Monthly Archives: March 2012

SunEdison’s 100-kW unit rises on StanChart rooftop

Chennai, MARCH 19:

SunEdision has put up a 100-kW solar plant on roof of building of Scope International in Chennai. Scope is Standard Chartered Bank’s captive BPO and its headquarters is in Chennai.

Spread over 20,000 sq ft of roof space, the plant uses 875 solar panels and will generate 3 million units of electricity over the next 20 years, enough to power 40 average Indian homes annually.

This is the first commercial rooftop solar project, SunEdison India’s Managing Director, Mr Pasupathy Gopalan, said on Monday, meaning that the Scope building will consume the energy produced on its rooftop, paying a price for it. SunEdison has not disclosed the price, but said it was the first commercial PPA rooftop in the country.

The entire project was completed in three months. SunEdison is in talks with other prospects for similar rooftop projects.

mramesh@thehindu.co.in

source: http://www.TheHinduBusinessLine.com / Companies / by M. Ramesh / March 19th, 2012

City gets first designer car showroom

Chennai auto scene has a new address to flaunt about a designer car showroom in Egmore.

A joint venture between Dilip Chhabria Design Pvt.Ltd and Lalitha Motors Pvt.Ltd (part of Lalitha Jewellery group), saw the opening up of a DC Design outlet in Chennai on March 11, 2012.

This is not just a collaboration aimed at profits but a result of my passion for vehicles. Lalitha Group’s customer-centric approach alongwith a rich experience in retail and DC Design’s superior designs skills will indeed be a formidable combination” said Mr.Kiran Kumar of Lalitha Jewellery.

“The Indian market for high end automobiles is on a steep uphill curve as witnessed year-on-year and our focus is at the top end of this rarified niche.

The design is completely our very own as is the engineering and also the production process. Type approval and on-road tests would follow soon and we intend to simultaneously set up an all new facility at Talegaon near Pune to build this vehicle,” said Mr Dilip Chhabria, India’s leading automobile designer and owner of DC Design DC Design was founded in 1993 with the dual aim of redesigning and modifying mass market cars to create one-of-a-kind automotive beauties for automotive connoisseurs as well as offering design and prototyping services to the OEM automotive sector. Recently, the firm unveiled DC Avanti, the country’s first ever sports car and its flagship product.

The sleekly styled DC Avanti is intended not only to be a sports cars but also to be on Sale in limited production to the general public.

“Every country which has written its name in the pantheon of automobile manufacturing has invariably distinguished itself with sports cars by its own nationals and I thought that India rightly needs to be in this exclusive club,” said Mr Chhabria commenting about the venture.

“We intend to produce 300 units of the Avanti in 2013-2014 and if all goes well we could ramp up production to go into four figures per annum,” he added.

DCD has already put in place a unique and dedicated self-owned and managed sales and service network in Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai and Hyderabad and this would only be honed to a fine pitch by the time the Avanti production commences. Four additional outlets will be opened in the course of 2012.

source: http://www.DeccanChronicle.com / Home> Channels> Cities> Chennai / DC, Chennai / Sunday, March 18th, 2012

India gets DNA diagnostic centre

With male infertility reportedly reaching an alarming high of 50 per cent in Coimbatore, a centre in the city is offering a first-of-its-kind procedure that can ascertain damage to DNA strands in about 5,000 sperm cells at the rate of 200 per second.

Set up in collaboration with SCSA (Sperm Chromatin Structure Assay) Diagnostics, US, Women’s Centre will accept semen samples from across the country to diagnose DNA fragmentation, considered the most important aspect of male infertility.

Explaining the partnership, Dr Donald Evenson, inventor of the technique, said Women’s Centre was the only centre outside US and Europe with rights to offer the diagnostic device, considered a solution for couples unable to conceive.

Dr Mirudhubashini Govindarajan, clinical director of the centre, said damage to DNA that lowered sperm count or hindered sperm movement could be due to lifestyle-related factors.

