SEBI to Join Global Regulators Group

India will soon join the high table of top securities regulators, including those from the US, the UK, France and Germany.

In recognition of the strides made by India in terms of creating an enhanced regulatory structure, International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO), a global policy forum for securities regulators, based in Spain, has invited the Indian capital market regulator, the Securities and Exchanges Board of India (SEBI), to join its technical committee. SEBI will join the committee at its next meeting in June.

India is currently a member of the Emerging Markets Committee of IOSCO and by the latter’s recent decision, it will join 15 key decision-making members.

The IOSCO membership will enable a two-way exchange of experiences in regulating markets between Sebi and other members with a view to promoting development of domestic bourses and making a united effort to establish an effective surveillance of international securities transactions.

It will also enable SEBI and other members to promote the integrity of the markets by a rigorous application of the standards and by effective enforcement against offences.

Apart from SEBI, regulatory authorities from Brazil and China have also been invited to take up membership of the technical committee.

Kathleen Casey, chairman of IOSCO’s technical committee, said, “The changing landscape of the international financial system in this time of crisis demands that organisations, such as ours, reflect such changes in the composition of its membership. It is quite proper that the technical committee now should include members from India, Brazil and China within its ranks.”

The new members were chosen on the basis of the size of their capital markets, the international nature of their markets and the development of their regulatory system and authority.

DTH Market Potential In India

India is country with variety of Culture and Geography.about 70% of Indian lives in Rural and Semi-Urban areas in which cable network are not available.Also most of people living in rural area can't afford to pay Rs 200-400 towards the cable fess monthly even if it is made available.While with the technology advances Private Companies(Dish TV) tries to introduce the concept of DTH-Direct to home which can be made available in everywhere in country it remain mostly in Urban areas due to lack of interest and unawareness about the rural market as potential revenue source.

With launch of India's First Free DTH Service -DD Direct Plus by Doordarshan on 16 December 2004 open up new dimension in this world of TV Viewing by Rural mass.This opens up the real future market of India for Brands.Response from rural and also poor and middle class urban was quite good with 6 million subscriber while Dish TV struggle for more than 15 yrs to reach 1 million.

Launch of DD Direct also opens the eyes of big corporate people about the really unexplored sector.Thanks to C.K.Prahalad for spreading the Buzzword"Bottom of Pyramid"and DD DTH which resulted in launch of 5 DTH services within span of about 3-4 years(Tata Sky, Sun Direct, Airtel digital TV and Big TV ,Videocon DTH throughout India).This really helped every Indian who watch TV in Terms of More Customer satisfaction and Better TV Viewing Experience.This also provided a platform for all products and services to reach a wider section of audience and also this resulted in flooding of new News and other Entertainment channels.

while initial expexctation about the DD DTH were very high among the Audience but Reality was something not Unexpected-Another Government Service (Indian).While initially DD was able to attract some big private channels-like Aaj TAk,Headline Today,BBC world , Zee Music.But soon almost all the channels get disappeared.Reason for this is high carriage fees partly shows inefficient management on govenrment side and other very seroius public thinking that government can't charge same fees as other private DTH Players are doing.This is despite the fact that Number of Subscriber is almost 6 times than most popular private operator.But soon the both parties realizes the mistakes thus resulting in reducation of carriage fess from 1 crore to 25 lakhs which resulted in flood of application from all types of channels including all the famous

music channels like Music India,9XM,B4U Music,Enter10,ETC and News and General Entertainment.While Music channels come first and able to secure slots but big News and GEC are unable to get their slot.Industry pressure of private DTH(all the private players are big name s sector on government may be one of reason for not allowing Heavy-weight players in Large audience reach as they want a pie of it.

I will write about "Whether DD DTH can be transformed into a profitable or no for profit venture like Freesat lauched by BBC and ITV in UK".

If you want to share any opinion then please put a comment here.Toghether we can Build a Better India.

Now, VCs to invest in rural tech

Venture capitals (VC) in India, which traditionally invested in urban segments or technology sector, have begun investing in rural-centric technology firms. Avishkaar India Micro Venture Capital Fund, Acumen Fund, and Rural Innovations Network (RIN) are showing increased focus on rural markets.

A non-profit investment firm E+Co, with investments in 28 countries, plans to begin operations in India. The firm with $183 million capital mobilised and $24.6 million investment portfolio will focus on clean technology.

“India has very few funds that look at investing in rural India. But what’s heartening to see is that the sector now has a few options and entrepreneurs can approach for investment,” said Arun Natarajan, MD and CEO, Venture Intelligence.

