automobiles manufacturers

From the time he was in high school in New Delhi’s Sardar Patel Vidyalaya, Sanjay Mehrotra was clear that he wanted to go to the US. In 1974, the system involved only 11 years of schooling, and US universities told him he needed to do 12 before he could apply. So he joined BITS, Pilani. At the end of the first year at BITS, he applied again US universities. They said could come as a freshman but he could not get credits for his year at BITS. He declined, and reapplied in the second year. This time, University of California, Berkeley, gave him admission with full two years’ credit in the electrical engineering and computer sciences programme. He joined, went on to do a Masters at Berkeley, and then worked for four Silicon Valley semiconductor companies, including Intel, between 1980 and 1988. Mehrotra was working specifically in the then nascent area of what is known as flash memory — the storage technology that involves no moving parts and where the chip retains the stored information even when its power source is removed. In 1988, Eli Harari, a former Intel colleague, approached him with the idea of founding a company focused on flash memory, and that’s what they did later that year, together with Jack Yuan, a colleague of Harari’s in Hughes Microelectronics. “We believed that in the future there would be applications that would need flash storage,” Mehrotra told us on a visit to Bangalore recently. “And 25 years ago, when we founded the company, we had said in one of our publications that in the future there would be phones like cellular phones and light computing devices that would need this technology.”automobile manufacturers in india That proved prophetic. Flash memory is today ubiquitous — it’s the memory that is used in cellphones, digital cameras, USB drives, external hard drives, set-top boxes, tablets and increasingly in servers and PCs (traditional servers and PCs run on hard disk drives that have spinning disks and other mechanical/moving parts and are therefore more prone to disruptions and higher energy consumption). With flash memory’s success, the company they founded — SanDisk — became a household name, and last year had revenues of $5.7 billion. “Globally and in India, we have a third of the retail market in flash products,” says Mehrotra. SanDisk’s early success was with camera makers. Cameras then used chemical films. “We worked with Kodak, Nikon, Polaroid and converted the industry to digital film,” says Mehrotra.automobile supplies Then came USB flash drives that toppled the floppy disc drives industry. And then flash in audio players and mobile devices. These have made countries like India particularly important for SanDisk. “Just look at India: Half the population is less than 25 years old and a big chunk of it is tech-savvy, digital media-savvy. They know how to use these things better than you and I, and they are much faster at it. They are capturing more data, sharing more data, they want to be able to access their data fast and anytime, anywhere. That’s driving increased local storage in mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets,” says Mehrotra. Within Asia, India and China are SanDisk’s fastest growing retail markets. The big push now is into laptops and enterprise servers, where solid state drives based on flash technology is replacing traditional spinning hard disk drives. Flash is enabling sleeker, lighter, more power-efficient and reliable laptops. Flash is also faster, giving fast boot up times and instant access. Mehrotra says solid state drives in computing is the biggest growth driver for the flash industry and for SanDisk.automobiles manufacturers Prices of solid state drives are still high, so last year only about 10% of the notebook computers had such drives in them. Estimates are that in another three years, about one-third of notebooks will have solid state drives in them. “But I won’t be surprised if the penetration rate is even higher by then,” says Mehrotra. All MacBook Air laptops and many of Intel’s ultrabooks today come with solid state drives. SanDisk’s Bangalore R&D centre, which has 350 engineers, or more than a tenth of its global R&D strength, works on the design of memory chips and controllers that go into flash memory products, as also on software development. It is integral to SanDisk’s operations. Would the company now be willing to do some manufacturing in India? The question was repeatedly put to Mehrotra during his Bangalore visit, given the Indian government’s recent push for electronics manufacturing. Mehrotra, who became SanDisk’s CEO on January 1, 2011, when Harari retired, would only reply that the company’s plants in Japan and China were currently sufficient. Is manufacturing in India a challenge? Mehrotra says the most important things are to make sure that the skilled resource pool is available, and that the infrastructure and the ecosystem needed to become a world-class supplier is there. “I can see that India is working towards attaining that,” he says.