She said stress at workplace and handling chemicals, pesticides in agricultural belts were some of the causes.

People in the jewellery industry who handle heavy metals such as cadmium and traffic police exposed to too much heat were increasingly experiencing the problem of infertility, Dr Govindarajan said.

She said semen analysis technology in India was inadequate and women underwent a series of tests but often never conceived despite normal results.

She said Women’s Centre would tie up with IVF labs to share the method of sending semen samples for DNA fragmentation diagnoses

source: http://www.DeccanChronicle.com / Home> Channels> Cities> Regions> Coimbatore / by Vidyashree Charmaraj / DC, Coimbatore / Saturday, March 17th, 2012

Three sisters and Kabir

Kamayani Bali Mahabal meets three sisters who took their interest in the weaver-poet, Kabir, to a new level.

So just what is common between three sisters from South India: Archana Sundararajan, a classical dancer from Madurai; Bindhumalini Narayanaswamy, a graphic designer from Bangalore, and Jaya Madhavan, a writer from Chennai? The poet, Kabir.

During the Kabir Festival held at Prithvi House in Mumbai last month, the trio staged a unique and thought-provoking presentation on the great poet-weaver, entitled ‘Ankath Kahani’, which translates as ‘Unsaid Story’. The Kabir festival is a voluntary effort by people from different walks of life, drawn together by their passion for the poetry of Kabir and the music of folk singers.

The performance of the sisters threaded story, song and dance into a unique “word-sound and movement” dramatisation, punctuated by personal sharing, excerpts from Kabir’s work and dance movements for selected couplets. But the pivot on which ‘Ankath Kahani’ rested was a song which they sang as an impassioned plea to the great weaver-poet, to evoke a sense of Kabir, the sensitive, sensible and spiritual being that is present in all of us.

Archana danced to Kumar Gandharva’s ‘Ud jaaega hans akela…’ even as Bindhumalini’s singing took audiences to a level where being is “just to be there”. The beautiful interpretation of the song, in dance form, mesmerised the 100-plus listeners as they chanted Kabir’s couplets with the sisters. Soon there seemed to be no difference between the performers and the audience — both entities had merged in the bliss of Kabir’s verse.

How did the women choose Kabir? It was Jaya who first took the plunge when she wrote a book on him seven years ago. She says, “Kabir was a fortuitous encounter, a life enhancing one for me.” Describing this journey she reveals that it was Linda Hess’s translations of Kabir’s work that first opened her eyes to the poet. “I was so enraptured by the man’s courage, vision and well — insanity — and the fact that there was so much drama around him, that I decided to record my responses to him as a play.”

She then wrote a short skit with just two characters — a warp and a weft — with her sister Bindhumalini and herself playing the two roles. The play was shot through with Kabir’s couplets, his ideals and anxieties; not as his admirers and protégés saw them but as an outsider who loved Kabir. The warp and weft became many things in the play: Hindu-Muslim, India-Pakistan, Mullah-Pundit — but never was Kabir evoked in his entirety. Looking back Jaya confesses, “I think he still had shades of grey in my mind then.”

At that point Jaya realised that she knew only two things about Kabir: One, that he was a poet, and, two, that he was a weaver. “The poet I seemed to know, the other I didn’t. So I took up weaving classes,” she laughs. That experience changed her view of the poet. As she puts it, “Frankly, it is the loom that showed me a glimpse of Kabir, and taught me creative introspection.

It is the ‘thakli’, the dye, the loom, the warp and the weft, which spoke of the image of the poet for me. I married the weaver and poet as the warp and weft to draw a fuller picture of Kabir. I really believed, like the much loved Tamil poet Thiruvalluvar (also a weaver), Kabir’s ‘dohas’, or couplets, were born out of the material at hand and his vocation. This may be the reason why the loom features so strongly in my book. It is as if it bears witness to his bursts of poetry,” she elaborates.

