Live MOS Sensor, a Leica D Vario-Elmar 14-50mm f3.8-5.6 lens, 2.5-inch LCD display that can rotate 270 degrees, optical image stabilization and a Supersonic Wave Filter system to prevent dust collecting on the sensor.

The DMC-L10 includes a Face Detection technology to focus, set auto exposure and detect up to 15 human faces simultaneously.

Panasonic executives  are positioning the DMC-L10 as a bridge for consumers transitioning from a compact digital camera.

Priced at Continue Reading…

Microsoft is putting out the first service pack of its Windows Vista operating system in the first quarter of 2008.

Service packs are a collection of bug fixes and improvements that Microsoft puts out for major programs such as its operating systems.

Besides the bunch of updates the company has previously released, SP1 is supposed to address specific reliability and performance issues, support new types of hardware, and add support for emerging standards such as an Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) and an Extended File Allocation Table (exFAT).

SP1 is also set to include enhancements aimed at Continue Reading…

The FT is reporting that Indian auto company Mahindra & Mahindra is also interested in Ford’s Land Rover and Jaguar units.

According to the FT piece, Mahindra is conducting due diligence on Land Rover and Jaguar.

Tata Motors has already expressed its interest in the two Ford brands. See our earlier posting on Tata Eyeing Ford Disasters.

The top 20 private equity and hedge fund managers in the U.S. - all White men - made on average $675.5 million (Rs 2,700 crore) in 2006, or 22,255 times the pay of an average U.S. worker, according to a Forbes study cited in a new report called Executive Excess 2007: The Staggering Social Cost of U.S. Business Leadership.

The top four actually made more than a billion dollars each last year, according to the report.

And how are the others doing in the U.S.?

For the most part, American workers are doing badly. They are losing their Continue Reading…

Social networking start-up Masala Inc. has snagged $4.5 million in Series A funding from VantagePoint Venture Partners, according to a regulatory filing cited by PEHub.

Amra Tareen, a former partner at venture capital firm Sevin Rosen Funds, is behind San Francisco-based Masala Inc.

Social networking consultant Erik Sundelof is also involved in the new venture.

Amra’s background is in telecom, having worked previously at Lucent and Ascend Communications.

Originally from Pakistan, Tareen holds a BS in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of New South Wales, Australia, and an MBA from Harvard.

Anupama Chopra’s book on Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan may have garnered all the media attention because of her connections but Stephen Alter has written the superior book in Fantasies of a Bollywood Love Thief: Inside the World of Indian Moviemaking.

Fantasies of a Bollywood Love Thief captures the spirit and essence of Bollywood better than any other book we’ve read lately on the Hindi movie industry.

Written against the backdrop of the making of Hindi film Omkara, director Vishal Bharadwaj’s adaptation of the Bard’s play Othello, Bollywood Love Thief provides not just an elaborate look into Bollywood style moviemaking but also a bird’s eyeview of the entire Hindi film industry and some of its dramatis personae.

From the Mahurat (the first shot of a Bollywood production) to star tantrums and the stars’ fitness trainers to star salaries, Alter Continue Reading…

Embattled Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf has agreed to step down as the country’s military chief before the upcoming elections.

In a deal reached with Pakistan Peoples Party leader Benazir Bhutto, Musharraf is also said to have agreed to drop corruption charges against Bhutto and other politicians.

General Musharraf, who seized power from the civilian government of Nawaz Sharif via a military coup in October 1999, and his cronies have been holding secret talks with Benazir Bhutto for several months.

Daughter of the country’s late Prime Minister Zulfikar Bhutto, who was hanged by another Pakistan military man Zia Ul-Haq, Benazir Bhutto has been living in exile in London.

Benazir was dismissed as the country’s Prime Minister on charges of corruption in November 1996.

General Musharraf has been under considerable U.S. pressure to get a better handle over the deteriorating law and order situation in Pakistan, a haven for Islamic radicals.