FROM CORPORATE INITIATIVE TO COMMUNITY SUPPORT

Mint

While several companies are taking up HIV initiatives for their employees and in their workplaces, some are going a step further to reach out to a larger community.

The Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) has teamed up with Godrej Industries and Ballarpur Industries to set up anti retroviral treatment (ART) centres. The Godrej-run ART centre is near its facility in Vikhroli, in suburban Mumbai, hoping to benefit slum dwellers in the area.

MphasiS has installed condom vending machines in the vicinity of its offices, including in parking areas. “[They] have been accessed… by people who are not MphasiS employees, including drivers and visitors to the office buildings, making this a community outreach initiative,” says Nimrod Dias, Operations Manager at MphasiS, Bangalore.

Earlier this year, Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) joined hands with the United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) to ensure equal access to HIV services for the poor across India. RIL already has successful workplace initiatives on HIV across its plants in Hazira, Jamnagar and Dahej in Gujarat, which have been scaled up to reach out to more than a 100,000 people in the surrounding communities. The community care centre at Hazira provides free treatment to hundreds of people living with HIV making it one of the largest anti-retroviral treatment centers in the country. ”I am convinced that such a business model will enable countries to quicken the pace of action in scaling up programmes and meet the needs of hard-to reach populations,” Michel Sidibe, UNAIDS deputy executive director, Programmes, said in a statement.

Its initiatives in these locations will be the role models for future expansion through the RIL-UNAIDS partnership. The specific focus will be on expansion of healthcare outreach to rural populations especially serving people living with HIV. It will address existing gaps in the public health system and build the capacities of public and private healthcare providers.

Satyam Foundation, the corporate social responsibility arm of Satyam Computer Services Ltd, runs several community initiatives on education, health, environment and empowerment of the disadvantaged. One of them has employees working as volunteers to create awareness of HIV/AIDS in Hyderabad’s slums. The foundation has also run awareness programmes for students at professional colleges in Andhra Pradesh and Orissa, focusing on ‘communication’ skills and the need to take informed decisions—as for career building, so to address HIV/AIDS.

Standard Chartered Bank, through the Clinton Global Initiative, has pledged to educate one million people on HIV and AIDS by 2010. This is being achieved through an HIV workplace education programme called Living with HIV that educates Standard Chartered staff and other companies on the issues around the epidemic. Hundreds of staff volunteers, called ‘HIV Champions’, have been trained to run the education programmes across 50 countries.

ANIL AMBANI HEALTHIEST, HAPPIEST PERSON IN BUSINESS: SURVEY

Mumbai
The Economic Times

Anil Ambani, chairman of ADAG Group, has been voted as the happiest and healthiest person in business in a study by magazine Complete Wellbeing.

The survey was conducted by global market research firm Synovate, to find out India's healthiest and happiest people. The survey gives an insight into who Indians feel are the healthiest and happiest people in the world of business, entertainment, politics and sports.

A majority of 47 per cent chose Anil Ambani as the happiest person. He was closely followed by 72 year old Ratan Tata, Chairman, Tata Group (36%) and brother Mukesh Ambani (35%).

Two foreign business magnates who've had a deep impact on many Indians and have made it to the survey are, Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, and Warren Buffet, the renowned investor, the American who ranked as the richest man in the world during the first half of 2008.

Anil Ambani was also chosen as the healthiest person in business, having caught the attention of the entire nation with his early morning marathon run.

More than half the respondents of the survey, i.e. 53 per cent, voted for him as the health icon and an inspiring leader.

Ratan Tata and Mukesh Ambani feature second and third with 46 per cent and 40 per cent votes respectively. Interestingly, one of the most dynamic and exemplary businessman of India, Aditya Birla, who died in 1983, is still perceived by a good number of people to have been one of the fittest in the world of corporate finance.

Sudha Murthy, wife of Infosys founder chairman Narayana Murthy, is the only woman, followed by Balaji Telefilms' Ekta Kapoor, among the chosen top twenty healthy business leaders.

The survey was conducted across eight major cities in India among a broad age group of 25 to 45 years old

CINCOM SYSTEMS PARTNERS UNISYS

Chennai
The Hindu

Cincom Systems Inc., which delivers and supports innovative software and services to simplify complex business processes, has entered into an agreement with Unisys Corporation, an information technology services and solutions company. Under the agreement, Unisys will integrate Cincom’s eloquence with the Health PAS suite, providing interactive and batch document automation capabilities associated with claims administration, authorisation, provider and member services, third-party liability, and other mission-critical business processes, says a release.

LME-LISTED SAGE SOFTWARE BULLISH ON INDIA BUSINESS

Kirtika Suneja, New Delhi
Business Standard

London Stock Exchange-listed Sage Software is bullish on its business from India where it recently acquired the Pocket range of Payroll and Human Resource Management Software (HRMS) and all customer contracts from Crystal Info Solutions.

