Seventymm's Kher: Going to the movies

What: India's first online movie rental service called Seventymm.com

How: Log on to www.seventymm.com, register, select movies from a database of 10,000 titles, order, and have it home delivered. The good part: There is no late fee, and the VCDs/DVDs are collected from home

How Much: Rs 199 a month for four movies per month, or pay Rs 549 for unlimited movies; besides, there's a registration fee of Rs 499 and deposit of Rs 2,000. These are inaugural fares open till May 30, 2006

Who: The man behind Seventymm is a serial entrepreneur called Raghav Kher (his previous company Rendition Networks was acquired for $40 million), and is backed by Silicon Valley VC Draper Fisher Jurvetson and ePlanet Ventures

Inspiration: Kher wants to do a NetFlix, which is America's biggest online movie retailer

Catch: The service is currently limited to Bangalore, and the model is easily replicable, although Kher says that Seventymm's first-mover advantage, coupled with scale and logistics, would be high enough barriers

-Venkatesha Babu

Now Borrow Talk-time

What: A new plan from cellular operator Hutch that allows subscribers to literally borrow talk-time

How: Open to all pre-paid customers in Delhi, the scheme allows subscribers to transfer talk-time. To do that, simply send an SMS to 144 saying, for example: BAL 9811012345 Rs 200. The minimum amount for such transfers is Rs 50 and there's a charge of Rs 5 per transaction that gets automatically deducted

Why: "With varied pre-paid recharge schemes like life-time validity, low/high-amount recharges and many different amount of recharges, the portfolio of purchase options is almost complete," says a Hutch spokesperson

Prospects: It should do well. Life for budget-conscious parents and individual employers becomes that much easier

--Shaleen Agrawal

Opera Strikes A New Chord

Opera's Tetzchner: Eyeing India

In 1994, Jon S. Von Tetzchner and Geir Iversoy developed a web browser while working for Norway's telecom giant Telenor. The following year, they had formed their own company called Opera Software, with a mission to deliver the best web browsing experience based on open standards. More than 10 years later, Opera is still a small company (2004 revenues Rs 67 crore), but enormously popular for its free browsers, which are designed for a variety of devices-from PCs to PDAs to mobile phones to IP TV. Now, Opera wants to tap India's software talent. Last fortnight, Tetzchner came to India to announce the setting up of a centre in Chandigarh. Initially, the centre will employ quality assurance testers, who'll support all of Opera's browsers and "open the web" evangelists. But why Chandigarh? "People coming to work for Opera in Chandigarh would be a dedicated lot and their attrition to other companies would not be easy as there are very few other such companies," says 38-year-old Tetzchner, adding that Chandigarh is a nice city to live in too. He hasn't set a date for the opening, but says it will be within this year. Browser rivals Microsoft and Google will be keeping an eye on Opera's moves in Chandigarh.

-Shaleen Agrawal

P-WATCH
A bird's eye view of what's hot and what's not on the government's policy radar.

A NEW DRUG POLICY

Final touches are being given to the National Pharmaceutical Policy (NPP), 2006. The NPP will put in place a system for pricing patented drugs. The empowered committee is studying the practices followed in Canada, France, Australia and some Asian countries in this regard. The new policy aims at "providing life-saving drugs at affordable prices, dispensing free medicines to people below the poverty line and exempting anti-cancer drugs from all central taxes like excise and import duties," says a senior officer in the Ministry of Health. A 2 per cent health cess has been proposed, along the lines of the education cess, to pay for the free medicines that will be supplied to BPL (below poverty line) families. This will now be sent to the Finance Ministry for its consideration. The policy has also proposed that the names of medicines, costs, manufacturing and expiry dates should also be written in Hindi. The final policy will be announced by March-end.

-Ashish Gupta

EXEMPT EXEMPT TAX REGIME AROUND THE CORNER

No, EET is not a new medical test, though it may impact the condition of your heart. How? Currently, several savings schemes, like postal savings, insurance and pensions are exempted from taxes at every stage-when you invest, during the tenure of the investment and at the time of withdrawal. Hence, the name exempt, exempt, exempt or EEE. You get the drift? The government thinks all income should be taxed at least once. So it proposes to change the last "E" in EEE with a "T" for tax. The plan now is to introduce EET in phases. The implication: you will then buy insurance or other saving products because you need them and not because of the associated tax breaks. And EET is expected to increase the penetration of products such as insurance and pensions. A final decision on the matter is expected soon.

-Shalini S. Dagar

A SERVICE TAX FOR THE STATES

Here's some good news for state finances. The finance ministry is drawing up plans to allow states to levy service tax on items that are not "national in nature". So, doctors, lawyers, architects, chartered accountants and educational institutions, among others, will have to cough up this levy. The new plan will be a win-win situation for both the state and the central governments. While it will mean more money flowing into the state coffers, it will save the central government the bother of collecting taxes-as it now does in the form of central sales tax, which is passed on to the states-from the smaller non-corportised services sector.

-Ashish Gupta

A TWO-MONTH RESPITE

Petroleum and natural gas Minister Murli Deora has urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to urgently implement the report of the Rangarajan Committee on Pricing and Taxation of Petroleum Products (see The Recommendations). But elections are due in five states; so the government is unlikely to accept the report till they are over. Meanwhile, Indian Oil Corporation, Hindustan Petroleum Corporation, Bharat Petroleum Corporation and IBP continue to bleed.

-Ashish Gupta

GET YOUR PAN

Scrutiny of annual information Returns, or AIRs-which track high value purchases and are filed by third parties such as mutual funds and credit card companies-reveals that about 60 per cent of such transactions are conducted without quoting the purchasers' Permanent Account Number (PAN). The Finance Ministry now plans to net tax evaders by making PAN mandatory for such high-value transactions. There's more: it proposes to issue PAN suo moto in some cases, and will direct people to apply for PAN in others.

-Shalini S. Dagar