apparel manufacturer

The apparel manufacturers in south Gujarat’s first Special Economic Zone (SEZ) for garment and textile are at the receiving end as the denotification of apparel park hangs in balance. While the unit owners in SEZ are willing to wind up their manufacturing facilities following the steep decline in export orders from key markets like US, Europe, Germany and Japan, the concerned departments in central and state government are yet to take any decision.apparel manufacturers india The Surat Apparel Park Association (SAPA), apex body of garment manufacturers in SEZ, has urged the central and the state governments that SEZ should be denotified and converted into a regular apparel park so that the units can face the onslaught of dwindling demand from key export markets by selling their garments in domestic market. According to the data released by Apparel Export Promotion Council (AEPC), India exported garments worth $ 2.41 billion in the quarter that ended on June 30 as compared to $ 2.85 billion it earned in the previous year. In June, garment exports fell 10.15 per cent from $ 968 million to $ 870 million due to the dwindling demand from key foreign markets and the trend continued in the first quarter of 2010. Secretary, SAPA, Nilesh Mehra told TOI, “About 41 stakeholders in SEZ have sent letters to the concerned departments seeking de-notification of the apparel park from SEZ. In the last few months, around 20 per cent of the garment workers have lost their jobs due to the cut in production of garments.”apparel manufacturer According to Mehra, Surat Apparel Park in Sachin was converted to SEZ in 2006. Out of the 128 demarked plots inside the SAP-SEZ, developed by GIDC, only 66 plots are sold to 42 unit holders. Only 11 units have started so far employing more than 3,000 workers from nearby villages, while the construction of other eight units are going on. There are some 23 units owners who are not ready to invest in the park following the low sustainability. The total investment by 11 units so far is around Rs 195 crore and the export in the last three years since August-2006 is hardly Rs 60 crore. This shows that the Apparel SEZ in Surat is a loss making venture and thus, we are not interested to continue in it for long,” said managing director, Saffari Apparels, Kirti Patel said.

computer manufacturer

From the time he was in high school in New Delhi’s Sardar Patel Vidyalaya, Sanjay Mehrotra was clear that he wanted to go to the US. In 1974, the system involved only 11 years of schooling, and US universities told him he needed to do 12 before he could apply. So he joined BITS, Pilani. At the end of the first year at BITS, he applied again US universities. They said could come as a freshman but he could not get credits for his year at BITS. He declined, and reapplied in the second year. This time, University of California, Berkeley, gave him admission with full two years’ credit in the electrical engineering and computer sciences programme. He joined, went on to do a Masters at Berkeley, and then worked for four Silicon Valley semiconductor companies, including Intel, between 1980 and 1988. Mehrotra was working specifically in the then nascent area of what is known as flash memory — the storage technology that involves no moving parts and where the chip retains the stored information even when its power source is removed. In 1988, Eli Harari, a former Intel colleague, approached him with the idea of founding a company focused on flash memory, and that’s what they did later that year, together with Jack Yuan, a colleague of Harari’s in Hughes Microelectronics. “We believed that in the future there would be applications that would need flash storage,” Mehrotra told us on a visit to Bangalore recently. “And 25 years ago, when we founded the company, we had said in one of our publications that in the future there would be phones like cellular phones and light computing devices that would need this technology.”computer parts suppliers That proved prophetic. Flash memory is today ubiquitous — it’s the memory that is used in cellphones, digital cameras, USB drives, external hard drives, set-top boxes, tablets and increasingly in servers and PCs (traditional servers and PCs run on hard disk drives that have spinning disks and other mechanical/moving parts and are therefore more prone to disruptions and higher energy consumption). With flash memory’s success, the company they founded — SanDisk — became a household name, and last year had revenues of $5.7 billion. “Globally and in India, we have a third of the retail market in flash products,” says Mehrotra. SanDisk’s early success was with camera makers. Cameras then used chemical films. “We worked with Kodak, Nikon, Polaroid and converted the industry to digital film,” says Mehrotra. Then came USB flash drives that toppled the floppy disc drives industry. And then flash in audio players and mobile devices. These have made countries like India particularly important for SanDisk. “Just look at India: Half the population is less than 25 years old and a big chunk of it is tech-savvy, digital media-savvy. They know how to use these things better than you and I, and they are much faster at it. They are capturing more data, sharing more data, they want to be able to access their data fast and anytime, anywhere. That’s driving increased local storage in mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets,” says Mehrotra. Within Asia, India and China are SanDisk’s fastest growing retail markets. The big push now is into laptops and enterprise servers, where solid state drives based on flash technology is replacing traditional spinning hard disk drives. Flash is enabling sleeker, lighter, more power-efficient and reliable laptops. Flash is also faster, giving fast bootcomputer manufacturer up times and instant access. Mehrotra says solid state drives in computing is the biggest growth driver for the flash industry and for SanDisk. Prices of solid state drives are still high, so last year only about 10% of the notebook computers had such drives in them. Estimates are that in another three years, about one-third of notebooks will have solid state drives in them. “But I won’t be surprised if the penetration rate is even higher by then,” says Mehrotra. All MacBook Air laptops and many of Intel’s ultrabooks today come with solid state drives. SanDisk’s Bangalore R&D centre, which has 350 engineers, or more than a tenth of its global R&D strength, works on the design of memory chips and controllers that go into flash memory products, as also on software development. It is integral to SanDisk’s operations.laptop manufacturers Would the company now be willing to do some manufacturing in India? The question was repeatedly put to Mehrotra during his Bangalore visit, given the Indian government’s recent push for electronics manufacturing. Mehrotra, who became SanDisk’s CEO on January 1, 2011, when Harari retired, would only reply that the company’s plants in Japan and China were currently sufficient. Is manufacturing in India a challenge? Mehrotra says the most important things are to make sure that the skilled resource pool is available, and that the infrastructure and the ecosystem needed to become a world-class supplier is there. “I can see that India is working towards attaining that,” he says.