It was not just Jaya’s work that got influenced by Kabir, her life changed, too. “For a while I even did drastic things like trying to fit all my needs into a small bag and living out of it. I wanted to distinguish between needs and wants. I began reducing my needs, meditating regularly, walking to my destination, and so on. The man does that to you. Unlike other Bhakti poets we know, this man wants to take you along. He wants to share his truths with you,” reveals Jaya.

But how did her sisters get roped in? Says Bindhumalini, who is also a trained singer in Carnatic and Hindustani music, “What attracted me was that Kabir touches every aspect of life. Happiness, bliss, renunciation. He becomes the ultimate being, the guru, the formless one that speaks. And his special poems, called ‘Ulat Bansi’, really made me fall in love with him. He is abstract no doubt, but somewhere something will catch you and the insight hits hard.”

As for Archana, a trained Bharatanatyam dancer with an M.Phil in French, she discovered Kabir through the French language! “That was the catalyst. I got attracted to him when I started translating Jaya’s book into French. Later, I started to dance to Kumar Gandharva’s music on Kabir,” says Archana with a twinkle in her eyes.

Explaining their unique style of presentation — they just sit, read, sing and dance — the sisters say almost in unison, “Kabir, we felt, could be reached only through simplicity and with no pretension. He is someone you cannot claim to know. But we know ourselves and we know how we are impacted by Kabir. The lesser the distractions in the presentation, the better the focus.”  In other words, the less the audience looks towards the performers, the more they look inwards so there is nothing visually distracting about the presentation.

What are their favourite Kabir couplets? Archana says, a touch philosophically, “My favourite is ‘Maya Maha Thugni Hum Jaani’ (Maya is the biggest thug, I have come to understand the power of illusion to be a great thug). It perfectly suits my life. Everything is bound in ‘maya’, illusion. I totally believe that.” Jaya finds solace in ‘Dheere dheere re mana/Dheere sab kuch hoi/Mali seenche sau gade/Ritu aaye phal hoye (Slowly, slowly O mind/Everything happens at its own pace/The gardener may water with a hundred buckets/fruit arrives only in its season). “We are leading such fast lives and want everything to happen immediately, but we don’t realise everything has its own time,” says Jaya.

Humming the couplet, Bindhumalini indicates her choice: “Haman hein ishk mastana/Haman ko hoshiyari kya/Rahe aazad yeh jag se/ Haman duniya se yaari kya” (I am bursting with love/ Why do I need to be careful?/Being free in the world). Says she, “This is a beautiful poem in which Kabir talks about the blissful state of absolute love, supreme and unconditional love towards oneself and the world. Here, when everything becomes one, there is no waiting. When the lover is within oneself, why befriend anyone else? And so on. It talks of a happy state and the happiness in this song makes these seemingly difficult concepts or experiences really possible. When we are blissfully happy, don’t we lose ourselves as we merge with the world?”

The sisters now hope to keep sharing Kabir with more and more people. Says Jaya in conclusion, “We have kept our performance simple so that it fits all contexts. It is entirely up to the listeners on how they should interpret it. We are ready and willing to go anywhere. We operate within the spirit of sharing. We have performed in drawing rooms, conference halls, balconies and, well, now Prithvi House, too! It is Kabir and the listeners that matter to us. As long as the sharing continues, the journey will materialise on its own.”

source: http://www.DeccanHerald.com / Home> Supplements> She / DHNS, March 17th, 2012

Thirunageswaram temple wears new look

Sri Naganathaswamy temple in Thirunageswaram.  Photo:B. Velankanni Raj / The Hindu

FACELIFT The floors of the prakaras now have rough granite.

Sri Naganathaswamy temple at Thirunageswaram, kshetra for Raaghu in Kumbakonam, attracts thousands of devotees throughout the year. Legend has it that Raaghu worshipped Naganathaswamy and got rid of his curse. Occupying the south-west corner of the temple, the planet god in the company of his consorts Nagavalli and Nagakanni, is seen with a human face instead of the serpent visage one finds in other shrines. The transition of Raaghu (Peyarchi) is celebrated in a grand manner, when the deity is taken in a procession on Sesha Vahanam.

