As its marketing head for five years, he's credited with having turned Samsung Electronics into a globally cool consumer electronics brand. For 51-year-old Korean-American, Eric Kim, Vice President & General Manager (and head of marketing), Intel Corporation, the challenge now is to change how the world sees the chipmaker, not a PC-component maker, but the enabler of a digital lifestyle. On a recent visit to India, Kim spoke to BT's Shailesh Dobhal. Excerpts:

What was the challenge with Intel when you came on board last year?

Intel is already an established brand, so the challenge was very different from Samsung. Samsung was not a very well known, (almost) a commodity brand (back in 1999), and the challenge was to bring it onto the global stage. With Intel, it is to go beyond the pc, for Intel was established within the pc category and is (still) synonymous with the pc.

The vision for the brand is to evolve it from a technology-leadership brand to an emotionally exciting, digital convergence one. Emotions are important because technology has got to a point where it has become such an intricate fabric of life and is no longer only for the specialists. Technology is accepted implicitly as part of life and Intel has to be positioned as a brand that you accept as part of life, not as a technology product.

As Intel moves out to mobile and consumer electronics, how does it compare with brands in this space?

Well, Intel is unique in that there is no comparable ingredient brand. So, our mission is not really to compete, but to complement-(just as the) Intel brand complements hp, IBM, HCL, etc. (in the pc business). The reason why they embrace our offering-number one is that we provide the right technical specs and right components for their needs-is also because we bring a brand to the products they use.

Intel is reported to be going in for a re-branding exercise with a new logo.

I won't call it re-branding, but the evolution of the Intel brand. Intel was very much associated with the pc and we need to take that as our core strength and evolve it into a broader foundation-not just the pc, but anything digital. The latest rim phone (the new Blackberry phone model from Canadian company, Research In Motion) that uses the latest 3G technology, has Intel's latest application and communication processor and is (almost) a full computer in itself. We have agreed to let rim brand 'Intel Inside' with this phone to be available in the US by the end of the year. So, Intel Inside brand is expanding beyond just pc products into mobile products, and hopefully, in the future, into consumer electronics products.

Why did Intel scrap the 'Whitefield Chip' project in India?

Leading edge technological development is never a guaranteed thing, so you engage in multiple projects betting that some of them will be successful. We are funding many projects, and it (Whitefield) was one of the projects that didn't work out. On the other hand, there has been a major success story. We are launching Intel's latest mobile platform, and a key part of this platform was developed here (in India) by the same team.

I'm OK, You're OK
SEBI takes the open-market approach to defaults.

SEBI's Damodaran: An adult-adult transaction?

Thus far in 2005, India's securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT), which hears appeals on orders passed by stock market watchdog Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), has heard 107 cases. Of these, it has modified SEBI's order in 50, and set them aside entirely in 18. Some of these cases were from the years 2003 and 2004. SEBI's track record (in terms of how sat deals with appeals on its orders), and the backlog are unlikely to give defaulters, current or prospective, any sleepless nights.

It is in this context that reports about SEBI's plan to go down the negotiated settlement route should be considered. Popular in the us, this essentially means that SEBI and the individual or company in question agree to settle the case for a certain mutually-agreed upon amount (by paying this, the individual or company does not admit any guilt). Although SEBI is not willing to comment on the when-and-how of this process, corporate lawyers believe negotiated settlements are a good idea. "It is good for the regulator," says Girish Dave, Partner, Dave & Girish Advocates. "Apart from saving time and resolving cases, it will reduce the burden on the judicial system and help SEBI earn a good amount."

The negotiated settlement system can be abused (it is highly subjective), but that isn't the biggest flaw in SEBI's thinking. This is: with sat modifying every second order of SEBI, why should defaulters want to pay when they have a 50 per cent chance of getting off easy.

-Mahesh Nayak

Go South For Profits
Philips' Kleisterlee: Testing it in India

Philips' Kleisterlee: Testing it in India

That's what Gerald Kleisterlee, President and CEO, Royal Philips Electronics, would like his company to do. Not South geographically, but in terms of price. "Bridging the digital divide is a key focus for Philips and we see India as a great testing ground to develop programmes and solutions that can be used not just here, but around the world." Among these, adds Kleisterlee, are low-cost variants of its Nexperia chipsets that will allow telephone companies to make sub-$20 (Rs 900) phones and battery-operated radios with integrated television bands that users can tune into when a power cut blanks out their TV. Can these halt the relentless march of the Koreans in India (and elsewhere)?

-Rahul Sachitanand

IPTV: It's Here

UT Starcom's Yadav: TV isn't TV without IP

What is it?

Just what the name indicates, Internet Protocol TV that will be delivered to the houses of customers through broadband.

How does it work?

Television signals are digitised (or packetised; essentially broken up into small packets), streamed to houses by telcos (through broadband) and put together by set-top boxes (or viewed directly on the PC).

When will it hit India?

Technology provider UT Starcom is currently partnering one telco in a pilot; there should be an IPTV launch in India by the end of this year.

What are the benefits?

Real-time rewind and the like; enhanced revenues per user for telcos; addressability (who is watching what) for broadcasters.

Who will go for it?

UT Starcom Managing Director Vijay Yadav believes anyone "who has a broadband connection will opt for IPTV". That's a market of between 7,00,000 and 9,00,000 for starters.

-Amanpreet Singh

Children Of A Lesser Mammon
The government is moving at last to improve public sector pay scales.