Thirty-four employees of Crystal have joined Sage in its Payroll and HRMS business group. Based in Chennai, Crystal has over 300 customers across India and Sage plans to double this number in next twelve months. Sage has bought Crystal’s assets of trademarks, copyrights and customer contracts, apart from its movable assets.

“It is our first acquisition in India and a step towards increasing our presence in the Indian market with a localised product and R&D facility. The acquisition allows Sage to offer a comprehensive solution comprising ERP, CRM, Payroll and HRMS to meet the needs of the Indian SMB and mid-market customers,” said Thomas Abraham, managing director, Sage Software India, without disclosing the size of the acquisition.

Explaining about Sage’s India plans, Abraham said, “Our business is not headcount-linked but is based on the partner model. We aim to have 20-25 partners in India for the HRMS business.” Sage currently has over 14,800 employees worldwide with operations in the UK, Europe, North America, South Africa, Australia, India and China, where it provides business management software solutions to small to medium enterprises.

The company is seeing traction in the payroll and HRMS business and plans to open centres in Mumbai, Chennai and Delhi in six months to offer end-to-end solutions in the segment..

MICROSOFT IS MORE THAN A WINDOWS AND OFFICE FIRM

Venkatesha Babu, Bangalore
Mint

He took over as managing director of Microsoft India Pvt. Ltd (MIPL) three months ago, moving from hardware maker Dell India Pvt. Ltd, where he was country manager. Rajan Anandan says the transition was smooth. “If the Dell stint was all about getting market share, the current (work at Microsoft) is all about creating new markets, which is fundamentally a different thing.”

In India, Microsoft has five divisions—MIPL which sells to the India market, an India development centre based in Hyderabad which does applied research and development, an offshore software development arm, a global technology support office and a pure research wing, Microsoft Research India. Together, the five employ around 5,000 people. While Microsoft doesn’t provide country-specific revenues, trade magazine Dataquest estimates Microsoft’s Indian revenue at Rs 3,263 crore in 2007-08, with 90% of it coming from the domestic market and the rest from software exports.

While Microsoft is primarily identified through its popular Windows and Office software, Anandan wants the company to be known as a key enterprise player too.

“We have very strong offerings in Business Intelligence, ERP (enterprise resource planning), CRM (customer relationship management), HPC (high performance computing), unified communication, mobile software, search, virtualization and related areas,” says Anandan. While Windows Vista and Office packaged software are ubiquitous, piracy which is at 69%, remains a key challenge, he adds.

In a wide-ranging interview, among the first since he took over, Anandan talks about his plans to reposition Microsoft more as an enterprise company in India.

Edited excerpts:

Could you give us an overview of where MIPL’s operations are in India?

We have a very good market position in India. Over the last four-five years business has grown dramatically…by an order of magnitude, though we don’t disclose country specific (revenue) numbers.

The current (tough) market conditions present us an interesting set of opportunities and challenges. Our fiscal year runs from July to June. So, we are in our second quarter. Our first quarter was terrific. Growth in the second quarter has obviously slowed down. This is already being seen in the case of hardware players. Software tends to lag a bit, but clearly the impact will be felt.

However, there are certain segments, where unlike say an auto sector or real estate, the growth story continues albeit at a slower pace. We are focused on those segments.

And those segments are…

We see enormous growth potential in Central and state governments. The (IT) mission projects and the e-governance frameworks, which have been announced, are billions of dollars in spend.

Our) public sector business is the fastest growing segment, though on a small (base); 40 state-owned enterprises are going to invest heavily in IT, which again is an opportunity. Many of them like Oil and Natural Gas Corp. Ltd, State Bank of India, NTPC Ltd or Punjab National Bank are very well positioned to invest even in the current economic conditions. Communications, mainly telecom, is another major growth engine focus area for us. For instance, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd’s phase VI rollout includes 93 million lines. WiMax rollout will happen in January. We are seeing strength in media companies, which want to grow big on the Internet.

The SMB (small and medium business) space is showing a lot of resilience and our opportunity here will be through geographic expansion. Earlier, people may have wanted to invest in IT for growth, (now) it is to get savings.

But several of these public sector enterprises want to opt for free software and open standards regime. Some states such as Kerala, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu have even passed laws…

We want governments to be technology neutral and to focus on solutions.

Microsoft today has the most interoperable platform, which is a part of our ethos. We want a level playing field. It is one thing (for governments) to say we will focus on Linux but I think the key is to focus on the best technology platform and the least total cost of ownership, whether it is Unix, Linux or a Microsoft platform.

Cost, scalability and user-experience are three critical issues and we clearly think, in most situations, Microsoft wins on all three counts. While others talk of open source, all we are asking is for openness.

About your Windows and Office business…

Piracy is down by a percentage but is still at a staggering 69%. Our efforts to emphasize the benefits of having Microsoft original software continue. As net penetration rises and viruses spread, people are realizing the benefits of using genuine software. Vista has taken off well in the corporate environment as we worked with our enterprise customers on application compatibility. Consumers anyway love Vista