The sprawling temple has two prakaras, one of them around the principal deity Naganathaswamy. Being an ancient temple, built by Kandaraditha Cholan and renovated by Achuthappa Nayak, the prakaras were laid with bricks. Devotees found it difficult to walk, particularly on rainy days. Thanks to a munificent donor from Bangalore, granite slabs have been laid around both prakaras.

NEW PATHWAYS

The eight-month work has been completed and the prakaras measuring 36,000 sq.ft. were dedicated to the Lord at a function held at the temple on Monday last. S. Mohana Sundaram, assistant commissioner and executive officer, said that the newly laid pathways are sure enhance the look of the temple and give it a new lease of life. Jayaram Sarma, architect, said that the scientific aspect had been taken care of to avoid stagnation of water. Rain water harvesting facility and channels have been provided for the abishekam water to drain. Rough granite has been fixed on sand bed to a height of four inches.

“Granite is a natural material and will last long,” Mr. Sarma said. Dr. K. Venkatesan, Founder and Chief Patron, Vaastu Foundation, Haresh Vaswani, Vice-chairman, Platinum Corporation, Dubai, and Varun Manian, Managing Director, NAPC Properties participated in the function.

source: http://www.TheHindu.com / Arts> History & Culture / by G. Srinivasan / March 15th, 2012

Rail budget: Tamil Nadu gets new trains; bio-diesel, windmill plants

New Delhi:

 New express and passenger trains, increase in the frequency of some long-distance and suburban trains, setting up of windmills and completion of the Mass Rapid Transit System (MRTS) in Chennai are some of the steps Railway Minister Dinesh Trivedi announced for Tamil Nadu Wednesday.

Presenting the 2012-13 budgetary proposals for the Indian Railways in the Lok Sabha, Trivedi said the MRTS extension service, the elevated rail system in the state capital, would be completed in 2012-13 and conversion of a near defunct 156-year-old South India’s first railway station at Royapuram into a terminal would be studied.

The MRTS currently connects Chennai Beach and Velachery. With Tamil Nadu leading in wind power generation, Indian Railways too plans to cash in on that potential by setting up some windmills in the state as well as a bio-diesel plant at Tondiarpet in Chennai.

Trivedi said the railways will set up Rail Neer (bottled water) plant at Palur. To ease the congestion in suburban services, Trivedi announced 18 additional services on Chennai Beach-Tambaram, Chennai Beach-Chengalpattu, Chennai Beach-Avadi, Chennai Beach-Tiruttani, Chennai Beach-Gummidipundi/Sullurupetta and Chennai Beach-Velachery sections.

In respect of new train services, Trivedi announced nine express and two passenger trains for Tamil Nadu apart from increasing the frequency of some trains and extending some services.

He said four new lines (Walajah Road-Ranipet, Namakkal-Mohanur, Needamangalam-Manargudi and Mohanur-Karur) would be completed this fiscal.

Trivedi said a new line linking Avadi-Guduvancheri via Sriperumbudur and Orgadam had been sent for the Planning Commission’s approval.

Surveys for new lines (Chennai to Sriperumbudur via Guindy, Poonamallee, Kanchipuram-Thiruvannamalai-Katpadi, Kumbakonam-Andimadam-Jayankandam-Vridhachalam, Thanjavur to Pudukottai via Fandarvakottai, Attipattu-Ennore Sea Port and Dindigul-Kumuli via Bodinayakkanur) would be taken up in 2012-13.

Similarly, the Railways have sent new line doubling projects (Jollarpettai-Katpadi-Arakkonam, Renigunta-Arakkonam 3rd line) to the Planning Commission’s approval.

Sanction has been given for new surveys for line doubling projects linking Madurai-Triunelveli-Kanyakumari alongwith electrification and Trivandrum and Kanniyakumari and the electrification of Coimbatore-Mettupalayam route.

