My Wonderful Life

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.

As rumoured earlier, Wipro Technologies, the global IT services business of Wipro Ltd, has acquired Infocrossing, Inc., a Nasdaq-listed IT infrastructure management company for $600 million in an all cash deal. Wipro will pay $18.70 a share, which is about 13 per cent premium over the six month average of Infocrossing’s share price.
The deal, the largest by Wipro and the largest overseas acquisition by an Indian IT company yet (see the table, bottom), is expected to close by the fourth quarter of 2007.

It also needs regulatory approvals. The deal is also significant since it’s the first acquisition by Wipro of a listed company abroad, which shows that Indian companies are getting better at wading through the complex regulatory hurdles and disclosure norms. Infocrossing had revenues of $232.4 million and net income of $9.3 million for the year ending March 31, 2007.

The company provides integrated managed infrastructure services to global clients. The acquisition will give Wipro Technologies a strong presence in the remote infrastructure management space, by adding five data center locations and about 900 employees in the US, according to Sudip Banerjee, President, Enterprise Solutions of Wipro Technologies. Infocrossing also brings in expertise in health plan and payer management segments. The company has processed over 175 million claims annually and also provides contracted services to over 90 managed care organisations.
The operating margins of Infocrossing is only in the range of 10-14 per cent as against Wipro’s 25 per cent. Apparently, the margin differences will be mitigated in the next 2-3 years, according to company officials. The current global IT infrastructure market is estimated to be around $150 billion, of which the remote infrastructure management services (that can be offshored) will be worth $70 billion, according to NASSCOM.

I get several missed calls, mostly from unknown numbers. This made me search for some news about missed calls and surprisingly, Indians are the masters of Missed Calls, a tool to communicate several things.. Hindustan Times article may give you more details.