Photo: Ratan Tata

Ratan Tata, 71, told the newspaper in an interview that the possibility of a non-Indian taking over the entire Tata group cannot be ruled out.

According to the WSJ interview, Ratan Tata said 65% of the group’s revenues come from overseas sources.

Considering that fact, an expat taking over the Tata Group is not unthinkable, said Tata. Tata also said that things would have been easier if his successor was an Indian, as Tata is an Indian brand.

Ratan Tata, the man who currently leads the conglomerate, is due to retire in 2012. Tata wants to name a worthy successor to his throne before he retires.

Tata confirmed in the WSJ interview that they have already started searching for a suitable successor, and are looking for candidates from both inside and outside the company.

Ratan Tata had repeatedly said in the past that he would want to see a much younger face lead the group, and that he or she should be ideally in his or hers 40s.

Ratan Tata has also said in the past that he/she should get at least 18 months to two years as the designated successor before taking over the reins of the group. Earlier, possible contenders for the throne of Tata Group were considered to be Keki Dadiseth, Noel Tata, and Cyrus Mistry.

However, with Ratan Tata’s new interview with WSJ, it seems that the race is still very much on and other names apart from those mentioned could yet surface.

The Tata Group, which was set up in 1868, has annual revenues of USD 71billion and employees 37,000 workers. Though the Tata Group has always been a

Tata-company, it has once been led by someone outside the Tata family. Sir Nowroji Saklatvala started with the group as a clerk in 1899 and ended up heading the Tata Group.

The single larget stakeholder in Tata Sons, which is Tata Group’s holding company, is Pallonji Shapoorji Mistry. Mistry has an 18% stake in the company and is now settled in Ireland. His son, Cyrus Mistry, is on the board of directors of Tata Sons.

The new product provides flexibility to change the premium amount as per the guidelines of the insurance regulator, the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA), the company said in a statement.

Rahul Agarwal, chief distribution officer of ING Vysya Life Insurance, said in the statement that ING Flexi Life Plus gives the police-holder a lot of flexibility and convenience to suit his financial needs.

Also, ING Flexi Life Plus passes the benefits to the customer, thus giving better value for money, he added.

Customers can, Agarwal explained, change their premium amount from the second year onwards, and this facility is available throughout the term of the product.

Accordingly, the customers can either raise their premium to 125% of their first policy year annualised premium or lower it to 75% of the first policy year annualised premium.

There are 4 investment options in the ING Flexi Life Plus – debt, secure, growth, and balanced.

The customers have the option to switch the funds as they wish and also can  have the flexibility to choose their protection cover – ranging from 6.5 times to 25 times of the annualised first year premium.

Moreover, the customers get the benefit of what the company calls an “in-built” accident protection benefit.

Age-wise, the ING Flexi Life Plus has the following features: Minimum age of entry – 0 years; maximum age of entry – 60 years; minimum age of maturity – 18 years; and maximum age of maturity – 70 years.

The policy term is 10 years or 20 years; the premium-paying term is 10 years or 20 years; and the premium-paying mode is annual, half-yearly, quarterly, or monthly – by cash or cheque.

As for partial withdrawal benefit, one partial withdrawal per policy year is allowed after completing 3 years.

ING Vysya Life Insurance says that the maturity benefit of ING Flexi Life Plus also has also been made attractive in that the customers have the option to take the maturity benefit amount either in a lump-sum or in equal installments of units over a period of 3 years or 5 years after the date of maturity.

In the life insurance venture ING Life India, which is a part of the ING Group, ING Insurance International holds 26% stake, Exide Industries 50%, Enam Group 12.5%, and Ambuja Cements 11.5% stake.

According to the company, the foreign partner is planning to give up its stake in the life insurance venture by 2013, as a part of its ongoing ‘Back to Basics’ programme, which aims at total separation of its banking and life insurance businesses.

According to a statement from the company, the Termsurance Protection Plan is a simple term-insurance plan offering 3 covers: ‘level cover,’ ‘increasing cover,’ and ‘level cover with return of premium.’

The Termsurance Protection Plan lets a person choose a cover based on his requirement.

While the ‘level cover’ comes with a large cover at a low cost, the ‘increasing cover’ offers an increasing cover of 10% every year, and the ‘level cover with return of premium’ returns the premium paid after the cover matures, says the company.

The minimum entry age for the plan is 18 years, and the maximum entry age is 65 years. The maximum age at maturity is 75 years.

