The Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG) has collaborated with One Laptop per Child (OLPC) foundation to bring the latter's much-hyped $100 laptop to India to promote e-learning among poor children.

Under this initiative, Reliance Communications (RCom) will provide Internet connectivity, network backbone, logistics, and support to the OLPC initiative.

The initiative aims at covering over 25,000 towns, and 6,00,000 villages in the country by 2008. The larger OLPC project has already provided laptops to 5 million school children across the world, and aims to cover 150 million by 2008.

Based on the Linux OS, the OLPC (XO) laptop has replaceable keyboards, which can be changed for use with 35 global languages.

While announcing the collaboration, Tina Anil Ambani, said, "Children are the future of the nation, and shaping the future of millions of school children through new age learning systems is of prime importance in today's digital era."

OLPC has launched its first pilot in the country at a school in a tribal village at Khairat, near Karjat in Maharashtra, where school children have been provided with laptops, and training for teachers to incorporate new ways of imparting education.

Carla Gomez Monroy, learning consultant of OLPC, and a part of the pilot, said, "Children lack opportunity, and not capability. Children at Khairat school, who have never even seen a laptop before, are showing easiness and receptiveness while learning on laptops. It has also resulted in reduction in the number of children absentees."

Sumit Chowdhury, chief information officer of RCom, said, "School children will be able to access their educational modules in local languages, collaborate with each other, connect to the Internet, and play games as well."

The laptops are connected via network to the school server. All laptops are on the network, so school children can interact with each other, and share the learning experience. However, once out of the school network, these laptops are rendered absolutely useless. They would work only till such a time the battery lasts.

"Keeping in mind that the laptops will be handled by school children, they have been built drop-proof, 45-degrees shock-proof, water proof, and have a longer battery life as compared to regular laptops," added Chowdhury.

RCom and OLPC are in talks with government agencies, NGOs, content developers, translators, teachers, and project managers to create successful ecosystems to further the OLPC program in India.

Around 20,000 youths from the eight northeastern states are to be recruited for India's booming IT enabled services and business process outsourcing (ITES-BPO) industry.

According to the National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom), the initiative for the recruitment drive is being done with help from the union ministry of development of northeastern region (DoNER).

Nasscom, the apex body of Indian IT and service companies, has created an assessment and certification programme called Nasscom Assessment of Competence (NAC) for a common and transparent recruitment process.

"About 100 NAC tests would be conducted across the northeast followed by job fairs early next year for the successful candidates for recruitment to the ITES-BPO industry," said Brajamohan Sinha, director of the Tripura manpower and employment department.

The tests, meant for graduates and others, are to be held in phases later this month and in November and December.

According to a Nasscom statement, of the 20,000 proposed recruits, the highest number of 8,000 would be from Assam followed by 3,500 from Tripura, 2,000 in Nagaland, 1,500 each from Mizoram, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh, and 1,000 each from Manipur and Sikkim.

"The ITES-BPO industry is growing at an overwhelming pace and giving a major fillip to the Indian economy. India has established its leadership position globally in the off shoring market and now the availability of skilled manpower is one of the key barriers to the fast growth of the industry," Nasscom said.

Air Chief Marshal F H Major on Friday said IAF fighter pilots are now gearing up to take part in the world famous US 'Red Flag' air combat exercise, confirming an earlier TOI report.

But it's too early for the Left to raise their flags of protest against the 'Red Flag' since the exercise will be held only in mid-2008.

Six IAF fighters, two transport aircraft and an IL-78 mid-air refueller are likely to fly to Nellis US air force base at Nevada, north-west of Las Vegas, for the exercise.

"We have bid for 'Red Flag' in 2008. It's the most sought after exercise in the world. The facilities at Nellis can simulate all kinds of air warfare and we want our pilots and technicians to be exposed to it," said ACM Major.

India and US have held around 50 joint military exercises in the last six-seven years to enhance "functional interoperability" between their armed forces, with the recent Malabar naval war-games in the Bay of Bengal being the latest example.

With Indian Railways planning to install ATMs in selected trains, you may be able to withdraw money while travelling.

"We already have ATMs in many stations. Now, as a further step, we are planning to install ATMs in some trains as a pilot project," said a senior railway ministry official.

"We are in discussion with some banks to finalise the ATM project", said the official adding a feasibility study is also being commissioned to study the proposed ATM plan.

In the first phase, ATMs would be installed in popular trains and later on depending upon the success of the facility it would be extended to other trains.

However, trains passing through Naxal-affected areas are not being considered for ATM facility for security reasons, the railway official said.

"We have strengthened security measures at railway stations and trains by deploying explosive detection devices, door-frame metal detectors, CCTV and smart video cameras at sensitive stations. Beside acquiring modern security gadgets our dog squads have also been strengthened as there is a need for deploying sniffer dogs at stations", he said.

Steps have been initiated to operate Global Positioning System (GPS) in trains to improve our trains tracking system. A GPS-based system for rail navigation has been planned in coordination with IIT Kanpur. The system provides real time tracking system using GPS.

Beside ATMs and ATVMs, Railway Ministry is planning a major up-gradation of entertainment in some inter-city super-fast trains.

As per the plan, the seats of the coaches will be equipped with flat-panel television touch screens with head phones offering passengers options of live and pre-recorded entertainment and movie channels.

