India Business

A benchmark index of the Indian equities markets was trading nearly 0.30 percent down in the pre-afternoon trade Tuesday owing to negative foreign cues and continued profit-booking.

Soon after buying  social media blogging site Tumblr for $1.1 billion in cash, Yahoo has overhauled its photo sharing service Flickr. Flickr has been overhauled with high resolution images and larger photos. The new Flickr homepage offers “endless scrolling” and has ditched the old interface with white space, text and blue links. It now sports a sleek user interface with grid layout of huge pictures in full resolution. Users will be able to share the full-resolution photos by email, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Tumblr. Along with the overhaul,Yahoo is making Flickr bigger and offering users whopping 1TB of free storage which can store 537,731 photos of average size. An ad-free option is available for $50 a year and a pro version of the service will set you back $500 for 2 TB of storage. Yahoo has also launched a power packed Android app  with the new photo-centric UI that fills the activity feed with a dynamically resized layout. Flickr looks at the photos in the feed and arranges them to create a solid wall of photos. The good news is that none of the photos are cropped from their original aspect ratio to achieve this effect. Since acquiring Flickr in 2005 for $35 million US, Yahoo has been criticized for allowing the service to languish with few major improvements. Flickr has seen its popularity wane with the rise of competitors like Instagram, and of social media sites generally, though it still has about 89 million users. Yahoo has seen some important acquisitions under CEO Marissa Mayers reign like gobbling up mobile apps such as Astrid, Alike, Summly, Milewise, GoPollGo and Jybe. Yahoo! is gradually improving its position as a media company and making some progress toward boosting user engagement on mobile. It recently launched two mobile apps on android and iOS. With the pace Yahoo is expanding is really impressive and I believe it will soon climb the charts and enjoy the view from top. Image Courtesy |  flickr Looking For A Social Media Agency?? - Contact WATConsult - India's Leading Social Media Agency

Indian IT bellwether Infosys Ltd Monday said it would appeal against the notice of the income tax department demanding Rs.577 crore as outstanding dues for fiscal 2008-09.

India and China should focus on trading in their own currencies, the rupee and renminbi, instead of the US dollar, as this would help reduce risk and cut exchange costs, Reliance Group Chairman Anil Ambani said Monday.

MP Birla group flagship Birla Corporation Monday reported a 26.40 percent rise in its net profit to Rs.72.63 crore for the quarter ended March 31, 2013, from Rs. 57.46 crore during the same period a year ago.

Srei Infrastructure Finance, one of India's leading infrastructure financial institutions, Monday announced a 424.45 percent jump in its consolidated net profit to Rs.69.28 crore during the quarter ended March 31, 2013, from Rs.13.21 crore in the same period previous year

Nasdaq-listed software services firm iGate, on Tuesday, said that it had sacked its president and chief executive Phaneesh Murthy as a result of an investigation into the ‘facts and circumstances surrounding a relationship that Mr. Murthy had with a subordinate employee and a claim of sexual harassment.’

Apollo Tyres’ Chennai plant, situated in the southern part of the nation, has bagged the Platinum award under the large size group of the FICCI’s Quality Systems Honors for Manufacturing 2012. Mr. Saurabh Chandra, secretary, Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, Government of India gave away this most coveted honor to the well known company. Mr. Satish Agarwal, chief, Company’s Corporate Manufacturing, who pocketed the honor, together with John Devadason, division head of thec company’s facility stated, “While making proposals for this manufacturing plant, we have ‘interrogated’ subsisting practices, analyzed benchmarked systems within the company as well as outside with a need to generate an iconic fabrication plant. Gratitude like FICCI Quality Systems honor reinforces our determination towards additional improvement of our quality systems crosswise fabrication sites.” The FICCI Quality System Honors were brought in with the aim to distinguish the sturdiness of superiority systems in companies. Firms get rewarded for exhibiting outstanding quality systems, which result in a methodical enhancement in recital. The country’s Quality Council is the knowledge associate for these honors. While talking on the event, Mr. Sanjay Bhatia, board member and chairman, Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry’s manufacturing group, stated, “The company’s Chennai facility is a high-tech plant, with steep standards and reliable quality methods. We would be eager to share the most excellent practices of the company with other candidates and also with the business generally that would work as a means to support other makers to take on healthy quality methods and thereby confront rivalry in the worldwide market.” The company’s Chennai plant is situated on a more than 128 acre place and was constructed with a total investment of more than Rs 21 billion (i.e. around £252 million). This all radial facility bags the capacitance to manufacture 16,000 passenger vehicle tyres in addition to 6,000 truck-bus tyres on a daily basis. During the existing year, seventy nine firms including automobile, steel, electronics, chemicals, tyres, engineering, paper, cement, fast moving consumer goods, refinery, food as well as fabrics segments lodged applications for these honors. The board members consisted of – Mr. B Venkataram, Secretary General, Quality Council of India Mr. Surendra Singh, Ex Cabinet Secretary, Indian administration Mr. Shyam Bang, Executive Director, Jubilant Life Sciences Ltd Mr. Rohit Relan, Managing Director, Bharat Seats Ltd Mr. Sanjay Bhatia, Managing Director, Hindustan Tin Works Ltd Mr. Gaurav Dave, Joint Secretary, National Manufacturing Competitiveness committee

Wechat is being hailed as the up and coming competitor to Whatsapp. The app has picked up in the Indian market which is itself getting accustomed to smartphones and the handheld device revolution. It was launched in India in July last year in partnership with Ibibo as Tencent has minority stake in the company. There were speculations about it starting to charge money from its customers but Dennis Hau of Tencent has cleared the rumors and said that it would remain free for its customers. Wechat is the first Chinese ‘social media’ application which has the potential to go global, despite some home bound cynical remarks from the dissidents and politicians. Internet messaging has become indispensable since the advent of smartphone. WeChat has adopted good business models and outreach programs to ensure good marketability and monetary buoyancy  The app is the product of one of China’s biggest internet developer companies – Tencent and is known as ‘Weixin’ there. The app can send voice messages, snapshots and emoticons. Tencent has adopted a very unique and focused market strategy for the app. Collaborations with college festivals and sponsorship rows were to be seen across the country which opened it up to the youth, the biggest user base of smartphones in India. Asked about monetization plans, the company officials indicate towards a possibility of launching games on the chat interface. Barclays analyst estimates the total number of WeChat users will reach at least 400 million by the end of 2013 and the company is likely to earn up to 2.16 billion yuan (US$348 million) from WeChat integrated games. Wechat has clear intentions of staying and expanding. It acquired stake in Korean mobile telecommunications app Kakaotalk. With rising user base and net revenues, would WeChat be able to surpass the success story of its predecessor and competitor Whatsapp? You can download the app here. Image Courtesy |  imandarin Looking For A Social Media Agency?? - Contact WATConsult - India's Leading Social Media Agency

Oil Ministry has moved a Cabinet note to raise the price of natural gas produced by state-owned ONGC and OIL as well as private firms like Reliance Industries to USD 6.7, less than USD 8-8.5 hike previously expected.