Mukesh Ambani CMD Reliance Industries Rs 22 crore		Subir Raha CMD ONGC Rs 6.5 lakh + perqs
K.V. Kamath MD & CEO ICICI Bank Rs 1.83 crore		A.K. Purwar Chairman State Bank of India Rs 5 lakh+perqs
Rono Dutta President Air Sahara Rs 5 crore		V. Thulasidas CMD Air-India Rs 12 lakh

Here's further proof that the government is internalising reforms. After being in denial mode for decades, it has at last realised that money does indeed make the world go round. Proof: it has proposed a revision in the salaries of public sector banks to reflect market realities. PSU salaries across the board are a joke. Sample this: India's largest commercial bank, State Bank of India, pays its Chairman A.K. Purwar Rs 5 lakh per annum plus perquisites, which include housing, a chauffeur-driven car, medical facilities, etc; their cash value, Rs 8-10 lakh per annum at the most. Fresh MBAs from Tier I institutions have come to expect as much or more from foreign or new generation Indian banks. And K.V. Kamath, MD & CEO of the country's largest private sector bank, ICICI Bank, gets Rs 1.83 crore a year.

Little wonder then that the best and the brightest no longer consider PSUs their first choice employers. And private sector companies are more than willing to poach talented, but underpaid professionals from PSUs to spearhead their thrust into sectors that were hitherto out of bounds for them. "In PSUs, the pay structure at senior levels is cash-poor, but perqs-rich," says Mohit Mohan, Senior Vice President, Gilbert Tweed, a leading executive search firm. Another drawback: the best a public sector executive can expect for outperforming his peer group is an out of turn promotion; salaries are decided by the Pay Commission. "But salaries in the private sector are performance-linked and sharply focussed on the individual," adds Deepak Gupta, Country Head and Managing Director, Korn/Ferry India, another leading placement firm.

Despite this, there are still die-hard public sector loyalists. Subir Raha, CMD of ONGC is one such. "I have thoroughly enjoyed my career in the public sector and would not wish to trade it for any private sector company," he says. His annual salary: Rs 6.5 lakh plus perqs. The corresponding figure for his opposite number at Reliance Industries: Rs 22 crore. "Compensation is important, but not the overriding factor in any executive's employment choice. Many executives consider the challenge more important," says Sanjeev Goenka, Vice Chairman of RPG Enterprises, which reportedly pays its power sector CEO Sumantra Banerjee about Rs 2 crore per annum. By contrast, C.P. Jain, CMD of NTPC, gets a paltry Rs 11.4 lakh per annum plus perqs.

Footnote: There's more good news. The Ministry of Science & Technology has decided to pay researchers market-linked stipends and is even working on a package that will give them a share of royalties from any patented technology that is successfully commercialised. The winds of change are picking up speed. But what we need is a gale force storm.

-Arnab Mitra and Amanpreet Singh

Rajesh Jain's Ecosystem
The entrepreneur is tech's weathervane.

Netcore Solutions' Jain: IT's scoothsayer

One way to find out which way technology is headed is to keep an eye on Rajesh Jain. The man has been there (ahead of time, actually), done that. He built a cluster of sites, such as samachar.com, khel.com and khoj.com in the very early days of the internet (1994) and sold them to Sify for $115 million (Rs 499 crore at the then exchange rate) in 1999. Jain hasn't been sitting back and taking it easy since (although he has managed to keep a low profile). He has been ideating, investing and launching new ventures.

Today, there are seven such, each of which is a bet on tech's next big thing. Jain likes to call this the Emergic ecosystem. Emergic is the man's term for disruptive innovations in computing that can bridge the digital divide. "The driving vision behind this platform-codenamed Emergic-is to make computers and broadband access available at a cost of Re 1 per hour," Jain writes in his blog (Emergic.org; a media-shy Jain declined to talk to BT for this story).

What are Jain's big bets? The first is low-cost messaging and security solutions offered by his company, Netcore Solutions (he spends almost 70 per cent of his time on this). From e-mail to bandwidth management to spam filters, Netcore handles everything and with Linux-based solutions (some 300 companies have bought into this vision). Then, there is Novatium, a partnership between Jain, Analog Devices' Ray Stata and IIT Madras Prof. Ashok Jhunjhunwala to design and make low-cost hardware that will change the way people in Asia and Africa use their PCs. The company's soon-to-be-launched Nova Netpcs will essentially be thin clients (that means much of the intelligence, or software, will reside with servers maintained by a third-party service provider, maybe telcos, and accessed by users over broadband) that provide a simple-to-use computer interface for just around $100 (Rs 4,500). Jain is also an investor in two more companies incubated by Jhunjhunwala, Midas Technologies, which makes equipment based on the low-cost cordect wireless standard developed by the good professor, and also provides broadband solutions, and n-Logue, an ISP (internet service provider) and wannabe telco that uses this technology to provide voice and data services in rural areas.

Jain is also part of an interesting project called Seraja, the brainchild of Ramesh Jain (no relation), a professor of computer science in University of California, Irvine, and the founder of three companies (praja, Virage and ImageWare). Although not much is known about this project-conceived in February this year-it is said to be developing an experiential search engine for events (for instance, an event like a cricket match can be searched and experienced using multimedia tools). Finally, Jain is also an investor in Rajat Barjatya's Rajshri Media, which creates and aggregates Bollywood content for delivery through broadband and mobile networks, and PubSub.com, a New York-based next generation web tool that matches a pre-stored search query against any new information appearing on the web. "I think about what I am doing as blending entrepreneurship and thesis-based investing. Will it pay off? I hope so," he writes in his blog.

-Sahad P.V.