MUMBAI: Tata Consultancy Services' iON cloud platform, which failed to live up to its initial expectations of revolutionising the small-and-medium business space by offering them computing capabilities at a low cost, has taken on a new life almost five years after its launch. It's now the preeminent platform for conducting examinations in the country.

New Delhi: Indian businessmen scrambled to showcase many of their existing investment plans and allocations as a response to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Digital India initiative, which was launched on Wednesday. By the end of the day, they had announced planned investments of Rs.4.5 trillion, and hires of 1.8 million people, over the next 5-10 years.

The numbers sound highly laudable, but are mostly investments in their own businesses, experts said.

Country’s largest IT services firm Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) on Tuesday said it will hire 60,000 people this fiscal and impart training to its existing one lakh employees in various digital technologies.

The software exporter is also ramping up investments in the digital solutions space.

MUMBAI: Tata Sons, owner of the Tata brand and promoter of Tata companies, has capped the royalty payment from group entities using the Tata name at Rs 75 crore. The cap on maximum royalty amount is aimed at reducing the burden on its large and profitable units and also freeing up cash for their growth. The move by Cyrus Mistry-led holding company for India's largest conglomerate, with a brand value of $21 billion, is in contrast with decisions by several MNCs to saddle their Indian arms with higher royalty payments.

Laid out in 1996, under an agreement titled Tata Brand Equity and Business Promotion (TBEBP), companies using the 'Tata' name have to directly shell out 0.25% of the annual revenue or 5% of the profit before tax, whichever is less.

Benchmark index, Sensex is heading toward the highest fall in a span of four weeks as the fear of Greece default spooked investors amid loss in the Chinese stocks despite a decision by the central bank to cut interest rates to a record low.

Weakness in the rupee owing to persistent demand for the American currency from importers has further dampened the sentiments. The rupee is currently trading at 63.86 against the US dollar.

MUMBAI: "Have you seen the Matrix? Remember the scene where Neo and Trinity get into a helicopter and don't know how to fly it. So Neo just downloads the instructions into his brain and they're off ? This product is exactly like that," says Harrick Vin, vice-president and chief scientist at Tata Consultancy Services, describing the company's latest product.

The description itself is a shift for the industry. Indian IT firms, known more for their labour arbitrage model than innovative technology, rarely get to compare products to something seen in cult sci-fi films.

Are MNCs better at generating cash from their companies than their domestic counterparts? Data on dividend seem to suggest so - for FY15, there were four MNCs among the top 10 companies with dividend-earning promoters. While the Tatas topped the list with total promoter dividend earnings of Rs 12,018 crore, American tech giant Oracle was the second (Rs 4,193.4 crore), followed by Unilever (Rs 2,181.8 crore).

By contrast, many of India's prominent business houses earn low amounts as dividend from their companies, with the exception of tech majors. Azim Premji of Wipro was India's fourth-highest dividend earner in FY15, with dividend income of Rs 2,174 crore. He was followed by Mukesh Ambani, who earned Rs 1,464 crore as dividend from Reliance Industries.

In the run-up to primaries ahead of the US Presidential elections next year, two of India's largest information technology (IT) outsourcing services companies - Infosys Technologies and Tata Consultancy Services - have come under the scanner of authorities in that country for alleged violation of visa rules.

According to a New York Times report, the Department of Labour has opened an investigation against TCS and Infosys for "possible violations of rules for visas for foreign technology workers under contracts they held with an electric utility, Southern California Edison". This is based on the allegations that many of the 500-odd technology workers laid off by Southern California Edison were made to train their replacements, who were immigrants on temporary visas and brought in by these Indian companies.

BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty edged higher in a choppy session on Friday, while still on course for a third consecutive weekly decline, as gains in Reliance Industries after its annual shareholder meeting, overpowered falls in IT exporters for the day.

At 03.20 pm, Sensex was up 64.39 points at 26435.37, whereas Nifty gained 21.30 points at 7986.65 during the same time.

It pays to be at the helm of India’s largest information technology (IT) services provider. Literally. N Chandrasekaran, chief executive officer (CEO) and managing director of Tata Consultancy Services, received Rs 21.28 crore as total compensation in 2014-15, up 13.9 per cent from Rs 18.68 crore last year. This total remuneration for the financial year 2014-15 does not include dividends from 88,528 shares he owns in the company.

Chandrasekaran was also the highest salary receiver for FY15 when compared to CEOs of competing firms. His salary of Rs 21.28 crore (around $3.35 million) was higher than Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka’s $716,539 (around Rs 4.5 crore), T K Kurien, Wipro CEO’s annual salary of $1.5 million (around Rs 9.6 crore) and Cognizant’s Francisco D’Souza’s annual salary of $1.15 million (Rs 7.3 crore).

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