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ST Team
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
NSN plans $100 Mn investment in India

Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN), an equal partnership joint venture between Nokia’s Network Business Group and Siemens announced its plans to invest $100 million in the country over the next three years as a part of its commitment to develop a strong telecommunications environment.

According to newspaper sources, setting up of the proposed telecommunication equipment manufacturing facility in Tamil Nadu for wireless network equipment, new offices across various cities, development of the existing R&D centre and expanding the Global Networks Solution Centre are included in this investment.

The proposed facility aims to address the market demand in the country and will manufacture high-end equipment.

NASSCOM plans to certify students’ IT job skills

Followed by the success of NASSCOM’s Assessment and Certification Programme (NAC) for the BPO sector, it is also considering a similar testing and accreditation offer, NAC Tech, for IT services.

According to Kiran Karnik, Chairman, Nasscom, NAC-Tech, likely to launch this academic year, aims to make NAC-Tech, an industry standard to evaluate students aspiring to find jobs in the technology and engineering industries.

It will also help the IT industry, academic institutions, and individual colleges to understand the potential of the students and to determine their caliber in terms of industry relevance and employability.

India among top 13 countries in scientific papers

India is among the top 13 countries in terms of published scientific research papers, according to a recent study by the Science Watch team of Thomson ISI.

Thomson ISI, a global leader in providing access to high-value, essential information for researchers said that India published 211,063 papers as against 422,993 by China. In terms of total papers in all fields from 1996 to 2006, India ranked 11th, ahead of South Korea and Taiwan.

KnowledgeLink Newsletter of June 2007 noted that the May/June issue of Science Watch ranks 13 countries based on published scientific papers that reach the top one percent of most cited papers worldwide from 1996 to 2006.

Cognizant plans $200 Mn investment

Cognizant Technology Solutions, a provider of global IT and business process outsourcing services will invest around $200 million in India through the end of 2008 to build new fully owned techno-complexes in Chennai, Coimbatore, Hyderabad, and Kolkata.

As a part of its first phase of expansion the company will set up its second IT and business process outsourcing services infrastructure in Kolkata. Through an investment close to $46 million by the end of 2008, the facility would accommodate around 4,000 more employees. The company will also continue to lease additional facilities in Kolkata.
Presently, the global workforce of the company is 44,000, out of which 33,000 is in India. The company is also planning to increase its global headcount to 55,000 by end of 2007.

Nexus raises $100 Mn fund to invest in India

Nexus India Capital, a venture capitalist firm, has closed a $100 million Venture Capital Fund to invest in opportunities across sectors in India. Nexus plans to invest in both technology start ups as well as companies with business models not driven by technology. The funds investors include top tier institutions and strategic family offices from North America, Europe, and Asia.

The fund has invested in five innovative companies to date, including $5 million each in the Mumbai-based mobile2Win, a mobile value-added services company, and the Andhra Pradesh-based DimDim, a web collaboration start up. The fund, which generally invest in around 2-3 companies every quarter, is expected to invest in three more companies in July.

Nexus Capital expects its portfolio to grow to $20-25 million over the next two to three years, and is investing in the range of $500,000 to $10 million in companies.

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