The term of policy ranges between 10 years and 30 years.

According to G V Nageswara Rao, managing director and chief executive officer of IDBI Fortis Life Insurance, the Termsurance Protection Plan provides an “invaluable protective cover” to families in India in the event of the untimely death of the main bread-earner.

The increasing risk cover option of the plan, Nageswara Rao said, increases the benefit amount each year by a specific amount – thereby enabling the customers to plan for the increasing responsibilities in future, by taking the effect of inflation into consideration.

The company said in the statement that it is offering “a suite of innovative products.”

The products include Homesurance (giving a protective cover for home loan); Wealthsurance (meant to create an insured wealth plan); Retiresurance (for post-retirement, life-long pension); Bondsurance (for guaranteed returns with life insurance cover); Termsurance Grameen Suraksha (a low-cost life insurance plan meant for rural markets.); and Microsurance (the affordable life insurance cover for groups).

IDBI Fortis Life Insurance claims that, with the Termsurance Protection Plan, the company aims to cater to customers seeking a flexible protection plan as well as a large insurance cover at affordable costs.

IDBI Fortis Life Insurance, launched in 2008, is one of the fastest-growing life insurance companies in India, the statement says.

It is a joint venture of IDBI Bank, the development and commercial bank, Federal Bank, a leading private-sector bank, and Fortis Insurance International, a multinational insurance company based in Utrecht, the Netherlands.

In IDBI Fortis Life Insurance, IDBI Bank owns 48% equity, and Federal Bank and Fortis own 26% equity each.

BY A CORRESPONDENT

In the inaugural issue, Editor Anuradha Das Mathur writes that the Economist group’s CFO publications were a major inspiration for CFO India. The newfound self-belief and aspiration of Indians in the last decade have made her confident enough to launch the new magazine, she writes.

The advisory panel of CFO India includes Bhagwan Chowdhry, Professor of Finance, UCLA Anderson; Don Durfee, Hong Kong Bureau chief, Reuters News, and former editor, CFO Asia; Giri Giridhar CFO, Aditya Birla Retail; JK Jain CFO & Senior V-P, DCM Shriram Consolidated; and TV Mohandas Pai, Director, HR, Infosys; Hari Mundra, Former Joint Director, Essar Oil; R Natarajan
CFO and Investment Advisor, Helion Ventures; Ameet Parikh, MD and Founding Partner, Axis Risk Consulting; Ravi Ramu, Director, Puravankara Projects Ltd; and Suresh Senapaty, CFO and Director, Wipro.

The issue kicks off with Topline and International Topline, a wrap-up of brief stories on recent events in business and politics. Topline leads with the Ambani family row over Krishna Godavari gas, and includes stories on swine flu, the Maoist uprising and L&T’s cement business consolidation, among others. International Topline speaks about Nobel Peace Prize for Barack Obama, and the Chemistry Nobel won by India-born Ramakrishnan. The issue moves on to first-person accounts by Harsh Goenka, chairman of RPG Enterprises on the role of the CFO and by V Balakrishnan, CFO of Infosys on the challenges in finance for his company.

In the next pages, Bennett Voyles, a Paris-based writer pens a profile of Tata Steel CFO Koushik Chatterjee. Tata Steel had purchased Corus two years back for $12 billion, in a bidding battle with CSN of Brazil. The Tata-Corus acquisition is the biggest purchase of an overseas company by an Indian group, and made Tata Steel the fifth-largest steel producer in the world. In the story, Chatterjee draws attention to his mentor Ishaat Hussain, currently finance director of Tata Sons, and former CFO of Tata Steel. ““Mr Hussain is an extremely high-quality coach. He let people do what needed to be done. He is not interfering, he gives them space and yet holds people accountable to decisions,” Chatterjee tells CFO India. The article also quotes B Muthuraman former MD (and currently non-executive vice-chairman) of Tata Steel commending the choice of Chatterjee as the CFO of the metal giant.

The next to come is a profile of Robin Banerjee, CEO of wind-power firm Suzlon. The Bose-and-MontBlanc-loving CFO has clinched mega-deals at Mittal Steel and Essar group, and has worked at other marquee names like Hindustan Unilever and Thomas Cook. The challenge before Banerjee, this time, is not to sew up big deals, but to tackle the company’s huge debt burden. With careful equity dilution and encashment of assets, he feels that Suzlon will ride out the storm. In the course of the interview, the Suzlon CFO also explains the components and workings of a wind mill to CFO India’s consulting editor Ullekh NP.

