News sneak

Chandrayaan: a giant leap for Indian private firms

Wednesday, January 09, 2008

 Bangalore: When India undertakes Chandrayaan, its first unmanned moon mission in 2008, it would be some private Indian firms shining in the limelight. Many bigger as well as smaller Indian firms have been powering India's ambitious space program, which is being super wised by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), reported The Economic Times.

The firms in support of the program include big corporate houses like the Tatas, Larsen & Toubro and Godrej and many smaller companies like Walchandnagar Foundry (Satara, Pune) Venkateshwara Engineering (Coimbatore) and Shoma Industries (Bangalore).

"Private players have a 30 percent share of the total project cost of Rs 386 crore," said M Annadurai, the project director of Chandrayaan. Over 40 private players are involved in the production of the Chandrayaan, he added.

Chandrayaan will catapult ISRO into the big league, and help it break into the orbit of space exploration. While the craft will go round the moon over a two-year period, a probe will land on the lunar surface to conduct tests, and transmit information. India hopes to have astronauts in orbit by 2014.

 

iGATE's Chief Delivery Officer Sekhar resigns

Wednesday, January 09, 2008

Chennai: iGATE Global Solutions has announced the resignation of Mohan Sekhar as Chief Delivery Officer (CDO) of the company and as a Member of the Board.

 Sekhar joined iGATE as CDO in November 2003. Prior to that, he was with Infosys Technologies.

"He has made significant contributions to the delivery function. He came on board with a four year perspective of helping iGATE in its transformation effort," said Phaneesh Murthy, CEO, iGATE.

The company is planning to delist its shares from the Indian stock exchanges, for which an open offer exercise, at Rs 410 a share, was recently completed. But the parent firm, iGATE, would continue to be listed on the NASDAQ in the U.S.

Sean Narayanan will take over as Head of IT Services Delivery. "Narayanan has over 17 years experience in IT and management consulting both in the US and India. He has been with iGATE for over a year as Senior Vice-President. Prior to joining iGATE, Sean was Vice-President and Global Practice Head of IT Infrastructure Services at Cognizant," a statement from the company said.

"This is the logical end for me at iGATE. With the delisting, I am not sure what changes would occur in the company. There would be a cultural shift. It won't be an India-listed company any more. To me that is important, to be listed here and to have an India brand," said Sekhar.