Posts from — July 2009

Reuters reports that Microsoft’s research center in Bangalore, staffed with about 60 full-time researchers, many of them Indians with PhDs from top universities in the United States, is at the cutting edge of the American company’s R&D. Covering seven areas of research including mobility and cryptography, its success, including developing a popular tool for Microsoft’s new search engine Bing.
B. Ashok, director of a research unit at the center, said the innovation would never have taken root if the R&D had been done in the United States. The tool enables searches for locations with incomplete or even incorrect addresses. “It was completely inspired by the Indian environment, but is applicable worldwide,” he said.

Pranab Mukerjee presented the budget for the current fiscal year yesterday and it appears to have something for everyone.  Expenditures rise by about 35% with the stated goal of halving poverty over the next several years. Thefiscal deficit — the gap between its revenue and expenditure — is expected to balloon to 6.8 per cent of GDP  compared to just 2.7 per cent in 2007-08.

Of interest to Western companies, defence spending is also expected to rise by over 30%, echoing a trend indicated in the “interim budget” presented a few months ago.

Corporate India gets some relief with the removal of the “Fringe Benefits Tax”, which is a kind of tax on expenses; foreign companies will appreciate this.

The government’s official highlights are listed here. http://indiabudget.nic.in/ub2009-10/bh/bh1.pdf