Polycom, a $420-million provider of video and web conferencing solutions, is trying to find a niche for itself in telemedicine and education in India. Its CEO and President, Robert C. Hagerty, was in India recently to explore market opportunities. As he told BT's Abir Pal, Hagerty liked what he saw. Excerpts:

It's your first visit to India. How does it look?

Changes that are going on in the (optic fibre) network infrastructure are really making a difference for our applications and it's really amazing. With the emerging IP broadband network, our applications work better, are more reliable and of course the cost of technology has come down substantially.

Do you think the level of broadband network in India is adequate?

I think it is more than adequate. They are going to be the best in the world, and I think India is going to leapfrog the rest of the world and have a model network.

Any specific area you think needs improvement in technology, infrastructure?

We are floored by the fibre that has been laid here, especially by Reliance Infocomm. It's going to be amazing. Once that is done, we can get pictures that can be put on broadcast television.

SPORT
Shooting for Gold

Corporate punch: Ringing in moolah

The Athens Olympics is round the corner in August, and guess who is eyeing gold? The players apart, it is India Inc. CII's national committee on sports is urging its members to support to, for starters, boxing and wrestling. "Our main objective is to make sports a way of life in India and focus on winning gold in the Olympics," says Sushanto Sen, Deputy Director General, CII, in charge of the sports wing. The committee actually has a "Core group on Golden Hopes" whose main task is to "select and identify sportspersons who could bag gold for India in the Olympics". Under this scheme, Tata Steel has sponsored Diwakar Prasad, and acc, Akhil Kumar and Jitendra Kumar, all boxers, of whom the latter two have qualified for the Olympics. As for the fight in the ring, that's another story.

-Moinak Mitra

On Board Embraer
The Brazilian company has India on its radar.

Embraer's Peddle: His next big bet is Asia-Pacific

If somebody told you that India is potentially a big market for the aviation industry, you'd probably laugh. After all, there are only three major domestic airlines compared to the 40 in the US. But when J. Bruce Peddle, Managing Director (Asia-Pacific), Embraer Civil Aircraft, tells you that-and on board an Embraer E170, 30,000 feet above Delhi-it's hard not to pay attention to him. Last fortnight, Peddle took a motley crew of journalists for a ride in his E170 as proof of the Brazilian aircraft maker's interest in India. "Across the world, consumers want more frequency and airlines want to make (more) money," he said as the surprisingly comfortable 70-seater took off from Delhi's international airport. "The E170 can allow airlines to start routes on sectors that would be unprofitable on the Airbus 320 family or the Boeing 737 family."

In fact, Embraer has sold more than 800 regional jets over the last 10 years, and is now challenging the near-duopoly of Airbus and Boeing in, what Peddle calls, the medium capacity market. In plain English, that's the 70 to 110-seat aircraft market. Peddle expects the Asia-Pacific markets (China excluded) for jets in the 30 to110-seat category to buy 480 units over the next two decades (China alone is expected to buy 630 such aircraft). And India and Australia, says Peddle, would pick up most of them. With cheaper fares and more friendly aviation policy in India, Peddle will probably have a lot of jet-setting to do.

-Kushan Mitra

A Boost for Banks
SC strengthens the hands of the lender.

Mardia Chem's Rasiklal Mardia: NPA's poster boy

It was one ruling that the banks had been waiting for a year-and-a-half now. And when the Supreme Court ruling finally came on April 8, validating the Securitisation Act in what is now known as the Mardia Chemicals vs the Union of India case, the banks were ecstatic. So was the stockmarket, which rewarded them by pushing the BSE Bankex up by 2.35 per cent (versus the Sensex's 0.4 per cent gain) when the week ended on April 16.

That may seem surprising to many, especially after the apex court struck down Section 17 (2), which required the defaulters to deposit 75 per cent of the debt owed to the bank with the debt recovery tribunal (DRT) before filing an appeal against the attachment of their assets. But the apparent anomaly is easily explained. Although in scrapping Section 17 (2) the Supreme Court has made a minor concession, it has upheld the basic framework of the Act. And that takes away a whole lot of tentativeness about the lender's right to seize and sell the defaulter's assets. "The very existence of a law like this has a deterrent effect on borrowers defaulting," says Kalpana Morparia, Deputy Managing Director, ICICI Bank. She feels that the Act will have a psychological effect similar to that of Section 138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act, which makes cheque bouncing an offense punishable with imprisonment.

While in the short term there may be an increase in the number of appeals filed with the DRT, in the long term nobody is in doubt as to the effect the Act will have on the banking sector's non-performing assets.

-Ashish Gupta and Narendra Nathan

FM RADIO
Sweet Tunes

By putting out its first consultation paper on the second phase of fm radio privatisation recently, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has touched upon many no-go areas that have been plaguing the private fm radio industry for the past three years.

The new media and broadcasting regulator has invited suggestions from the industry on a host of contentious issues such as allowing news & current affairs, offering multiple licences, intra- and inter-operator networking, doing away with mandatory co-location, introduction of national and local area licences, allowing foreign direct investment, setting new modalities for the highly contentious issue of licence fee, and even migration of 24-odd phase I licences (issued in 2000-2001) to the new fee structure.

"We're excited as TRAI seems to be moving very fast on it," says Nishchint Chawla, Chief Operating Officer, Radio Today. The excitement is understandable. Radio's revenues from advertising are less than Rs 150 crore, which is not even 2 per cent of the total advertising pie of Rs 9,000-crore. But the fm stations players need to spend anywhere between 234 per cent and 998 per cent of their revenues on just the licence fee. TRAI's consultation paper, then, is a harbinger of hope for the beleaguered industry.

-Shailesh Dobhal