indian manufacturer

What are your views on the penalty to Ranbaxy and do you believe the $500 million payout was too harsh? It’s unfortunate. The company lost over $500 million in business opportunities, which may be the highest for any generic company, but the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) penalty has been higher for many global leaders, like GlaxoSmithKline (British) which signed a consent decree in 2005 to post a penal bond of $650 million for violation of manufacturing standards. In 2011, the FDA issued a consent decree to McNeil Consumer Healthcare, a Johnson & Johnson (US) subsidiary, over its repeated manufacturing problems (for drug Tylenol), indefinitely closing one plant and placing oversight over the two others. In another consent decree, Ben Venue Laboratories, a subsidiary of Boehringer Ingelheim (German), was restrained from manufacturing and distributing drugs from its Ohio facility until FDA determines that its operations are compliant with the Federal Food, Drug & Cosmetic Act. The loss of business and reputation is a greater risk than the penalty payable. Does the closure of this case impact the Indian generic drug market?indian manufacturers The consent decree puts a lid on the case. The company (Ranbaxy) can now start afresh and focus on its business. It is unlikely to have any spillover effect on other Indian companies. The US FDA processes are very objective and thorough, but unbiased. The fear of collateral damage is from the foreign competition. They may use this episode to contain the challenge of safe, affordable and quality generics from India. What are the learnings Indian companies can take away from Ranbaxy’s issues with the FDA? The first and most important lesson is not to compromise quality and safety of medicines. The second and more important lesson is not to cover up, even if the error is inadvertent. In this context, Johnson & Johnson’s response to owning up to the responsibility for manufacturing and quality defects in an over-thecounter drug Tylenol is noteworthy. Has the case damaged the reputation of the Indian generic drug market, and Ranbaxy in particular? Will exports from other Indian companies gain from their disgrace? One cannot rule out collateral damage by foreign competitors, but all Indian companies will have to work together to prevent such damage. After the consent decree, when the company (Ranbaxy) is able to resume supplies,indian manufacturer it is unlikely that other Indian companies can take away their business. Whatever was lost, was lost before the consent decree (was signed). Falsification of data and violation of manufacturing process guidelines were charges leveled against Ranbaxy. Are those widespread problems in India? Regulators from different jurisdictions have not come across such practices which confirm it is not a widespread problem.,indian suppliers Cases of adulterated medicines have been reported from the Indian market as well. Why aren’t our norms as stringent as the FDA? The National Drug Regulatory Authority is a product of the milieu. It evolves by national priority and is generally in conformity with the standards of general hygiene, sanitation and drinking water. India is moving towards improving these standards and has made significant progress in the last decade. However, we still have a long way to go. In the meantime, companies looking at the developed markets adopt appropriate standards to suit their business requirements. In the US and other developed markets, there is a robust system of recalling all consumer goods, including medicines. What do we have in India? Rules 54 and 55 of the Drugs & Cosmetics Act have provision for freezing and destroying stocks of sub-standard medicines. Rule 74(j) of the Act empowers the licensing authority and obliges the manufacturer to recall medicines not conforming to the standards. Companies follow strict guidelines for the export of medicines. Why can’t they then abide by the same standards in their home market? India does not have different standards for different markets. However, the manufacturers comply with the standards of the respective markets where they are selling their products. The h a r m o n i z at i o n o f standards is a major challenge. Political leadership and drug regulators need to work on it. Some progress is made under the ICH (Inter national Conference on Harmonization), but there is still a long way to go.