Trivedi also announced new express trains for Tamil Nadu (Coimbatore-Bikaner AC Express (Weekly) via,Roha,Vasai Road,Ahmedabad,Jodhpur; Chennai-Bangalore AC Double-decker Express (Daily); Tiruchchirappalli-Tirunelveli Intercity Express (Daily) via Madurai,Virudunagar; Visakhapatnam-Chennai Express (Weekly);Kacheguda-Madurai Express (Weekly) via Dharmavaram,Pakala,Jolarpettai; Shalimar-Chennai Express (Weekly); Mannargudi – Tirupati Express (Tri-Weekly) via Thiruvarur,Villupuram,Katpadi; Chennai-Puri Express (Weekly) and Asansol-Chennai Express (Weekly) via Purulia, Sambalpur, Vizianagaram.)

The two new passenger trains announced are Villupuram-Katpadi Passenger (Daily) and Villupuram-Mayiladuthurai Passenger (Daily).

The trains that are extended are Madurai-Tirupati Express to Rameswaram; Palakkad-Mangalore Express to Coimbatore and Dadar-Yesvantpur Express to Puducherry (three days) via Jolarpettai-Katpadi-Villupuram and to Tirunelveli (three days) via Dharmapuri-Erode.

The frequency of the Madurai-Tirupati Express two to three days, Chennai-Mangalore Express six to seven days and Nizamuddin Kanniyakumari Express one to two days have been increased. (IANS)

source: http://www.PunjabNewsline.com / Punjab Newsline Network / Wednesday, March 14th, 2012

EdServ details Rs 40 cr investment plan

Chennai-based Education Services Company (EdServ) has launched the EdServ Training Institute (EDI), an Instructor-Led-Training (ILT) centre. The company is planning to invest Rs 40 crore in the initiative.

The company plans to use the franchisee network route to offer academic support and vocational training courses, including tuition, coaching, test prep and job-oriented training apart from placement support, according to company’s release.

EdServ already has a range of e-content along with onl-ine test prep engine as part of its flagship Lampsglow.com that shall power these brick-and-mortar learning services in EDI.

EdServ has tied up with A-Team Edutech Ltd, an education management company, for the supply of tablet PCs to the EdServ Training Institute which in turn will offer a tablet PC free with specific preloaded course content.

The instructor-led training courses will comprise of coaching for CA, IITJEE, AIEEE, AIPMT, CAT and all other competitive exams in the national and international arena, including TOEFL and GRE, academic support tuition from KG, right up to PG that include both CBSE and state board subjects as well as engineering semester exam support, Job skills and life skills training such as spoken English, soft-skills and IT skills all under one roof in a brick-mnd-Mortar training centre with tablet PC-based extended learning support to every student.

S Giridharan, chairman and CEO, EdServ, commented that while on the one hand we have ound that a large number of students in tier II and tier owns are still not able to utilise technology gadgets to gain access to online and Internet-based education, on the other, there is no national brand offering a combined brick and mortar, and online academic support services.

“Given our strong presence in the online segment, we believe the present scenario presents EdServ with a great opportunity to tap the brick and mortar model of academic support services as well.”

EdServ is aiming to go pan-India and plans to open 200 franchisee-led EdServ Training Institutes across the country, including about 80 centres in South India within the next six months.

EdServ already has 1000s of distributors, dealers and master franchisees for Lampsglow apart from its skill development centres (MODES) and the company plans to upgrade many of them into partners for the brick and mortar model as well.

The company will initially invest close to Rs 40 crore for the expansion and is targeting revenues of over Rs 20 crore from the EdServ Training Institutes on the first year of operation.

source: http://www.Business-Standard.com / Home> Economy & Policy / by BS Reporter / Chennai, March 13th, 2012

Ponni Sugars to commission 19 MW plant soon

Chennai, MARCH 10:

Ponni Sugars (Erode) Ltd is set to commission its 19-MW co-generation plant by the month end.