Other interesting articles in CFO India cover the declining political risk in India, how companies are resorting to temporary fixes to ride out the slowdown, new mindsets for growth, infrastructure offshoring, and a detailed survey-based article on the choice of news delivery platform by finance professionals. The survey finds that most finance guys depend most on magazines, and less on print and TV.

Towards the end of the edition, CFO India also features gadgets, book reviews and an art review.

As niche magazine, CFO India does justice to the theme of targetting finance professionals in India. The magazine is designed well and the language maintains the gravitas required for a niche, elite readership. However, given the controlled circulation of the magazine, it is doubtful how CFO India will gain in readership in the near future.

The multinational consumer goods major’s claim that its Kissan Amaze gives “33% key brain nutrients” that children requires daily is being examined by a committee set up by the Food Safety and Standards Authority.

The panel will look into whether Hindustan Unilever violated regulatory provisions pertaining to “misleading or deceptive claims on food.”

P I Suvrathan, chairman of the Food Safety and Standards Authority, said the organisation has set up a committee to examine specifically Hindustan Unilever’s claims on Kissan Amaze and also to make out how scientific those claims are.

The committee will study the data that Hindustan Unilever has submitted to it and give its report by December 2009. After studying the data furnished by the company, the Food Safety and Standards Authority will formulate a detailed procedure on “misleading advertisements” on food and beverages, Suvrathan said.

A spokesperson of Hindustan Unilever said the company, after having received a communication from the government around two months ago, submitted to the government “all the research work and all the technical inputs in order to satisfy the authorities concerned.” The management of Hindustan Unilever, the spokesperson added, believes that it has satisfied the authorities by answering all the questions they had asked.

It was in February 2008 that Hindustan Unilever launched Kissan Amaze, which the company touted as a “brainfood specifically designed for schoolgoing children.” The product is being test-marketed in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.

Hindustan Unilever claims that each serving of Kissan Amaze provides “the right type of brain nutrients, in the right combination,” giving children 33% of the nutrients they require for their mental development.

The Food Safety and Standards Authority’s 5-member panel, headed by Vasantha Muthuswamy, former deputy director-general the Indian Council of Medical Research, is to examine Hindustan Unilever’s claims on Kissan Amaze pertaining to “brain development” in order to ascertain if the claims are backed by scientific evidence.

In addition, the committee will study if the claims have any adverse impact on children or discourage their healthy eating habits.

Other scientists and experts also are likely to test Kissan Amaze.

At the time of launching Kissan Amaze in February 2008, Hindustan Unilever had declared that the product has come after four years of research and development conducted at Hindustan Unilever Unilever’s Research Centre (HLRC). The company also had averred that Kissan Amaze – a “wholesome nutritional product that is 100% vegetarian” – contains major nutrients, which the body can easily absorb.

Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL) is the biggest fast-moving consumer goods company (FMCG) in India.

Shopping is what fuels the economies of the world but the ongoing recession is not a good time to be a spendthrift. So, what does one do? Shop and spend wisely. Almost everyone has probably begun to carpool and learnt to take the bus instead of cabs but that’s not all. Spending on essentials is where the money is now disappearing and here’s how to do that smartly.

# Check soap packaging. A snazzier new package always means an additional Rs 3 – Rs 5 to your wallet. So if you buy a dozen of these soaps, one lands up paying anywhere between Rs 36 to Rs 60 more. All for the fact that Katrina Kaif might just be wearing a different coloured gown on the new soap wrapper! Take the slightly older stock if available. .after all, it isn’t a perishable item.

#  Similarly with shampoos. Reach for the stock at the back of the shelf because often that is where the older stock gets pushed and which also has the lower price tag, A Dabur Black Olive Shine shampoo costs Rs 89 for a 200 ml bottle but there was a time when it did cost Rs 82 and that bottle might just be within your reach right now! Bend over and grab it. Chances are that it will be still within an expiry limit.

Even better, go for those dinky sachets. For an entire month, even if you need to wash your hair every day, at Rs 2 a sachet, even the best brands work out to a reasonable Rs 60 (30×2). At 5 ml a sachet…for 30 days, it still works out to 150 ml for Rs 60. Let’s take this math a little further: to make it an even 200 ml..another 10 sachets of 5 ml will cost Rs 20. So, add Rs 60 + Rs 20 = Rs 80. It still works out cheaper than Rs 89..doesn’t it?

