According to Ratan Tata, chairman of Tata Sons, the company will set up similar housing projects in other centres in India such as Bangalore, Kolkata, and Assam.  Read more about the Tata Shubh Griha low cost housing project in this story.

The company’s affordable housing project launched in Boisar has attracted interest from all parts of the country, Ratan Tata said in Munnar in Kerala. He was in Munnar to attend the silver jubilee celebrations of the High Range School in Munnar, run by the Tata Group.

The Tata Housing Development Company Limited, which started the ‘Shubh Griha’ project in Boisar, near Mumbai, is offering what the company calls ‘Smart, Value Homes’ to people across India, to start with.

The Tata Group, the first corporate entity to have entered the low-cost housing sector, says it will spread its presence across India – in Tier I cities and Tier II cities.

The ‘Smart, Value Homes’ from ‘Shubh Griha’ in Boisar are priced between Rs 3.9 lakh and Rs 6.7 lakh.

Ratan Tata said that Maldives has expressed interest in the company’s housing project and has invited the Tata Group to introduce the concept in Maldives.

According to him, the consumption of steel in developed countries such as Europe and the United States is expected to reach the pre-recession levels in the next 2 years. The good news at present, he added, is that the market has stabilized, with no sudden drop or cancellation of orders.

Ratan Tata said that a team from Land Rover and Jaguar had visited India in search of components they can source from the country. So far, no decision has been taken on this.

Tata Motors, he disclosed, is planning to adapt the Nano car for the European market. However, it will take at least 2 years for the company to meet all regulatory requirements before the launch in Europe.

The new high-speed, high-horse-power truck that Tata Motors has launched will be marketed worldwide – among the countries would be Malaysia, Indonesia, South Africa, as well as the countries in the Middle East. At present, these trucks are exported to South Korea, according to Ratan Tata.

When asked whether the Tata Group will cut the salaries of its top executives, Ratan Tata said the Group has already taken steps to cut costs as well as avoid wastage.

These growth figures were lower than the net profit of 24 per cent, posted in April-June 2009, in comparison to the same quarter in 2008.

Reports say that four operators, including Etisalat, are poised to enter the already crowded Indian market, in 2009.

Tata DoCoMo, a joint venture of  India’s Tata Teleservices Ltd. and Japan’s largest wireless operator NTT DoCoMo Inc, that was launched in India in June 2009, has already stolen a march over Bharti Airtel by signing up more subscribers in the third quarter.

Tata DoCoMo’s plan to charge per second for calls, unlike other operators who charge per minute, has enabled it to garner more subscribers.

Meanwhile, Vodafone’s market share has grown to 17.7 per cent at the end of August 2009 from 17.3 percent during the same period, in 2008.

During the same period, Airtel’s market share fell from 24.5 per cent to 23.6 percent. Reliance, which also cut down its prices, increased its market share from 17.8 per cent to 18.4 per cent over the past one year.

Akhil Gupta, deputy chief executive officer of parent Bharti Enterprises Pvt., is reported to have said that Bharti Airtel is looking at emerging markets and plans to expand its non-mobile businesses, such as data and direct-to-home broadcasting.

The decision to issue multiple-entry visas to traders was taken at a meeting of the Indo-Saudi Joint Commission held in at Riyadh in Saudi Arabia.

The meeting was attended by India’s Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Saudi Arabia’s Minister for Commerce and Industry Abdullah Zainal Alireza.

A 10-member delegation of businessmen from India, which accompanied Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, also held discussions with senior officials of Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province Chamber of Commerce, on taking the trade between Indian and Saudi Arabia “to the next level.”

Reacting to the bilateral decision on multiple-entry visas to businessmen, Sharad Nandurdikar, of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), said that a major hurdle has been removed. Indian business who wanted to come to Saudi Arabia to do business had to face visa-related issues every time, and businessmen from Saudi Arabia had similar complaints, Nandurdikar added.

Nandurdikar said that an important meeting will be held in New Delhi in early 2010 in order to address specific issues related to “processes and procedures” that affect two-way trade.

Adnan A Al-Nueim, secretary-general of Asharqia Chamber, of Saudi Arabia, said his country’s trade will certainly get a boost with the reciprocal visits.

According to Adnan A Al-Nueim, over 200 ‘Amerindic’ companies are at present active in Saudi Arabia.

The net profit of Bharti Airtel, the biggest telecom operator in India in terms of market share, dropped by 7.8% in the second quarter of FY 2009-2010 to Rs 2,321 crore from Rs 2,517 crore, on a quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) basis.