Most of these VCs get their funding from philanthrophic activities. RIN gets funding from donors such as HIVOS, The Lemelson Foundation, Sir Dorabji Tata Trust, and The Rockefeller foundation. Whereas Google, Gates, Cisco and others form the investor base for the Acumen Fund.

Acumen India has been in the country since 2005 and has invested in 12 entrepreneurs. The focus is to fund innovative businesses that target the poor as consumers and demonstrate to the world the sustainable ways of bringing access to critical goods and services such as healthcare, water, housing and energy to low-income households.

So far, Acumen India’s total approved investment is $17.4 million.

“Our capital commitments range from $3,00,000 to $20,00,000 in equity or debt with a payback or exit in roughly five to seven years. Our average investment is about $1 million. We also do follow-on investments as our portfolio companies’ scale — leading to anywhere up to $4-5 million exposure to a given company,” said Clara Bardy, India Portfolio Associate, Acumen Fund.

October adds highest ever mobile subscribers at 10.42 million

During these times of cutbacks there's one thing which Indians are buying in abundance-mobile connections. During the month of October the country added the highest-ever addition to the mobile subscriber base at 10.42 million taking the total number of mobile users to over 325 million, according to the data released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai). India already has the distinction of being the world’s fastest growing telecom market.

During the month of September, the total (GSM, CDMA and WLL) addition was of 10.07 million.

However, the net addition of about 10.29 million users (wireline and wireless) during the month, could have been higher but for the decline in the landline user base. The landline wireline segment saw the subscriber base falling to 38.22 million in October from 38.35 million in September. During September the net addition stood at 9.79 million. The total number of both wireless and wireline users now stand at 363.95 million, Trai said.

With this, the overall tele-density stood at 31.50% at the end of October against 30.64% in September. The total broadband subscriber base rose to 5.05 million by the end of October 2008 from 4.90 million in September.

In terms of break-up of the mobile subscriber figures, during October the GSM players added their highest-ever addition of around 8 million taking their user base to 242 million. Projections are that by the year end the total GSM user base would stand at 250 million.

Commenting on the record growth, TV Ramachandran, director general, Cellular Operators Association of India had earlier said, “the ongoing, vibrant growth of the GSM sector that with the cumulative GSM subscribers already at an estimated 242 million in October, it is clear that the GSM sector would by itself cross the historic 250 million milestone by December 2008.”

Bharti Airtel, the country's largest telecom operator added its highest-ever 2.7 million customers during October, which is a 3.51% growth compared to the month of September. The world’s third largest in-country operator has a market share of 33.23%. It added the largest number of operators in the Rajasthan circle, adding a 350,000 subscribers during the month.

Vodafone Essar, the country's second largest GSM operator with a market share of 23.49% added around 2 million customers in the month registering a growth rate of 3.81%. The company recorded a highest addition of around 266,000 subscribers in Eastern UP circle.

The state-owned BSNL, the country's second largest telecom player with about 670,000 users, during the period registered a growth of 1.71% over the previous month. The telco has a market share of 16.5% in the GSM subscribers. Among the CDMA operators, Reliance Communications, which is the largest operator in the segment, added 1.7 million subscribers.

Fast dialling

• Total number of both wireless and wireline users now stand at 363.95 million
• With this, the overall tele-density stood at 31.50% at the end of October against 30.64% in September
• The total broadband subscriber base rose to 5.05 million by the end of October 2008 from 4.90 million in September.

8 Indian supercomps in world's top 500 list

 Bangalore: Hewlett Packard (HP), the world’s biggest maker of personal computers, on Friday said that a total of eight entries in the list of top 500 supercomputers are from India and six out of the eight entries are from HP. Among vendors, HP leads the list with a 41.8 % share of the systems, followed by IBM (37%), Dell (4%) and Cray (4%).

Supercomputer Eka, a HP-based system with a performance of 132.8 teraflops (floating point operations per second) has been ranked at number 13. Eka belongs to the Tata Group’s Computational Research Laboratories.

The rankings are released twice a year by researchers at the Universities of Tennessee and Mannheim, Germany, and at NERSC Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The HP-based Param cluster of the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing has been ranked 68th.

The other supercomputers by HP from India are for an industrial research company (334), a research agency (428), IIT-Madras (436) and Paprikaas Interactive Services (478).

The two other supercomputers from India out of the eight in the list include IBM’s eServer Blue Gene Solution for Indian Institute Science ranked at 213 and a supercomputer for Digital Media Company (G) ranked at 481.

IBM’s Roadrunner has been ranked as number one in the list. The system, only the second to break the petaflop barrier, posted a top performance of 1.059 petaflops. One petaflop represents one quadrillion floating point operations per second.