Here again brands differ… most of them have introduced sachets ranging from 5 ml, 7.5 ml, 8 ml and 10 ml, so these work out as even more economical, at the usual price of Rs 2 a sachet.

Let’s do the math with Vivel. The 200 ml and 100 ml bottles and 8 ml sachets are priced at Rs 89, Rs 49 and Rs 2, respectively. So, for an entire month, 30 sachets works out to 240 ml at Rs 60 only.

#  This is where a woman’s expenses just cannot be cut back on. So, make the most of freebies. Kaya and VLCC are forever offering packages to make one look gorgeous. So, go for the free patch tests and sessions wherever possible. I went to two different Kaya clinics for their free underarm laser sessions. So, it saved my waxing bill by a bit for more than a month! I wish they start offering freebies for the legs as well!

# Food products also have variable price tags. Brands cost more while the lesser known variety can be just as good and cheaper as well. For instance: the Garden brand of chips may cost Rs 25 for 150-200 gms but a brand called Mari chips will sell its chips for Rs 32 for 250 gms. So, in this case paying a little extra works because do a little a math and see that for the same 250 gms of Garden chips, one would land up paying Rs 40 for it.

Here’s another eg: Take another much-consumed item like cheese and there are three major brands available – Amul, Britannia and now Govardhan (Go). These come in packets of 5 and 10 slices and Amul has introduced super saver packs of 20 slices (Rs 130) and mega saver packs of 50 slices (Rs 186).

Let’s do the math now:

Brand                    Price
Amul (10 slices)       Rs 73

Britannia (10 slices)   Rs 88

Govardhan (12 slices)* Rs 100

*(This has been introduced in 1 packet with 6 slices costing Rs 50 as of now and for convenience I’ve added two packets and 12 slices to fit with the other two in this comparison).

Anyway, what looks cheaper is obviously Amul but for 10 slices it works out to Rs 7.30 per slice. So for two additional slices at Rs 7.30X2 is Rs 14.60 (round off to Rs 15). Keeping this logic in mind, you would land up paying Rs 88 (73+15). That’s Britannia’s current price point and it’s really a good deal but the problem is Amul doesn’t sell 6 slices in a pack anyway. So in this instance, it’s really Go which is the wise choice.

The focus shouldn’t be only on saving money, it should be on extracting maximum value out of it as well.

# Using pre-paid cards or even switching to a lower value plan will help with cellphone bills.

# Most petrol pumps have ATMs and some even have convenience stores attached to them. Do all your shopping and cash withdrawals while getting your fuel tank filled. This way, repeat trips for shopping can be avoided.

# Some people actually go to buy vegetables and fruits later in the evening because they know that they will get them cheaper. The vendors are desperate to sell their remaining stock and are amenable to bargaining.

# Sign up to fun services like Mginger.com because for all the advertising SMSes you agree to receive, you get paid 35 paisa and over time, you could accumulate money without giving it too much thought or effort. What’s more, you can actually redeem them for 10% off coupons on a variety of services – travel packages, discounts at restaurants, beauty salons, book and movie websites etc. I recently redeemed just 1 point out of my account and got 10% off at Kareem’s at Carter Road, Bandra. So, when the bill came to around Rs 320, I paid only around Rs 285 for a meal for two. I didn’t skimp on the meal either! I had their famous chicken biryani, shikampuri cutlets and a large Sprite. So, you can get quality and quantity for the right price, if you know how. So, hook up with me at http://mGinger.com/index.jsp?inviteId=april4 on Mginger and you could avail of their mcoupons as well.

With money being a metaphor for power and protection, it is important to know the power of a few rupees saved – or for that matter spent wisely. I live with this motto: If you don’t put money to good use – then it’s of no use. You can borrow it as well!

The author is the owner of a listing website for seconds called www.seconddealnsteal.com

Named Sports Illustrated India, the Indian edition is being brought out jointly by Time Incorporated, The Sports Illustrated Group, and Dennis Media TransAsia.

According to Richard Downey, publishing director of Dennis Media TransAsia, Sports Illustrated India, priced at Rs 100 a copy, will have an initial print run of 1,00,000 copies.

The content mix of the Indian edition, Downey says, will comprise in-depth analyses of sports and photography as well as guest columns.

The first issue of Sports Illustrated India will have a total of 128 pages, out of which 100 pages are for editorial and the rest for advertising.

