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TVS Suzuki finally launches its 4-stroke offering, the Victor. Now what?
If there's one thing that can be held responsible for TVS Suzuki's fall from its number two position in the motorbike market, it has to be the company's procrastination in equipping itself with a 4-stroke model. Between April 2000, and August 2001, the company saw its marketshare dip from 18 per cent to 15 per cent. And armed with a clutch of new offerings number three Bajaj Auto overtook TVS Suzuki. ''Yes, we are late,'' admits TVS Suzuki CEO Venu Srinivasan, but hastens to point out that the Victor has an import content of less than 1 per cent. ''The product compensates for the delay.'' At Rs 41,187 (Rs 1,000 less than the Splendor), TVS-Suzuki hopes to sell 70,000 Victors this year; 200,000, the next. That target, believes Ganesh Relekar, the chief analyst of market intelligence firm Frost and Sullivan, is achievable: ''The company's popularity in the southern parts of the country should see to that.'' TVS Suzuki's share of the southern market has decreased from 23 per cent last year to 19 per cent this year, and in the same period, its share of the northern and the western markets have fallen from 19 per cent to 15 per cent and from 17 per cent to 11 per cent. The Victor, then, may not really help the company win back the number two slot. -Nitya Varadarajan Executive Tracking
The prodigal son returns. Early in 2000, Mukesh Patel, the managing director of PSI Data Systems quit to head Princeton India, a consulting firm. Soon after acquiring a controlling stake in the company from Groupe Bull, though, the AV Birla Group's Indian Rayon sought patel out, and the man has now joined the group as it Sector Head. His brief? To oversee psi's progress, explore forays into other areas of infotech, and scout for acquisitions. Returns seem to be the order of the fortnight. HLL has recently rehired Vishal Dhawan who had quit the company to become the chief executive of GE Countrywide. But he left earlier this year, and is now back with HLL, as head of popular foods (he'll be looking after the branded staples). Meanwhile, the seven Indian auto companies that announced a combine to create an auto exchange have launched a massive hunt for a chief executive. Watch this space... Scooter Woes The lowly and much-maligned scooter finally got its 15-minutes in the limelight early this month. Venu Srinivasan, was, at the time of going to press, shadow boxing with Rajeev Bajaj, the CEO-in-waiting of Bajaj Auto. The issue at hand was Suzuki scooters. Bajaj wants to make Suzuki scooters in India, following a world-wide alliance between Bajaj Auto's partner, Kawasaki, and Suzuki. Srinivasan says he is in talks with Suzuki to bring its scooters to India through his own company. Bajaj may well have the edge. Srinivasan had cold-shouldered Suzuki when the Japanese company wanted to bring its scooters to India through TVS Suzuki, a couple of years ago. Srinivasan had proceeded with an in-house product, Spectra, which turned out to be a dud. -Suveen K. Sinha BUBBLES
In an event that went unnoticed by most-the new-e is no longer in fashion-Sify's portal edged out Rediff's in the first quarter of 2001-02. The specifics: Rediff's portal recorded revenues of Rs 3.05 crore ($0.65 million), as compared to Sify's which did Rs 5.17 crore ($1.1 million). Worse, while Sify's portal revenues were 22 per cent higher than those recorded in the same quarter last year, Rediff's were 25 per cent lower. And revenue per 1,000 page views fell by 58 per cent for Rediff, and grew by 2 per cent in Sify's case. Out of Rediff's total revenues (portal plus other businesses), as much as 88 per cent came from its two recent acquisitions, Value Com and India Abroad News Service. ''Rediff has de-emphasised its business in India; in the short term the US market may be lucrative, but in the long term, it just cannot ignore India.'' warns Rajeev Gupta, a director with the Hong Kong operations of Goldman Sachs. But with both companies reporting losses (Rs 11.28 crore for Rediff and Rs 79 crore for Satyam Infoway (all its businesses)), the minor statistic about the performance of their portals is unlikley to bring anyone cheer. -Vinod Mahanta OIL-SLICK Don't pinch yourself; you're not dreaming. A presentation made by the petroleum ministry to industry this month says that's how much petrol could cost, once it dismantles the administered price mechanism (APM) for oil-products on April 1, 2001. Diesel, for those interested, could cost, Rs 18 a litre and although the presentation didn't get into the specifics of kerosene and liquified petroleum gas (LPG), it admitted that the prices of these two commodities, the most subsidised in the APM-roster, could spiral upwards. The ministry of finance could still block the petroleum ministry's efforts to dismantle the APM; it is worried about what could happen to the oil pool deficit which could swell to Rs 18,000 crore by March 2002 if prices aren't raised further. But petroleum minister Ram Naik has said the deficit is the finance ministry's problem and is pushing ahead. Industry is all for this, but as the automobile industry recently announced, it would like to know what the new policy would be at least six months in advance. ''Our production cycle is planned six months in advance,'' says Jagdish Khattar, Managing Director, Maruti. ''If we get to know the new rates for petrol and diesel on March 31, 2002, how can we plan our production?'' That's a legitimate concern. A sharp fall in fuel prices could have a tremendous impact on what the cars companies choose to produce. If petrol were available for Rs 21, Tata Engineering may wish to roll out more petrol-Indicas (currently, only 15 per cent of the Indicas produced run on petrol). Meanwhile, dream on about that Rs 21... -Suveen K. Sinha Spy Vs
Spy Ver 2.0: Inc. Capers
In its simplest form, this takes the shape of one company simply luring the employee of its rival to work for it, hoping, of course, that he or she comes with information that can be of use. Last year, Sanjay Bhatla, a manager at the Jaipur office of Samsung Electronics quit, and joined LG with the password to the company's Enterprise Resource Package back-end. LG won the court battle that ensued, but did Bhatla help the competition with 'sensitive' information? No one knows for sure. Another established custom is for a company in search of information to hire the sons and daughters of highly placed civil servants. Somehow, this ensures that the right information reaches them at the right time. Corporate espionage services in India are rendered not by detective agencies-the bulk of their business comes from supplying security guards; the rest from divorce cases-but by former army officials and bureaucrats, like the one this correspondent met in his office an asbestos-roofed one room structure located behind a civil servant's bungalow in a tony Delhi neighbourhood. ''It's a roaring business,'' says the man. ''And the 3Ws, wine, women, and wealth come in handy,'' he adds after a moment's deliberation. Much of this greying sleuth's work for companies involves finding out information about their competition, or, sometimes, details of the competiton's interactions and transactions with the government. With 70 clients, and an average billing of Rs 3 lakh to Rs 5 lakh per assignment, he must be making a pretty packet, but admits that the ''incidental expenses'' involved in the business of snooping are steep. And, if you get caught, you're certainly on your own. -Moinak Mitra
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Anyone
who hasn't spent all of September in a temporal warp is sure to know about
the Procter & Gamble-Unilever incident. The former admitted that it
used ''covert'' means to garner intelligence on the latter's hair care
products. ''I guess the compensation would run into tens of millions of
dollars,'' says Unilever's spokesperson Trevor Gorin. P&G may have
burnt its fingers, or more appropriately singed its hair, but corporate
spying, albeit in a less organised fashion, is very much alive in India.