Posts from — June 2010

Oscar and Grammy winner A.R. Rahman, who shot to global visibility on the back of the film SlumDog Millionaire, was to arrive at the Great Western Forum in Inglewood (Los Angeles) on Sunday.  My prized pair of tickets had just been delivered yesterday. Alas it won’t happen.

Rahmans special effects enhanced Jai Ho Concert: The Journey Home World Tour successfully dazzled audiences in New York and Chicago. Disaster struck in Detroit— a heavy piece of lighting equipment proved too much for the Pontiac Silverdomewhich collapsed during the setup for last weekend’s show.

A R Rahman

“It’s a miracle my team escaped with minor injuries,” Rahman said Monday on Twitter. After initially postponing dates in Detroit and Toronto, Rahman made the agonizing decision Tuesday evening to cancel his remaining North American tour stops in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Vancouver and Houston while sets were rebuilt and producers scrambled to ascertain which elements of the current show could be salvaged.

The predicament represents a significant setback for Rahman – who was named to Time magazine’s list of the world’s most influential people last year – in his quest to connect with Western audiences like no South Asian pop star before him while still relatively hot off his “Slumdog” success.

Combining Bollywood, Broadway and a rock circus, “Jai Ho Concert” was intended as a gateway into the American mainstream. The plan to cross over with non-Indian audiences also includes continuing soundtrack work in Hollywood (after “Slumdog,” Rahman was hired to score the 2009  comedy Couples Retreat) and a  deal with Interscope Records.

For decades India’s tax laws have gotten more complicated and the government’s take of overall GDP has generally meandered upwards.  Unlike in the United States, income tax contributes a relatively small portion of the overall revenue collections. The vast majority of Indians fall below the threshold for income tax payments. Tens of millions of micro-businesses more get by with under-reporting cash income.  But still, the burden of the 1961 Direct Tax Code on those who do pay the income tax is considerable.

The rules have been modified over 6,000 times in the last 49 years. A veritable army of ITOs (Income Tax Officers) exercise considerable discretion and power over those companies and individuals who do file and pay taxes. Therefore when the current Union (federal) Government of Dr. Manmohan Singh announced plans to overhaul/ simplify the laws, it was greeted with great interest and curiosity.

In move toward openness and dialog the government also shared a draft version of the new law with the public and invited comments. They received thousands of comments and several have been incorporated into an updated draft released last week with time to comment until June 30.

There are eleven major  issues addressed by the revised Direct  Tax Code paper. These include Minimum Alternate Tax (MAT) for companies; tax treatment of savings, taxation of capital gains; taxation of non-profit organisations; taxation of existing units in Special Economic Zones (SEZs); wealth tax; and Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement (DTAA) in connection with Indian law.  Each one of these is a complex area.

The finance ministry  expects to present the final DTC to the India’s  lower house of Parliament during the forthcoming “monsoon session”.

Listen to my comments on MarketPlace Radio on this. Click here.

India wants to assert its national identity domestically and internationally in many different ways. In recent years:

• The country has expressed pride in being invited to join the G20 group, but it really wants to be a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council (only five countries enjoy that privilege)
• It has sent spacecraft to the moon and conducted nuclear explosions to join two other exclusive international clubs.
• It’s companies have asserted themselves in the country of its former ruler, the United Kingdom, by buying the former British Steel (Corus) and the car that the Queen rides in (Land Rover).

Therefore it was no surprise to me when Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee announced the government of India’s intent to create a new unique symbol for the Indian Rupee. To India the $ is one expression of American dominance in the world. The symbols for the British Pound, and the Japanese Yen invoke the past glories of two other countries and the Eurozone asserted itself most recently with its own symbol.

Possible Rupee Symbols

The images above are some of the examples submitted in a contest open to Indian citizens. The hope is that the chosen symbol will be used by financial publications such as the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times and eventually will make its way onto personal computer keyboards and font sets. At the very least it will be reflected on Indian currency notes printed in the future.

Five finalists for Rupee symbol

The whole issue may seem flip to some, but India is taking it quite seriously. The final choice among these candidates is being made at the very highest level, at the Indian Prime Minister’s  Cabinet level on Thursday.

Microsoft India, which currently has an offshore  product development center in Hyderabad, the capital of Andhra Pradesh, announced the expansion of its activities further south to Bangalore in Karnataka, to focus on product development and applied research in web search and online ad technologies. “It will initially have 200  employees according to Satya Nadella, senior vice president, R& D, Online Services Division, Microsoft (MS-OSD). “The Bangalore location  joins Hyderabad as one of the core hubs of development and research for MS-OSD. The innovations from our Hyderabad team are already having significant impact on our US, UK, Canada, Australia,and India products.

Microsoft India R&D MD Srini Koppolu said that the Hyderabad team had been contributing in terms af adding core algorithm relevance, developing structured data and building page search advertising technology.

Takeaway: Companies who reach a certain degree of R&D maturity at one location in India, can start to branch out to other cities, to secure specific local talent which may prefer to live in a particular location. Expanding too widely too soon can cause serious challenges to most foreign entitites

German software company SAP, AG started a co-innovation lab ( COIL) in Bangalore  in April 2009, to collaborate with technology, service and software companies to develop new solutions. It is the third such location after Palo Alto, California and Tokyo, Japan and already employs 4,200 people.

By 2010,  COIL  completed 24 projects and produced 14 solutions ready to go to market, according to Axel Henning Saleck, head of the global SAP co-innovation lab network. Saleck said SAP has partnered with 11 technology companies including Wipro, Cisco, Arteria Technologies, MindTree and others to help take ideas from the concept to development and eventually will take them to market.

The lab hosts a heterogeneous data center, integrating hardware and infrastructure software, a hands-on environment where members can work on proof-of-concepts and build and test new business processes. The promotes applications and technology solutions to SAP customers. For example, the  Real Estate Sales and Tenancy business, typically in emerging markets, is largely a manual process with system interactions pushed more as a back-end activity. MindTree Ltd, a regional SAP Service partner, with expertise in implementations of SAP Real Estate solutions has worked in COIL to build a mobile application that automates sales and leasing for real estate.