Richard Downey told a news conference that the publishers of the magazine expect great success in India mainly because “India is the most sport-crazy country,” with cricket being the most popular game. Due coverage also will be given to other popular sports such as tennis, football, boxing and Formula 1.”We will look at a lot of cricket and other interesting sports as well,” Downey added.

Sports Illustrated India will be a monthly and not a weekly because, according to Downey, “we are starting from scratch, and would not have been able to do justice to the kind of in-depth analyses we are looking at for the Indian edition.”

Since the publishers have arranged a tie-up with Reebok, Sports Illustrated India will be available at Reebok stores across India.
Time Incorporated and The Sports Illustrated Group have been jointly publishing international editions of Sports Illustrated, under licence, in South Africa since May 2006, and in China since September 2006.

According to the publishers, the primary target audience of Sports Illustrated consists of males in the age group of 25-45 years. The secondary target group comprises sports fans.

The Indian edition of the magazine will be “fast-paced” like the other editions, and it will pick, every month, one article from the archives of Sports Illustrated.

The launch of the Indian edition will be accompanied by an advertising drive in the country’s leading print and electronic media.

Sports Illustrated India will be edited by Sundeep Misra, a sports journalist.

Those writing guest columns include Farokh Engineer, Saurav Ganguly and Shiv Kapur.

The cover feature of the debut issue will have ‘Twenty Greatest Indian Cricketers of All Time.’

Sports Illustrated, founded in 1954, is a division of Time Incorporated, which is a leading magazine publishing company in the world and a subsidiary of Time Warner. The magazine reaches a weekly readership of about 21 million.

The Sports Illustrated franchise includes Sports Illustrated Kids (www.sikids.com), which is a monthly magazine for children aged 8 years and above, as well as Golf Magazine.

News Corp’s Dow Jones & Company, the publisher of The Far Eastern Economic Review, says it has been forced to resort to this extreme step because the magazine has become “unsustainable” after losing readership owing to “migration to the internet” as well due to shortages in advertising revenue.

Todd Larsen, chief operating officer at the Dow Jones Consumer Media Group, explained in a statement that the decision to end the publication of The Far Eastern Economic Review was “a difficult one” which was made “after a careful study of the magazine’s prospects in a challenging business climate.”

The Far Eastern Economic Review, which became one of the leading print publications in Asia, was funded in 1946 soon after the World War II came to an end.

The Hong Kong-based magazine – with a circulation of just about 20,000 copies at present – has enjoyed excellent reputation for its in-depth and fearless coverage of politics and business in Asia since World War II.

According to many media-watchers and former journalists of The Far Eastern Economic Review, the announcement of the magazine closing shop marks the “denouement” of a gradual decline in the fortunes of one of the greatest titles in Asian journalism,” which was once considered as “essential reading” for the intelligentsia of the region.

Dow Jones had, in 2004, sacked most reporters of The Far Eastern Economic Review and turned the magazine into a monthly publication. Only a few people were retained on the editorial, and articles were for the most part commissioned.

David Plott, who was the magazine’s Editor at that time, described what he called the “upheaval” in 2004 as a loss of “one of the greatest concentrations of knowledge and expertise about the region assembled anywhere.”
In the statement, Dow Jones said it will now focus on the Asian Wall Street Journal, its redesigned website WSJ.com, the launching of a Japanese-language website in a few months, as well as the expansion of its website chinese.WSJ.com

The plan to close down the venerated magazine comes at a time when more and more print publishers are changing over to electronic media.

Asiaweek, another widely acclaimed weekly magazine based in Asia, wrapped up in 2001, after 26 years of being in print.

Hugo Restall, the present Editor of The Far Eastern Economic Review, was quoted as expressing his unhappiness at the magazine becoming extinct thus: “It is quite paradoxical that, as the Asian region is becoming more and more important, there are fewer and fewer publications producing quality coverage.” Restall is to stay on the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, which also is owned by Dow Jones.

The long list of distinguished personalities and correspondents who have worked for The Far Eastern Economic Review include John King Fairbank, the sinologist at Harvard University, and the Anglo-Dutch writer and academic Ian Buruma.

It may be noted that, all through its history, the magazine’s critical and investigative style of journalism has led to clashes with many governments in the Asian region. Right now, The Far Eastern Economic Review is involved in a legal battle with the government of Singapore. The High Court of Singapore has ruled that the magazine “defamed” elder statesman Lee Kuan Yew and his son, Lee Hsien Loong, the incumbent prime minister.