Weakening trade barriers boon for Indian agri biz

Ahmedabad: India’s agricultural produce may have to wait a while before it tastes the fruit of global success, but Indian agri-business players are certain it is only a matter of time as western trade barriers are living on borrowed time. Inspite of pre-conference signs indicating that ensuing round of World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) ministerial talks at Hong Kong may yield little in terms of concrete advances, there is overwhelming optimism that American and European trade barriers will collapse over next two-three years. India is a force to reckon with, says icecream manufacturer Vadilal’s Rajesh Gandhi, adding, “India’s bargaining power on the WTO has never been greater.” Indeed, with allies like China, Argentina, Brazil and Australia, India now packs considerable muscle. But, like other developing nations, India is unable to export its agricultural produce due to colossal western trade barriers. For instance, despite being the world’s largest milk producer, its milk exports are negligible. RS Sodhi of dairy giant Amul feels western governments are losing patience with their uncompetitive farmers. agricultural products manufacturers In the European Union, for example, with almost half the budget being pumped into agricultural subsidies, citizens and politicians alike are now recognising that supporting productive industries could fetch better returns. agricultural products exporters With its low-cost economy and the highest irrigated land-surface in the world, India is in a prime position to become a leading exporter of agricultural produce in an open world market, which also has major consequences for overall development. Indian agricultural products “The quality of life in Indian villages stands to improve drastically within the next three years if western barriers continue to fall as expected,” says Piruz Khambatta, chairman, Confederation of Indian Industry’s (CII) food-processing committee. “Agriculture has a lot of social ramifications. Half the population is made up of the poor living in villages, working as casual labour on the farms,” says Khambatta. With agricultural exports as core strength, Khambatta is confident that the “forgotten” part of India’s recent economic success will get a chance to compete. Sodhi too estimates an end to western subsidies to translate into a 20 per cent increase in the local milk producer’s income. “A fall in subsidies would create big opportunities at a rural level and a reduction in migration to urban centres like Ahmedabad.” Such opportunities would help India allay its growing urban-rural divide. Unfortunately Indian villages will have to wait a little while longer before their agricultural produce goes international.

