APP THAT’S A BACK-UP PLAN

Don’t worry about date risk, cellphone offers extra cover 

New York: Whether it was a match made online or a love that developed over the telephone, a new iPhone application is designed to make that first date or meeting safer.
    An estimated 20 million people visit online dating sites each month in the US, with activity usually spiking in the build-up to Valentine’s Day. “People are Internet dating now and you don’t know the character of these people,” said Linda Smith, of Chicago-based Date Tracker Alert LLC, which developed the app.
    Although love may be in the air, the dating safety app, myDate-TrackerAlert, aims to remove some of the risk of that first face-to-face encounter. “The person with the app can maintain their dating privacy,” Smith explained in an interview. “But when you need help, when you don’t check in, they (your emergency contact) have the information that will help them find you.”
    The app sends out an email or text to up to four chosen emergency contacts with the name, time and location of the date if the app owner does not check in by a predetermined time by clicking an ‘I’m OK’ button on the app. The date’s email and cellphone number can also be included in the app and up to four people can be listed as emergency contacts.
    “Four alerts can go out,” Smith explained. “You actually are better off that way because you have more of a chance that someone will try to find you in a timely manner.”

 Omshankar Tiwari

PGDM 2nd SEM

AUSTERITY DRIVE

Obama’s budget aims to reduce deficit by $1.1 trillion 

  President Barack Obama’s multitrillion-dollar budget, to be sent to Congress on Tuesday, will project deficit reductions of $1.1 trillion over a decade, an official said.
    Two-thirds of the reductions in the budget for the year beginning October 1 would be achieved through cuts in domestic programmes, including airport, water and sewer grants, and publichealth and forestry programmes, the official said, confirming a story in Monday’s New York Times.
    The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the budget details haven’t been released. He said that by 2015, the budget deficit would decline to about 3% of the US economy, from an estimate of about 9.8% this year, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Trimming the budget deficit to 3% of the nation’s GDP is a level most economists deem sustainable.
    The $1.1 trillion reduction over a decade is measured against spending levels in fiscal 2010, the official said. Budget director Jacob Lew said that measure is being used because it’s the last year of full funding of government programmes. Congress hasn’t approved a budget for fiscal 2011, which is almost half over.
    Much of the plan for savings comes from plans for a five-year freeze in non-security domestic
spending that the Obama administration says would save about $400 billion during the next 10 years. Such spending accounted for about 14% of the budget in Obama’s last budget. Republicans, who control the House, spelt out plans on February 11 to cut about $100 billion in programmes from the current year’s budget.
    Over the past few weeks, the administration has announced or leaked plans for the fiscal 2012 budget that would: Impose a fiveyear freeze on domestic spending outside security for a projected savings of about $400 billion over a decade, increase spending on education and infrastructure by unspecified amounts, add $15.7 billion to build a nationwide wireless network for emergency workers and widen access to highspeed internet, seek cuts of $2.6 billion, or about 50%, in the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Programme, grant relief to heavily indebted states by temporarily suspending interest payments they owe the federal government for borrowing money to cover the soaring cost of unemployment benefits. This would be accompanied by a moratorium of state tax increases paid by employers to help fund benefits. Adding to the above, there will also be a demand for $8 billion in fiscal 2012, and $53 billion over six years, for construction of high-speed rail. BLOOMBERG

Barack Obama 

 

 

Nitesh Ranjan

PGDM 2nd Sem 

Mahindra Aero eyes strategic investor 

Chennai: The Mahindra group is looking to scale up its aerospace business to capture a slice of the $12-billion offset business in the Indian defence market. Group company Mahindra Aerospace Private (MAPL) is looking to rope in a strategic investor (it already has Kotak PE) and is pumping in Rs 284 crore in a new facility in Karnataka for components, assemblies and aerostructures both for its own and other large aircraft. The idea, said a top company official, is to create competence for components on one hand and build compact, rugged, affordable aircraft—‘Scorpio of the aero industry’—on the other.
    “We are talking to potential strategic investors including OEMs and tier I suppliers. We are looking at a relationship that will help us access both customers and technology—not just for the offsets business but for aerospace competency beyond that too ...,” Hemant Luthra, president, Systech, M&M, told TOI. A tie-up is a “distinct possibility” in the quarter. The top tier 1 suppliers globally are players like Alenia, part of the Italian group Finmeccanica, Premium Aerotec, Aernnova Spain, Aerolia, and Spirit Aerosystems but Luthra refused to speculate on the name of the potential strategic partner. The $7.1 billion Mahindra group is building a 20-acre component plant at Narsapura in Karnataka.
    The company has acquired equipment from the Boeing Aerostructures plant in Melbourne Australia for the Narsapura plant. “We bought the assets of Boeing's metallic aero structure plant and it is being shipped as we speak. Acquisition of assets of Boeing Aerostructures Australia further enhanced by additional capabilities being built will ensure that the India plant has both sheet metal cutting and several distinct unique capabilities in terms of stretch forming and post machining processing capabilities matched by few others and should give us a distinct advantage to meet tier I plus OEM needs, including our own as we build out our own NM5 and GA aircraft,” Luthra said.
    Kotak Mahindra owns one-third stake in MAPL which has two arms —components, assemblies and aircraft. The former is built around the acquisition of Aerostaff and the latter around Gippsland—both Australian companies that MAPL acquired last year. The new strategic investor is rumoured to be looking at an equity stake in the components and assemblies arm. There are also plans to list the aerospace business but not in the near future.

 Aleem Ahmad

PGDM 2nd Sem

Cumulative sales for the fiscal (April 2010 – January 2011) are 868,583 higher by 27% compared to the corresponding period in 2009-10.

Tata Motors Group global wholesales, including Jaguar Land Rover, were 98,998 nos. in January 2011, a growth of 16% over January 2010. Cumulative sales for the fiscal (April 2010 – January 2011) are 868,583 higher by 27% compared to the corresponding period in 2009-10.

Global sales of all commercial vehicles – Tata, Tata Daewoo and the Tata Hispano Carrocera range -- were 45,815 nos. in January 2011, a growth of 14%. Cumulative sales for the fiscal are 408,761 nos., a growth of 27%.

Global sales of all passenger vehicles were 53,183 nos. in January 2011, higher by 17%. Cumulative sales for the fiscal are 459,822 nos., a growth of 28%.

Global sales of Jaguar Land Rover in January 2011 were 20,377 vehicles, higher by 25%. Jaguar sales for the month were 3,056 nos., higher by 3%, while Land Rover sales were 17,321 nos., higher by 30%. Cumulative sales of Jaguar Land Rover for the fiscal are 195,819 nos., higher by 28%. Cumulative sales of Jaguar are 46,008 nos., higher by 17%, while cumulative sales of Land Rover are 149,811 nos., higher by 32%.

Global sales of Tata passenger vehicles and the distribution offtake in India of Fiat cars were 32,806 nos. for the month, higher by 13%. Cumulative sales for the fiscal are 264,003 nos., a growth of 28%.

JITENDRA KUMAR SINGH

PGDM SEM-2

Malcolm Gladwell enlightens our thinking with his book Blink, a fascinating exploration of how decisions are made in the blink of an eye, before consumers even realize they’re making a decision. He suggests “we think without thinking.” Gladwell’s effort to share emerging insights into how our brains work is timely. In this decade, we are learning more about how humans think and feel and what drives our behavior than the whole of our discoveries in the time since Sigmund Freud dreamt up the idea of psychoanalysis. This has profound implications for marketing and brand professionals.

Varun Kumar Tiwari

PGDM-2nd sem