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Bharti and Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, opened their first cash-and-carry joint venture store here Saturday on

an investment of $7 million, and are planning to open at least 15 stores in the next three years.

The stores will be run under the brand name of Best Price Modern Wholesale.

“This is a beginning and we will come up with 15 more stores in the next three years. We have already tied up with 30,000 retailers and 8,000 suppliers and expect more to join us,” said Bharti Enterprises vice chairman and managing director Rajan Bharti Mittal.

“About 80 percent of our suppliers are from Punjab, we will set up our next store in Ludhiana,” Mittal said after inaugurating the outlet in this pilgrim town. “Each store will require about $7 million. This does not include the land price.”

According to him, the Amritsar store, spread over about 10,000 square feet, will provide 200 direct and 500 indirect jobs.

The two companies had earlier planned to open the store May 26 but this had to be deferred on account of the violence that erupted in Punjab after the killing of a spiritual leader in Austria.

Nokia plans to significantly ramp up its portfolio of touch-screen phones in India. The world’s largest cellphone maker intends to roll out at least 4-to-5 new touchscreen phones in the mid-to-high end segment in 2009. Nokia feels touch phones will also be key to drive revenue out of its services venture in India and thereby plans to launch touch-based applications.

The company’s forthcoming touch devices will be positioned in the enterprise, music and multimedia segment. While Nokia will primarily use the Symbian smartphone operating system S60 for its touch phones, it will launch few devices on the S40 platform as well. It is also evaluating possibilities to launch touch phones at the sub-Rs 10K price point in India.

Talking to ET, Nokia India director (marketing) Vineet Taneja said Nokia wants to cash in on the popularity of touch phones in India. Incidentally, the average selling price of touch phones are much more than the industry-average.

“Studies have indicated that touch phones will account for nearly 40% of the Indian market by 2012. This represents a huge opportunity and we too will evolve our portfolio accordingly. We were waiting for the touch technology to mature before going full steam. Now is the right moment,” he said.

Nokia is betting on the large screen size of touch phones to cross-sell its services in India. “While the traditional form factor phones have an equal split of keypad and screen, touch phones have much larger screens. Such large screens will allow use of multiple applications at the same time and will thereby provide a fillip to sell such applications,” Mr Taneja said.

Nokia is building a portfolio of touch-enabled applications with third-party developers. “There will be a portfolio of touch applications across categories like gaming, music and imaging. For instance, we will launch an application around June with which someone can play their favourite music instrument on 5800 XpressMusic,” said Mr Taneja.

The Finish major has two touch devices in India — 5800XpressMusic and 6208 Classic. The much touted first touch ‘N series’ handset ‘N97’ is lined up for launch in the next two months. The current portfolio is priced upwards of Rs 13K. “Pricing is a dynamic factor and there are possibilities of launching sub-Rs 10,000 touch handsets next year,” Mr Taneja said.

The company has undertaken an extensive study on the consumer behaviour towards touch phones which revealed people have high emotional connect with such devices. According to IDC, India’s touch screen device shipments had grown from 0.7% of total mobile phone shipments in 2007 to 1% in 2008.

Cobra Beer, which has been facing mounting losses, has been bought over by UK’s Molson Coors, one of top brewers in the world by volume,

in a joint venture deal with its NRI-founder Karan Bilimoria.

Revealing the “pre-pack” deal with Molson Coors, Bilimoria told PTI last night Cobra Beer’s Indian business would be an independent company which would be wholly owned and financed by its shareholders.

The new JV would be owned 50.1 per cent by Molson Coors and 49.9 per cent by the new company controlled by Bilimoria, who would be its Chairman.

“While I am happy about the joint venture as it would have enormous global growth potential… (the JV) is a fabulous opportunity. It is a long-term proposition and instantly the company can double its profit.”

Molson has put in 14 million pounds to pay off Cobra’s secured creditors and will now win control of a debt-free business that Lord Bilimoria tried to sell last year for as much as 200 million pounds.

Administrators PricewaterhouseCoopers said: “The company had run into financial difficulties in the economic downturn.”

According to reports, Cobra Beer had posted a loss of 16 million pounds last year.

Cobra Beer, outside India, would now be jointly run by Molson Coors and a new company- Cobra Beer Partnership Ltd -controlled by Lord Bilimoria.

Tata Steel UK, an indirect subsidiary of Tata Steel has got lenders approval to reset the covenants for its GBP 3.7 billion (today about

$5.6 billion) loan that was taken at the time of the Corus acquisition. The approval from the lenders, which was scheduled on May 29, would mean that all earnings-related covenants for Tata Steel UK will not be tested till March 2010.

Covenants are typically agreements between a company and its lender, that stipulates the conditions under which the loan is granted and could include restrictions on further borrowing. Tata Steel UK said the covenants would remain suspended till 2010 and subsequently resume with “significantly greater flexibility than in the case of the original covenants.”

There will also be no increase in interest costs for the remaining tenure of the loan, Tata Steel UK said.
The steelmaker however added that the reseting of covenants doesn’t imply additional finance from the lenders or rescheduling of debt servicing commitments.

“This positive response from our lenders is a mark of their faith in our business, even as we explore options for Teeside Cast Products,” Corus CEO Kirby Adams said in a statement.

The earlier deadline for reseting the covenants was May 22. Tata Steel had borrowed £3.67 billion through non-recourse finance, to buy Corus in 2007, that catapulted the Jamshedpur steelmaker to the world’s fifth largest steel company by capacity at 28 million tonnes.

Tata Steel’s lending syndicate is led by Citigroup Inc, Royal Bank Group PLC and LN Standard Charted Bank. As part of the package, Tata Steel will invest GBP 425 million in Tata Steel UK in a phased manner, of which around GBP 200 million will be used to prepay debt and de-leverage the balnce sheet.

GMR buys Singapore island power

government has recognised MCX Stock Exchange

Red Chery – Indian Blackberry rival

Power Grid gets order worth Rs 1000 crs

Share your thoughts about bing.com search engine.
Will post my review soon.

Bing.com is going to be launched in next few days. Battle for search is getting. Microsoft will be working overtime to make it a success. Google holds 65% market share already.
Yahoo comes second and Live search is only third.
Can microsoft topple Google ?
What do you people say ? Share your views .

BING versus Google war is going to begin soon.
Bing is set to be launched . It’s microsoft’s effort to beat google.
Let’s see how far Bing is going to be successful.
The word sounds good , but needs enourmous marketing to take on Google.
It’s going to be microsoft versus google vs yahoo

Religare enters Home Loan Business

GMR wins highway road project in AP
Hyderabad – vijayawada Section

Tech Mahindra is expected to start laying off satyam employees soon.
Satyam is estimated to have 10,000 extra workforce.