The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Scheme, popularly known as the NREGA scheme, seems to have slowing down as allegations over corruption have increased. According to the latest numbers, the last financial year (2010-11) saw a 9.4% dip in the total employment generated through the scheme. However, thanks to an overall rise in costs — […]
ITES, Construction and IT sectors saw sharp declines in recruitment activity in July compared to June as employers seemed to take a ‘wait and watch’ approach, India’s biggest jobs portal Naukri.com said. The biggest slump was seen in BPO (ITES) sector, where hiring dropped 24% in July compared to June. In IT, it was down […]
Mamata Bannerjee may have big plans for her home state West Bengal, but if her record at the Rail Bhawan is anything to go by, a rise in crime levels should come as no surprise. The crime rate on Indian Railways has increased steadily and substantially over the last 2.5 years, when Mamata Bannerjee was […]
Completing its move to a ‘consumer focused’ corporate structure, Bharti Airtel has filled up two slots — one to head its broadband and data service and another to head its DTH and media unit. The new posts, in the current avatar, were created on the reorganization of Bharti Airtel’s internal corporate structure a month ago. […]
The Indian Railways will install audio-video entertainment system in all its trains, starting with the day trains, the Ministry of Railways has said. Currently, audio-video entertainment system such as those in aircrafts are available only in half a dozen trains in the country. All of these, such as the Shimoga-Bangalore Intercity Express and the Bangalore-Mysore […]
A general trend by Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular, India’s big three GSM operators, to raise prepaid tariffs has got many customers irked. But a close look at the tariff numbers of the Indian mobile sector over the last two years reveals the reason for the move. It points out that hammered by competition, […]
Sprint has just announced the two most powerful Blackberry phones ever, including the Torch 9850 which has a 3.7 inch full touch screen — the biggest ever to adorn a Blackberry handset. The other phone, the Blackberry Bold 9930, is similar in specifications to the already announced Blackberry Bold 9900 and has a 2.8 inch […]
Huawei, World’s second largest mobile network equipment provider, has just launched a data-card product that may turn out to be crucial to the roll-out of wireless broadband in India by players like Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries. The data-card is the World’s first such device to support a host of technologies, including TD-LTE — seen as […]
Indian finance minister Pranab Mukherjee rebutted the argument that well-to-do owners of private cars are sucking up the tens of thousands of crores of rupees spent by the Government in the form of diesel subsidies. Quoting figures, he said only 15% of India’s total diesel consumption is consumed by diesel cars. “37% is used by […]
Google has retired its first public outreach program, the monthly email digest Google Friends, launched 13 years ago. The mailing list, aptly name ‘Google Friends’ as Google grew up more like a open source community than like a company, saw its final edition on Friday. “..the number of subscribers to this newsletter has remained flat, […]
India is famous for its World-beating wireless telecom expansion, but an analysis of the latest data reveals that its mobile subscriber base is increasingly getting filled up by junk, unused connections. Though showing signs of a slowdown of late, India’s wireless telecom market continues to add around 15 million telecom subscribers every month. The market […]
Mphasis, one of India’s biggest BPO companies (majority owned by HP), has acquired a US-based firm that makes insurance management software for an undisclosed sum. Mphasis, listed on the Indian bourses, said the acquisition is part of its strategy to focus more and more on specific verticals, one of which is insurance. The move is […]
India’s exports set a new high in June, while imports showed a welcome slippage from the high levels shown in May, according to the latest foreign trade data. The oil bill, which had cross the $10 billion mark in the previous month, remained stable at around $10.2 billion in June too. Proving critics wrong, the […]
Essar Energy has said that its $350 million acquisition of Shell’s oil refinery at Stanlow in the UK, will help it export the products of its India refinery to the UK market. The Stanlow refinery, whose acquisition was completed today, is the second largest refinery in the UK and supplies approximately one sixth of the […]
Indian e-retailer Letsbuy.com has brought to India the qwerty-enabled Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini Pro priced at Rs 15,399 ($340) The phone, despite having decent specifications like a 1GHz processor, 5 Megapixel camera, WiFi and Android 2.3 Gingerbread, is not exactly the ‘latest and greatest’ in the league of smart-phones. The biggest factor that differentiates the […]
The Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei, the second largest equipment firm in the World, has appointed John Suffolk, former Chief Information Officer (CIO) of the British Government as its chief cyber-security officer. The firm said the move is aimed at developing a state of the art security system for the company which can be deployed to […]
Bharti Airtel clarified that media reports on its Chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal’s salary being raised to Rs 70 crore per year this year are inaccurate. Media reports had reported that his salary may go up from the current Rs 27.5 crore per year, giving the impression of an immediate hike. Bharti said the there will […]
The news has been confirmed — Apple has indeed emerged as the World’s single biggest smartphone vendor displacing Nokia, according to market research firm Canalys. Not only did Nokia surrender the first place, but it also lost the second place to Samsung during the quarter ended June, Canalys said. In all, nearly 107.7 million smartphones […]
India’s IT companies, the second biggest source of IT outsourcing services to the World, grew at their fastest pace in four years in the year ended March 2011, according to a compilation by Dataquest Magazine. The top 200 grew at 25% in the financial year, up from just 8% growth shown in the previous year […]
The Government of India has dismissed reports that India’s forests are declining at an alarming rate of 1% to 2.7% every year, pointing out that the definition of forests is quite broad in its dictionary. Responding to a question by an alarmed Rajya Sabha member today, the new environment minister Jayanti Natarajan said that any […]