BANGALORE: The rupee appreciation looks to be hitting jobs in the technology sector. The industry's spends devoted to hiring have hit a speed breaker. According to industry observers and media analysts, the last few months have seen as much as a 50% decline in recruitment advertisements.

Several tier-1 tech firms that advertised 12 times across the country in a quarter has brought the frequency down to five. Domestic and MNC tech firms like TCS, Infosys, Wipro, Satyam, HCL, Patni, IBM, HP and Dell are all said to have embarked on a "conscious cost-cutting binge". The only exception is seen to be Accenture, which continues to spend heavily on print recruitment ads as the company has an ambitious mandate to increase its India strength.

Analysts say the decline in advertising is a consequence of increased utilisation of the bench (those sitting idly waiting for projects), and a greater dependence on employee referrals (on an average 30% of the entire IT hiring is done through this channel) and external hiring agencies.

Joydeep Raha, vice president (initiative) in advertising company Lowe, said, "IT firms today are extremely conscious about the utilisation levels of their bench staff to optimise productivity and increase profitability (which has been badly hit by the rupee appreciation). This has significantly brought down the size of the IT recruitment ad market."

Ajay Shroff, director in ad firm Pinxit Blue, said, "This scenario has resulted in an immediate business impact of 20 to 25% on ad agencies. Agencies that do not have a vertical spread could be the most hit, by up to 50% of their income. Also, the bring-the-buddy scheme (employee referrals) has become extremely popular, with some companies doubling or even trebling the referral bonuses."

Shroff said one employee was recently given a reward of Rs 1 lakh by his employer for referring his friend to work. "IT recruitment ads have become seasonal. Now, ad firms wait for increment/attrition months like June, July, August or January to put out the ads. This has started impacting our revenues adversely," said Soumya, director (accounts) at RK Swamy BBDO.

Quality of talent has always been a problem with recruitment ads, which drives up costs. "A single print ad can throw up 10,000 resumes at a time. But often, the employable ones in the lot could be barely 10. Imagine the time and energy we end up spending on screening these CVs" asked an HR manager of a large IT firm.

MUMBAI: It’s another feather in the cap of Indian academia. Vijay Govindarajan, the Earl C Daum 1924 Professor of International Business at Dartmouth Colleges Tuck School of Business, will soon join General Electric (GE) as professor in Residence and chief innovation consultant to help the company advance its innovation agenda.

Indian academicians are among the most sought after business brains in the West. Already people like Govindarajan, Ram Charan and CK Prahalad are advising several Fortune 500 companies. Incidentally, all three of them have made it to the Thinkers 50, an annual ranking of the Top 50 business and management thought leaders.

Says Govindarajan, "My area of expertise is how to create breakthrough businesses while managing the current business. And this is what I will do at GE as well." This was also a theme that Govindarajan addressed in the bestselling book 10 Rules for Strategic Innovators (co-authored with Chris Trimble).

Jeffrey Immelt has been pushing innovation at GE ever since he took over in 2001. The idea is to grow though organic innovation instead of just acquiring companies. GE has identified six areas to innovate in: environment, infrastructure, demographics, emerging markets, digital technologies and financial liquidity.

Each of these businesses present tremendous opportunities to create breakthrough businesses, says Govindarajan. "For instance, demographic changes are leading to a huge ageing population and huge healthcare needs in the coming 50 years."

"This means GE needs to identify these needs now and see how it can address them through its diagnostics business. Similarly, environmental problems like global warming and water scarcity also present significant opportunities."
This is the first time GE has created the position of chief innovation consultant. Govindarajan will perform three roles during his one year stint at the company (he will return to Tuck in 2009): teaching its top 600 executives and teams, consulting on a few innovation projects and consulting to GE executives who want to develop their ideas.

GE does a good job of integrating what they teach at their development centre in Crotonville with actually growth strategy, says Govindarajan.

BANGALORE: Continuing with its string-of-pearls acquisition strategy, Wipro has entered into an agreement to acquire a Singapore-based design services semiconductor firm in an all-cash deal. However, the value of the deal was not disclosed.

Wipro Technologies will acquire Oki Techno Centre Singapore (OTCS), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Oki Electric Industry, Japan, over a period of one year and this would be its second acquisition in the semiconductor space with the earlier one being NewLogic.

OTCS registered revenues of 8.8 million Singapore dollars for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2007 and has a 40-member team. Vasudevan Aghoramoorthy, V-P, Wipro Technologies said, this acquisition will enable them to meet the demand for newer wireless technologies and also expand its breadth of offering in the semiconductor design space.
For the first time, Wipro Technologies has made an acquisition in the Far East region with all its previous buyouts in the US and Europe.

OTCS is focussed on wireless design and has capabilities in radio frequency (RF) technologies. It mainly works for the parent company with some third party clients and Wipro expects to provide solutions for the semiconductor companies.

Sudip Nandy, chief strategy officer, Wipro, said, “Wipro sees this transaction as strategic fitment in building niche competencies which will enhance our presence among technology companies in Japan.”

Wipro Technologies has also entered into an agreement with Oki Electric to set up a dedicated development centre in Bangalore. Mr Aghoramoorthy said, this centre will work with tandem with the Singapore centre.

"OKI has been enhancing its design and development skills. We have been looking for a global partner to improve our efficiency in semiconductor design through outsourcing," said Masahiko Morioka, president, silicon solutions company at Oki Electric Industry.