Craig Mundie: CTO and Gates' chief evangelist, too

On September 29, Delhi hosted an ''ambassador''. "The Economist magazine called him Colin Powell-the Secretary of State,'' said the master of ceremonies by way of introduction. Indeed, the July issue of Economist did call Craig Mundie, the Chief Technical Officer of Microsoft, 'Secretary of State' of the 'State of Windows'. Mundie, pretty much like what Powell did after the Iraq war, is travelling around the US and the globe telling people that Microsoft, which is seen as a terrible bully, now wants to be seen as exerting responsible industry leadership.

But that implication was lost on the audience from the media, which had gathered to hear Mundie announce the launch of 'project Bhasha'-a project to support computing in 14 Indian languages. Microsoft has lured Professor S. Balakrishnan, who heads super computing research at the Indian Institute of Science, to head the project. "Microsoft is collaborating with government, academia, and industry" to promote local language computing said the press release. "This has been done in quick speed because it is Bill's (Gates) personal sponsorship," beamed Mundie after Windows and office were demonstrated in Hindi. It was bonhomie all over with Nasscom's Kiran Karnik saying the usual pleasantries, this time about Microsoft's effort to increase domestic computing.

When a lone reporter who had read that Economist article asked Mundie if all the fonts and property that were being developed with help from academicians and scholars in India would be available in the open source, Mundie's reply was a very taut: "The fonts won't be given free. If the community wants, they have to make their own font. They are not entitled to any of ours.''

Mundie's diplomatic effort is targeted at academia, government and editors. He has to convince academia-Microsoft held an influencers roundtable where Balakrishnan of IISc, Deepak Phatak of IIT Mumbai and S. Sadagopan of IIIT Bangalore were present-to go along with Microsoft's vision of the future. He needs their backing both for technology and for linguistic help. It would also help if students used Windows too. India is a big future market. These influencers will also tell governments to go local language on government-to-citizen interfaces, which will spur usage of computers.

Microsoft hosted a meet for the editors too. But most editors deputed their usual it reporters and the one-and-a-half-hour briefing turned out to be tame. Mundie's message there: About a career in computing-we are at the threshold of another wave of innovation in computing, so what is coming is a golden era of programming; about ms strategy-Microsoft's web services vision is to create an abstraction for the internet, create a platform on which people can innovate. Then came the bit about "Trustworthy computing"-Microsoft's new thrust on security, privacy and reliability (ahem!). "There are 500 million windows machines out there, it is becoming essential infrastructure. These were never made for the net. Now we need to take care of their security. As your bandwidth increases, Windows will update patches on your machines automatically (huh!?)," he held forth.

Then there was that bit about treating machines with techniques used by epidemiologists to isolate machines with problems. Microsoft was also building technology for protecting intellectual property (''everything from luggage locks to safety vaults'') like digital rights management for songs. And lastly it also included business integrity-dealing with partners and customers responsibly (read: not bully brazenly). If all this has not convinced you yet, Mundie knows that. He is going to be back soon.

-Vidya Viswanathan

EXECUTIVE TRACKING
Churn at GSK

Simon J. Scarff: Trouble in his wake

Ever since Simon J. Scarff handed over reins at GSK Consumer Healthcare to the new Managing Director Nick Massey last November, there's been top-level churn at the Horlicks company. First it was Director (Sales & Marketing) R. Subbrayan who put in his papers on April 1, 2003, followed by a series of exits. Operations head Chris Lambert has been parceled off to the UK, and now it's the CFO Abhinandan Chatterjee's turn to leave. His case, though, is the most intriguing. As recently as 2001, Chatterjee had bagged a special commendation at the American Express-sponsored "CFO of the Year" event. BT learns that Mohit Jain, Head of Procurement, is leaving too. It's not unusual for a new MD to effect changes, but when that triggers an exodus of sort one has to wonder who's wrong: the company for having kept these people on board for so long or the new MD.

-Moinak Mitra

THE BT 50 INDEX
Things are getting giddy on Dalal Street. Hold on to your seats, investors.

Since May this year, the BT 50 index has soared from about 110 to 170 now. And if you had been paying attention to this index, you would have actually seen the rally coming. So what's so special about the BT 50? It's a free-float index and India's first at that. (BSE's shift to a free-float index came much after BT's.) But what's a free-float index and why is it better? In the BT 50 free-float index, the market capitalisation of a company is based on the quantum of shares available in the market for trading and, therefore, excludes holdings of promoters and strategic investors. As a result, the index is less prone to distortions that happen when large market cap companies with high promoter holdings are included. So, can the BT 50 tell you when the market will start dipping? Keep watching.

-Narendra Nathan

Shell's LNG Gamble
The energy major is betting big on India.

Ready to rock: Shell's twin LNG terminals at Hazira

Even from a distance of a few hundred yards, Royal Dutch-Shell's twin LNG terminals at Hazira announce their ambition loud and clear. When completed in mid-2004, the two terminals will each store 1.6 million metric tonnes of liquified natural gas and cost Shell Rs 2,000 crore in investment. But then this is no ordinary project. At a total cost of $600 million (Rs 2,760 crore), Shell's Hazira project is not just the biggest foreign direct investment in the energy sector, but also a measure of Shell's intent. It plans to be the first private sector company to bring in 2.5 million metric tonnes of LNG into the country by the last quarter of next year, besides building a multi-cargo, all-weather port at Hazira for its own usage.

Yet, there are many reasons why Shell should temper its enthusiasm. One, rival Petronet LNG (a consortium backed by GAIL, ONGC, BPCL, and IOC) is close to commissioning its 5-million TPA LNG plant at Dahej, 80 kms from Hazira. The Rs 3,000-crore plant will not just start production ahead of Shell's, but also sell most of its gas to the consortium owners. Besides, it has a tie up with Qatar's Rasgas for its supplies, and the first shipment is due in January next year.

Shell, in contrast, is yet to tie up supplies and buyers, although Group Managing Director, Malcolm Brinded, says that's a deliberate strategy. "We'll have more than one supplier and more than one set of consumers," he says. That, however, does not quite address another problem that Shell is set to encounter: Pricing its LNG. Matching the prevailing subsidised price of $2.50 per million British thermal unit (BTU) will be hard, given that existing vendors of natural gas (mainly ONGC and Oil India) actually lose money at that rate. Shell admits that it won't be able to match the prevailing price. "It has to be priced at anywhere between $3 and $4 per million BTU," says Marc den Hartog, Director (Gas & Power), Shell India.

But it's likely that LNG prices will go up in the future, simply because demand is building up. According to government estimates, the demand for gas is set to more than triple to 231 million cubic meters per day (MCMPD) by 2006-07 and to 391 MCMPD by 2025. Also, 46,939 mw of additional power capacity is to be set up under the 10th plan (2002-07), of which 2,600 mw could be gas-based. These NTPC projects had been held up because of the absence of fuel. If that happens, Shell's twin terminals will look less like a gamble.

-Ashish Gupta