During the period, the total revenues declined by 0.97% to Rs 9,845 crore – down from Rs 9,941.6 crore.

Both the revenues and profits of Bharti Airtel in Q2 2009 were below expectations. A poll conducted by CNBC-TV18 had shown that the company’s net profits would be Rs 2,401.2 crore and total revenues would amount to 10,218.4 crore.

Bharti Airtel, based in New Delhi, said in a statement that while its EBIDTA (earning before interest, depreciation, tax and amortisation) margin was 42.1%, the deferred tax writeback stood at Rs 221.2 crore. 

The ARPU (average revenue per user) went down to Rs 252 from Rs 278, and the minutes of usage fell to 450 from 478 quarter-on-quarter.

Sunil Mittal, CMD of Bharti Airtel, however, said in a statement that the company continues to maintain its market leadership position in the mobile segment in spite of the mounting competition. Bharti Airtel’s budding DTH business is emerging to be leader in the field in many states of the country thanks to high the quality of product and service, Mittal added.

Bharti Airtel said that 12 milion-13 million customers were being added each month and that it will pursue “all available growth opportunities” and work towards creating new streams of revenue.

The company said it had 113.4 million customers as on September 30, 2009.

Bharti Airtel had, in September 2009, an ambitious plan to merge with MTN, the leading wireless service provider of South Africa.

It may be noted that NTT DoCoMo, based in Tokyo, and the biggest wireless operator in Japan, is attracting customers with pay-per-second calls. Reliance is now offering plans with call rates of 1 US cent per minute. 

According to data from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), Vodafone’s share of wireless users in India rose to 17.7% at the end of August 2009 from 17.3% a year before, while Bharti Airtel’s share of wireless users declined to 23.6% from 24.5% in the same period.

Reliance performed well, with its market share rising from 17.8% to 18.4% in 12 months.

Net income in the second quarter rose to Rs 5,090 crore, or 23.8 rupees a share (EPS), Rs from 4,808 crore, or 22.48 rupees apiece, the New Delhi-based ONGC said in a statement to the Bombay Stock Exchange yesterday. Sales declined to Rs 15,080 crore from Rs 17,407 crore a year earlier.

ONGC  said profit also rose after the government allowed ONGC to cut discounts given to state-owned refiners such as Indian Oil Corp (IOC)., reducing the explorers subsidy burden. ONGC sold crude at $56.42 a barrel in the quarter after giving discounts, 21 percent higher than last year. Discounts to state refiners fell 80 percent to Rs 2,630 crore in the quarter from Rs 12,663 crore.

ONGC has to sell crude oil at a discount to the state refiners to help them compensate for losses from selling petrol and diesel below cost. ONGC was exempted from bearing losses from sale of kerosene and liquefied petroleum gas.

The company’s total expenses during the second quarter of 2009 fell to Rs 8,713 crore from Rs 11,177 crore. Interest payment dropped to Rs 3.54 crore from Rs 97.4 crore in the year-ago quarter.

The explorer plans to spend Rs 24,720 crore in the year ending March 2010, ONGC said in a statement posted on its web site. ONGC said it has made five oil and gas discoveries in the quarter ended September and another four this month.

ONGC said it plans to add 72.65 million tons of ultimate oil and gas reserves in the year ending March 2009 and 76.17 million tons in the subsequent year against actual of 68.90 million tons in 2008-09.

Apart from cutting jobs, Versace aims to rationalize production facilities, review its store network, reduce capital investment in 2010, and cut overheads as part of its reorganization plan.

Versace will lay off 350 employees, out of its 1,360 employees working globally.

Versace, famous for its Medusa head logo, is working towards boosting its bottom line in the year 2011. To achieve this goal, Versace has taken certain measures that it will execute in the  middle of 2010.

The company plans to rebuild its Japanese operations and is re-evaluating the entire strategy of the company, said Versace earlier in October 2009.

Design head Donatella Versace, her brother Santo and her daughter Allegra own Versace.

Donatella, who is in charge of the fashion collection designs, is more focused in wearable outfits than Versace’s trademark glitz and gold.

“Trading conditions in the wake of the global financial crisis have been severe and the company expects to make a loss in 2009,” said Gian Giacomo Ferraris, chief executive of Versace, since June 2009.

“No organization can allow a situation like this to continue, especially considering the flat outlook for 2010.”