The Pope’s moral blunders on outsourcing

Religion and business rarely mix well. This shows up in the encyclical of Pope Benedict XVI. The encyclical0 generally supports globalization, but criticizes western companies that outsource business to developing countries. This criticism has an unfortunate ethnic slant. The Pope echoes the wish of a white labour aristocracy in the West to snatch jobs and income away from much poorer but more competitive workers in Third World countries. That is repugnant in both economic and moral terms.brass hardware manufacturers The western argument cannot quite be called racist. Politicians and workers in the West are not all white — some are black or brown. Yet, the ethnic implications of the western protest against outsourcing cannot be ignored. The protest rarely focuses on outsourcing to white countries like Poland, Latvia or Bulgaria. It focuses overwhelmingly on outsourcing to black, brown and yellow nations. This is mainly on economic grounds — wages are lower in Asia than in Eastern Europe, and so, the scope for outsourcing is far greater. Yet, the ethnic implications cannot be ignored. The mainly white labour aristocracy of the West is clamouring to get companies to shut down jobs and production in countries with black, brown and yellow workers. This means impoverishing poor workers to subsidize the labour aristocracy. Instead of being ashamed of trying to rob the poor of jobs, the labour aristocracy talks in high moral tones, as though it has a God-given right to jobs that have actually gone entirely on merit to the Third World. For most of history, China and India were the richest countries in the world, with the most advanced technologies and best jobs.hardware suppliers The Industrial Revolution changed that — the best jobs moved to the West, and millions of Indian textile workers were rendered unemployed by British mills. The western labour aristocracy never complained of that shift of the best jobs from the East to the West, but cannot countenance a shift in the opposite direction. One valid western objection, on both economic and moral grounds, relates to the use (mainly by China) of prison labour, forced labour and child labour to produce cheap goods for export. Such exports have largely been checked, and now constitute a negligible part of outsourcing. This objection does not apply at all to India’s burgeoning exports of software or BPO, or to the shift of 80,000 IBM jobs or 35,000 Accenture jobs to India. China has become the world’s biggest supplier of manufactured goods, while India has become a major exporter of computer software, back-office services and R&D. This has transformed the economies of the two most populous countries in the world, made them the fastestgrowing in the world, and helped hundreds of millions of poor people to rise out of poverty. You might think that the Pope would hail this as a great development for humanity. Instead, he has parroted the bogus claims of the white labour aristocracy. His encyclical says, “the so-called outsourcing of production can weaken the company’s sense of responsibility towards the stakeholders — namely the workers, the suppliers, the consumers, the natural environment, and broader society — in favour of the shareholders, who are not tied to a specific geographical area and who, therefore, enjoy extraordinary mobility.” The racial implications of this leave me dumbstruck.brass hardware manufacturers The Pope has posed the issue as one of stakeholders versus shareholders. But are white stakeholders the only ones that matter? When IBM shifts 80,000 jobs to India , 80,000 Indian stakeholders replace American ones. Are the rights of 80,000 Indian stakeholders any less than those of the Americans they replace? When Chinese suppliers outbid American ones in supplying hardware to IBM, are the Chinese lesser stakeholders than the Americans they replace? The Pope is simply wrong in posing outsourcing as a conflict between shareholders and stakeholders. Outsourcing merely globalizes stakeholders across the world instead of leaving them within narrow national walls. And as a believer in one world, the Pope should be encouraging this spread of stakeholders across all humanity. Shareholders are getting globalised no less than workers, suppliers or consumers. Many shareholders of Citibank and IBM come from the West Asia, China or Japan. Are they not stakeholders on par with American ones? There is no moral imperative at all for Japanese or Arab shareholders of IBM to try and shift jobs from the Third World to the US. Yet, US politicians and trade unions talk as though morality lies in US jobs alone. In truth, it is a perversion of morality to penalize non-American workers and shareholders just to promote US jobs. Hopefully, Pope Benedict will have the courage to say so in his next encyclical.

Automobile sales plunge to multi-year lows in Nov,Sector Bears The Brunt Of Economic Turmoil, Witnesses Major Downfall

New Delhi: Poor retail finance and negative sentiment worsened domestic auto sales in November which plunged to multi-year lows as customers postponed new purchases in view of uncertain economic situation. Car sales, which had been slipping, crashed by record levels with major companies like Maruti and Hyundai leading the downfall. According to sales numbers released by Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (Siam), November car sales dropped 19% to 83,059 units against 1.03 lakh units in same month last year. The year-onyear percentage drop was biggest in last five years since a 31% fall in February 2003. The situation has been no better in eight months of this fiscal as car sales growth shrunk to a mere 0.48% in April-November ’08 period. The numbers appear alarming as except for scooters that came up with positive numbers, all other segments were down. Worst fall was noticed in commercial vehicles, where sales plunged by 49.5% at 20,637 units (40,879). The slowdown has already seen companies like Tata Motors, Ashok Leyland and Eicher announce major production cuts and even close plants temporarily. automobile supplies Within commercial vehicles, medium and heavy vehicle category was the worst hit as sales slipped by 63% and closed November’08 at 8,325 units against 22,453 units with both Tata and Ashok Leyland slipping. and automobile manufacturers in india Fall in economic activity has been a big dampener and freight operators are not willing to make any new purchases, analysts said. “In our history, all segments have never been down so badly together in a month,” Siam’s director general Dilip Chenoy said after releasing the sales numbers. automobiles manufacturers Motorcycle sales were also down and fell 20% at 4.3 lakh units against 5.4 lakh units in November last year. A sharp decline in sales of heavyweights like Bajaj Auto and TVS pulled the numbers down. Scooters, however, remained the sole category, where numbers grew, as sales were up 12%. Good growth reported by Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India and Hero Honda led to this increase. Analysts feel that the 4% excise duty cut announced by government would not immediately revive auto sales. “While it will make cars cheap, real booster will come when financing becomes easy and interest rates climb down,” the analysts said. “Banks must cut their rates and start lending more,” Chenoy said.