Asia Bizz

Asia Bizz: With the launch of Junglee.com on February 2, 2012, popular American online retailer Amazon.com is also entering the Indian market. Junglee.com is the toned down version of the global online retailer.

The best thing about the website is that users are allowed to compare prices of items, but the most actual purchases must be made through a network of third party retailers. The Indian shoppers can now shop for shoes from Reebok,  clothes from Fabindia, computer gadgets from Microsoft India and luxury leather bags from Hidesign.

Some of the items like Kindle are sold directly by Amazon.com, but it will be subject to steep international shipping along with customs fees. Amit Agarwal, the vice president of Amazon.com, said in a statement that they are excited to give customers in India a single line starting point where they can shop from a wide range of products sold by the local as well as international retailers.

Agarwal added that online shoppers can also make informed purchasing decisions. The internet penetration in the country is low, but the online retailing is a fast growing business. In India, the e-commerce market is expected to grow from $10 billion in the year 2011 to $200 billion by the year 2020.

Asia Bizz: In a good move by the administration of Ranchi, petrol pump owners have been instructed not to give fuel to motorists who do not wear helmets. The officials have asked the fuel stations to display a notice in their premises.

The fuel station owners have also been told to note down the number of the two wheeler if the rider without a helmet tries to get petrol by force. The measure has been taken to ensure the safety of the riders in the city.

One of the officials said that KK Soan the Deputy Commissioner of Ranchi has directed all the owners of the petrol pump not to give fuel to two wheeler riders without helmets. The pump owners have also been asked to install CCTV cameras in their premises.

More than 43,000 two wheelers have been registered in the city. Even in the past, the police launched a special drive against those not wearing helmets. Reports said that the police had also started garlanding riders without helmets. On the other hand, the petrol pump owners are sceptical on the move as it would increase their work and also expense to install CCTV cameras.

There are more than 95 petrol stations in Ranchi.

Asia Bizz: A new survey has revealed that India is among the few countries in the world, along with Romania and Mexico, which is not yet prepared to defend itself against the emerging cyber attacks. The survey which has been backed by McAfee cyber defense and it has mentioned that countries like Finland, Israel and Sweden are in the lead in terms of ‘cyber-readiness’.

The survey states that countries like UK, US, Germany, Spain and France rank favourably in the survey. The rankings in the survey are based on the experts perceptions of a country’s cyber – readiness as well as the ability to deal with the range of threats and attacks.

The survey has also taken into consideration basic security measures like adequate firewalls and anti-virus protection. It also includes more complex matters like well informed governance and education.

Raj Samani, the chief technology officer of McAfee, said that the subjectiveness of the report is the biggest strength. Samani added that the report has also considered the perception of cyber readiness by the individuals who understand and work in cyber security on a day-in and day-out basis. The report has also stressed on the need for greater information sharing making law and also enforcement of more powerful laws to combat cyber attacks.

Asia Bizz: With the growing popularity of dual SIM phones, LG is all set to launch a new mobile phone to hold three SIM cards at a time. The new phone, named A290, i s expected to  to operate three SIMs and will have a 2.2 inch display, with a resolution of 176 X 220 pixels.

The features of this unique mobile phone include a 1.3 megapixel camera with flash and 1500 mAh battery. Moreover, the A290 handset will also have slim dimensions despite being packed with powerful features.

At present, the phone will only be launched in Russia in the month of February 2012, but the details of the worldwide release are yet to be known. The price of the triple SIM handset is expected to be around € 75, which in Indian currency would cost approximately Rs 4,866.

Another important factor to be noted is that it is still not clear if the handset is a triple SIM dual stand by or triple SIM dual active. The dual SIM phones are day by day becoming popular in the Indian market and if the triple SIM phone is launched in India, it is expected to become even more popular provided it is offered in a good price range for the users.

Asia Bizz: The popular Luxury car maker Mercedes Benz has launched its GL-Class sports utility vehicle for the Indian market on January 31, 2012. The GL-Class SUV has been priced at Rs 65.5 lakh ex-showroom.

Debashish Mitra, the director of sales and marketing of Mercedes Benz India said in a statement that Mercedes Benz is an inspirational brand and the GL-Class has received very encouraging response from the customers since its launch in the Indian market.

Mitra added that the GL Class SUV, which means Grand Edition, has been aggressively priced for the Indian market. With the introduction of the new SUV, it will further strengthen dominance in the SUV segment of the country.

The GL Class SUV has been launched in two variants Executive and Luxury. The Executive has been priced at Rs 60.99 lakhs while the Luxury version has been priced at Rs 65.5 lakh. The new edition of the SUV comes with many exciting features including two tone leather seats, metallic paint finishes, 10 spoke and 20 inch light allow wheels. The managing director also said that their aim is to provide all top end luxury features in the grand edition at affordable prices. The company has launched the GL Class in the market looking at the growing demand of the SUVs.

