Archive for the ‘Indian Companies’ Category
Oberoi Udaivilas voted world’s best hotel – survey
An Indian hotel has won the award for the world’s best hotel for the first time in a survey by an international travel magazine .
Travel + Leisure Magazine released its 12th annual list of the world’s best awards after a poll of almost 19,000 conducted by researcher Harris Interactive.
The Oberoi Udaivilas in Udaipur, a grand setting combined with palatial architecture in heart of Rajasthan was voted the top hotel worldwide.
Prices for a room per night start at about $600 with an exclusive suite with private pool priced from $3,300, according to the hotel’s Web site.
Read more about the story in Reuters site.
Brijj – One more player in the Social Networking arena
Info Edge India Ltd, the company which owns job site Naukri.com, has finally launched a professional networking site – Brijj.com (The name is a variation of “Bridge” – as in connecting between two people). Naukri’s new launch comes at a time when professional networking sites like LinkedIn have started gaining a good number of users in India, and it has also been used to generate jobs and business leads. Business Networking is taking huge leap in India recently and it is obivious that leading job portals do not want to loose their customers.
The fear is that classic job site like Naukri may become redundant over time since potential candidates will get the job leads through a networking site or other platforms. So Naukri had to move into the networking space at least to plug that gap. A big challenge for Naukri will be to build the user base. Will it take the capital intensive, high octane advertising campaign to garner subscribers, or will it free float it and expect to get users on its own? Probably a few free ipods and iphones can get the initial traction. But will that be a valuable user base? Finally, all depends on what features the site provides (I am yet to take a test drive) and the branding. It’s also not clear what will be the target user base.
LinkedIn currently enjoys a mixed userbase of junior-middle-senior tech and finance pros. Unlikely they will shift to a new networking site. A good idea may be to get new users who haven’t tried LinkedIn yet. Brijj as of now, looks just an add on to the existing platform of Naukri, where they brought up the concept of Recommendation and invitation.
Also, techTribe, a networking site for tech professionals which recently got funded by Canaan Partners, has converted itself into a career networking website. Let us see further, how many people will come up with their own Social Networking portals.
Acquisition by Indian companies overseas continue.
Raman Roy’s (who was heading Spectramind of Wipro earlier) Quatrro BPO Solutions has announced the acquisition of mortgage loan processing operations and the technology platform of US-based Preferred Financial Group, Inc. The financial terms are undisclosed.
The deal is considered unique since Quatrro would become the first BPO from India to offer an onsite-offsite model. This path has already been taken by software services firms. According to Raman Roy, this acquisition will help the company to acquire the technology platform, the people and the origination business of the US partner and that would also enable to provide end-to-end fulfillment services to mortgage lenders across the US.
Apparently this model will hep Quatrro give services at 30 per cent to 50 per cent cheaper than the US costs. The acquisition will be done by Quatrro Mortgage Solutions, a subsidiary of Quatrro. PFG is a privately-held financial services corporation that originates, underwrites and funds mortgage products.
In April 2007, Quatrro had bought a majority stake in Chennai-based KPO firm Scope eKnowledge for an undisclosed amount. It bought out Mauritius-based fund eIndia’s stake in the 500 people firm.