Reliance Industries Limited, India’s biggest company by market value, said its 2009-2010 fiscal second quarter profit fell 6.4 percent to 3,852 crore rupees on lower refining earnings. This is the fourth straight decline in quarterly profit reported by the company as a global recession weakened fuel demand.

Mumbai-based Reliance said its net profit in the three months ended September 30 fell to 3,852 crore from 4,116 crore rupees a year ago, its fourth straight decline in quarterly profit. Sales rose to 46,848 crore from 44,688 crore rupees last year, Reliance said in a statement posted on its web site.

Reliance Industries, which operates the world’s largest refining complex, reported a 51 percent drop in the revenue it earns from processing each barrel of crude as oil prices fell from last year’s record highs. The company owned is Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man, is investing in exploration to cut depended on refining.

The company started producing gas from KG D6, its biggest discovery off India’s eastern coast, in April. Reliance said it produced 40 million standard cubic metres of gas from the find in the six months to September.

The refiner earned $6 on every barrel of crude turned into fuels in the September quarter compared with $13.4 a barrel a year ago. Global refining margins have fallen to $3.42 a barrel in the quarter compared with $6.20 last year, according to BP Plc data.

Earnings from Reliance’s petrochemicals business rose 16 percent in the quarter on higher demand and help from a fall in the rupee, the company said.

Reliance said it earned $7.5 billion in the six months to September from exports of fuels from its refinery located at Jamnagar in Gujarat. It exported for about 13.2 million tonnes of fuels compared with 11 million tonnes last year, the company said.

The company’s outstanding debt as on September 30, 2009 was 71,349 crore rupees against 73,904 crore on March 31, 2009, Reliance said. The company, which has the highest weightage on the Bombay Stock Exchange’s 30-share Sensitive Index Sensex, offered stockholders a bonus of one share for each equity share owned in Reliance earlier this month.

Reliance Industries fell over 1 percent on Friday morning trading, a day after it posted it released its quarterly reports for Q2 2009.

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.

“It is rather unfortunate that due to the continued economic constraints and business outlook, we do not anticipate that we will have the ability to recall many of our valued associates within the VPP period.”

Around 8,000 employees have become a part of the virtual pool that was formed on June 11, 2009. On that day Vineet Nayyar, CEO, Tech Mahindra had said that the VPP employees will be provided with  basic salary, PF and medical insurance.

The six-month period of VPP will come to an end in December, 2009. Since the company does not have enough projects to accommodate all VPP employees, it has sent a two-month notice to over 5000 employees as per the employment contract.

The reason for the axing is believed to be the lack of enough projects to accommodate all the employees.

A Mahindra Satyam spokesperson denied the news regarding layoffs and said that the company has taken 1,500 associates from the virtual pool.

The elevated expressway, which cost Rs 600 crore and passing through many congested routes, will provide a faster and rather trouble-free travel to the new airport, which is 27 kilometres away from Hyderabad city.

The expressway from Sarojini Devi Eye Hospital to Aramgarh will cut down the travel on the route by 30-40 minutes.

The flyover, constructed by the Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority, is planned to be named after the late P V Narasimha Rao, former Prime Minister.

According to Anam Ramnarayan Reddy, Andhra Pradesh Minister for Municipal Administration, the 11.6-kilometre-long, 4-lane carriageway has been constructed with the state-of-the-art technology, using the segmental-type, post-tensioned construction of super structure.

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister K Rosaiah will inaugurate the flyover next week. Trial runs are being carried out now.

While the actual cost of the flyover is Rs 439 crore, the rest Rs 161 crore was spent in acquiring land for shifting utilities.

The officials of the Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority say that the major components of the flyover project like Underpass on National Highway-7 at the Aramghar Junction, widening and strengthening of the Atgrade IRR from Rethibowli to Aramghar from 4 lanes to 6 lanes, and the Trumpet Interchange have been completed.

Also completed are minor protection works such as speed-breakers, hazard-markers, railings, streetlights, signages, placing of median slabs, and bitumen surface.

In the meantime, there are reports that a hitch of a political kind is delaying the inauguration of the elevated expressway, which was ready about 10 days ago – that there has been covert move from certain quarters to rename the expressway after the late Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy (YSR) who died recently in a helicopter crash. In fact, Rajasekhara Reddy had announced October 2, 2009, as the deadline for the completion of the flyover project.

The Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) is leading the opposition to naming of the expressway after P V Narasimha Rao since the party believes that Narasimha Rao was responsible for the demolition of the Babri masjid.

Work on the expressway, which began in September 2006, was intended to be completed in 26 months, but it got delayed, till it was finally completed about 10 days ago.