Rs 451 crore has been allocated by the government as non-recurring expenditure for setting up the new IIMs and Rs 118 crore has been allocated as recurring expenditure for the first phase.

The four cities are Trichurapally (Tiruchi / Trichy) in Tamil Nadu, Ranchi in Jharkand, Raipur in Chhattisgarh and Rohtak in Haryana. Initially, the new IIMs would all operate from temporary premises. Classes would begin in the academic year of 2010-11.

IIMs are also approved for the states of Rajasthan, Jammu and Kashmir and Rajasthan.

We have always found the debate over reservations for institutions like AIIMS, IIT and IIM ridiculous. There is such a high demand for high quality education institutions that the solution is to increase the size of the pie, not to divide the pie into even smaller pieces, leading to a mad scramble and raised tempers for a seat.

Admissions to the new IIMs would be through a common entrance test. In the initial phase, 140 students would be admitted, and that would be raised to 560 in the second phase.

Hopefully, the new IIMs would help students in more states to have access to the high quality education in IIMs.

The governments of Tamil Nadu, Jharkhand, Chhatisgarh and Haryana, where the new IIMs would be coming up in the first phase have already identified the land.

Media has reported that Chhattisgarh government has already identified 200 acres for the Raipur IIM campus, while the Haryana government has marked 170 acres for its Rohtak IIM campus.

For the IIM at Tiruchirapaly, the Tamil Nadu government has identified 192.35 acres  and 214 acres of land for the Raipur IIM in Jharkhand has also been finalised.

That is really scary, especially when you consider the number of abductions, looting, murders and rapes committed by the taxi men at the New Delhi airport.

Pre-paid taxis, introduced not too far back, slightly improved things. My first experience? You go the pre-paid taxi counter inside the domestic airport, tell the guys at the counter (I think they are cops) where you want to go, and pay them there. Take the receipt to the pre-paid taxi stand outside, locate your assigned taxi, and get home. Simple as that. In theory. In practice, it was a nightmare.

First, there is no order to the way the cars are parked outside. You could not locate your pre-paid cab. Say you did after a bit of searching. Sometimes he would outright refuse to come. Sometimes, they would try to palm you off to another taxi driver. If you are a first-timer to the New Delhi airport, you are in for some serious mess. If you are a woman and are new, my advice is, stay inside. DO NOT take a pre-paid taxi.

Once GMR / DIAL took over airport operations, I thought things would change. They became slightly better, for sure. There are helpers now, to find you your taxi. There is a queue for taxis, as well as for passengers. But it all still comes to naught.

What happens is that the taxi drivers refuse to pick up passengers, or drive away when you approach a cab. Is that crazy or what? The helpers are useless, they try hard but the cab-drivers don’t listen to them. They know they can get away with their stunts most of the time.

Do not look for logic here. Do not ask me why the cab-drivers behave the way they do. They just do it. Sometimes, its because its 10:45 PM, and after 11:00 PM, they could charge a night fare. So they wait till it is 11:00 PM, and then appear in front of waiting passengers and then insist on a night fare when you are taken to your destination.

Sometimes its because they are just lazy. Sometimes its because they want a long trip. And I am sure, a few times, its because one of them, or a few of them, have targeted you for their kill. This month, a woman was abducted from the airport by some cab drivers. Years back, there was a killer gang there.

This is scary, sure. But I think after seeing these bastards for a decade and a half, I have to warn you.

What do you have to do, if you are a tourist, woman, kid, or anyone unfamiliar with New Delhi and have to take a taxi from the airport?

Take a private pre-paid taxi. Like QuickCabs or EasyCabs, or some of the other proivate pre-paid taxi operators you can find inside the airport. Stay away from the regular yellow-and-black prepaid taxi counter. Ty can figure out that counter easily – it would look the most bureaucratic, dreary, and it would be called something like the government counter or new delhi tourism prepaid taxi counter or something similar.

Even if you pay a bit more for the private taxi cabs from the New Delhi Airport, you will get a cab almost instantly, you will generally be safe, and there is no wild chasing after taxis. Not to mention that your life is much, much safer with these guys.

My advice to DIAL / GMR – Clamp down on these guys. Try to get a standard pre-paid taxi from outside the airport, and you will see for yourself how nasty it can be. And do not forget that this is the first experience of India’s national capital for most visitors to the city. It is the worst introduction, for sure.