Asia Bizz: The netizens in China are discussing the rising prices of the popular Starbucks Coffee. The Seattle-based coffee chain has increased the prices of its beverages in 500 of its Mainland China stores on January 31, 2012.

The coffee drinks, as well as one of its chocolate ones, are now costlier by 1 to 3 yuan so as to offset the operational costs. The information was given in a post from the company at the popular Chinese micro-blogging site on Tuesday.

The post of the company has become so popular and it has already been circulated more than 13, 000 times with more than 2,200 comments. The netizens are at large criticizing the increased costs of Starbucks coffees.

On the other hand, despite receiving several complaints about the increased prices, the sales of the beverages at Beijing have not been affected. One of the employees said that he did not observe any changes in the number of customers since the price hike went on in to affect. Customers who come regularly still spend money on the coffee despite the increased prices. Starbuck claims that the price hike is the first in five years in its mainland stores. The coffee chain even increased the prices in California as well as south Florida.

Asia Bizz: The Indian technology companies are now in the current year and 2013 might slowdown the exports of software. The apex bodies of the companies will be taking the move as the corporations keep an eye on the global economic certainty and control the expenses on information technology.

One of the industry officials said that for now two things are certain – that they might not be able to beat the upper end of the year’s forecast and it is unlikely that the industry will grow any faster next year. The official also added that the double digit growth of the financial year ending March 2013 can prove to be a safe production.

Meanwhile the members, including Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro, are at present struggling to provide clarity about the demand. Normally the companies are certain about the growth forecast by the end of January, but this year the companies are still struggling with the customers on outsourcing budgets.

Another official from the company said that it does not look so robust and the picture is bit hazy this year. The official added that the goal cannot be seen unless the road is clear. There are possibilities that the companies might revise it upwards during the year in case if the picture becomes clearer.

Asia Bizz: The online booking of the world’s cheapest tablet PC Aakash began last year, but now all can book the coveted tab from the company’s website as the tablet is available at Ncarry.com, an online shopping site.

The tablet is manufactured by Datawind and 30,000 of the tablets priced at Rs 2,500 were put online for sale, only to get it sold off in no time. But now the bookings for the higher model Ubislate 7 are on.

The government of India initially thought of buying the ‘Aakash’ tablets with an aim to connect 25,000 colleges and 400 universities with the help of an e-Learning program. But thn many of the devices that were distributed in the testing phase had complaints of poor battery life and slow processor.

Now the Indian government has requested Datawind to come up with an improved device which will soon be launched. The tablet supports the formats like DOC, PPT, XLS, PPTX, XLSX, ODT and ODP. The commercial version of the tablet is powered by Android 2.3 with a resistive touch screen and a 7 inch display. The Ubislate 7 has a 256 MB RAM, 2 GB internal memory and graphics accelerator HD video processor. The HRD ministry has recently promised a revised version of the tablet soon.

Asia Bizz: The apex decision making body of the Indian telecom ministry, the Telecom Commission, has decided to allow the mobile phone companies to share spectrum. But the facility has been limited to the 2G spectrum only.

The second generation (2G) spectrum is widely used for vanilla voice services. This means that the telecom companies cannot share the 3G spectrum.

Earlier, telecom companies like Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, Aircel and Idea Cellular had taken the Indian government to court after the companies were asked to terminate their 3G roaming deals. With this move, the companies had hopes that it would put an end to the controversy.

The companies have signed up 3G customers across the country on the bilateral roaming agreements which allows these firms to use each other’s air waves to offer high end data services even in the regions where the 3G spectrum is not available. The operators state they were not aware of the TC decision as the government did not announce it. The new condition to the sharing includes only the operators which have airwaves in a particular region can share it. And two companies can share air waves only if their combined holdings do not exceed more than the prescribed in the M&A norms.

Asia Bizz: Till now Honda was the brand which kept itself away from the diesel market, but now the Japanese auto giant Honda Motors is all set to enter the diesel market in India with its compact car Brio.

At present, the Japanese car maker is testing its diesel technology – common rail i-DTEC on the Brio. The company can introduce it on a 1.2 litre version.

The Brio was launched in the Indian market in September 2011 and was priced at Rs. 3.95 lakhs. The hatchback has a 1.2 litre i-VTEC petrol engine, which has the capacity to churn out maximum power of 88bhp along with a mileage of 18.4 kmpl.

With the launch of the diesel version of the hatchback, it can be expected that the sales chart may rise despite the late entry in the diesel market. The demand for diesel cars in India have gone up by 26 % due to the rising prices of petrol. In the recent times, the prices of the City and compact Jazz have gone through a price cut due to the dip in the sales. The price of the City was cut twice this year, due to which the value of the cars in the city has depreciated.