This will be a significant development for the company in terms of revenue generation and potential growth to the top line.

Mr N. Ramanathan, Managing Director, Ponni Sugars, told Business Line that the project is being completed on schedule and well within the estimated project cost of Rs 102 crore.

The costs have been contained despite increase in the base rate, he said.

Initially, the cogeneration plant will operate at 15 MW which will help generate a surplus of about 11 MW that will be supplied to the State grid.

At full capacity, the surplus supplied to the grid will increase to about 14 MW. This will mean an additional revenue of about Rs 45 crore a year for the company at the current tariff level of Rs 4.47 a unit.

Ponni Sugars has tied up for a bank loan of Rs 65 crore and a loan under the Sugar Development Fund for about Rs 25 crore. The balance is through internal accruals.

The current sugar season has been a good year for Ponni Sugars, with sugarcane arrivals set to grow significantly over that of last year and sugar recoveries also increasing.

During 2010-11, the company crushed about 6.3 lakh tonnes (lt) of sugar and in the current year this is expected to increase by about one lt. This, along with the 50-basis-point increase in sugar recovery observed so far in the current season, augurs well for the company, he said.

rbalaji@thehindu.co.in

source: http://www.TheHinduBusinessLine.com / Companies / by R Balaji / March 10th, 2012

50 years later, students meet Professor

Chennai:

Not everyone gets an opportunity to meet his or her teacher 50 years after graduating. Surely something like that would be a special moment. On Thursday, as part of the golden jubilee celebrations of the School of Architecture and Planning Alumni Association (SAPAA) of the Anna University, students of the first batch (1957-62) met and honoured their teacher of 50 years ago, Professor Kasturi.

‘Students’ who participated included TV Prabhakaran, Anwar Sherif, Prof B Bhaskar Rao, Haji Mohammed Mustafa and A Krishnaswamy.

President of SAPAA, TV Prabhakaran introduced students of his batch (then department of architecture under the Madras University) and their teacher. Travelling down memory lane, he recalled how Professor Kasturi demystified the theory of structure and structural design for the students.

He narrated the memorable learning experience during the days of Prof V S Jayaraman and Prof Desai.

Prabhakaran noted with satisfaction that the first batch students were successful in their respective ventures, be it teaching, the profession of architecture or trade ventures. “When we met the students of the fiftieth batch last month, it was very special,” he noted. Later, Professor Kasturi was honoured with a memento and a shawl.

Suresh Kuppuswamy, Dean, School of Architecture and Planning (SAP), Anna University traced the history of the institution. Set up in 1957 as a department of the University of Madras, it was initially located in the Alagappa college of technology premises offering five year degree in architecture.

Eminent architect C N Raghavendran was the chief guest and P Mannar Jawahar, vice chancellor of Anna University presided.

source: http://www.ibnlive.in.com/ South> TamilNadu> Chennai / The New Indian Express / Express News Service / March 09th, 2012

Murugappa group-3M battle over Wendt India enters new phase

Chennai:

The battle between the Murugappa group and 3M for control of  Webdt India has entered a new phase, with the American conglomerate indicating that it is willing to sell its holding in the abrasives maker.

But a dispute over the price it is seeking to exit the joint venture with the Murugappa group company, Carborundum Universal (Cumi), could hamper a solution to an issue that is being adjudicated by the Company Law Board.

3M, whose products include the Scotch-Brite homecleaning range and Post-it notes, has told the Company Law Board that it is “not averse” to selling its 40% stake in Wendt to Carborundum, an executive of the Murugappa group told ET. But the valuation demanded by 3M, which is based on the market value of Wendt, is not acceptable to Murugappa group, Carborundum managing director K Srinivasan said.

Instead, 3M should settle for the valuation that was determined by KPMG, he added. 3M declined to comment. In 2010, by virtue of its nearly $500 million (Rs 2,500 crore) purchase of  Winterthur Technologies, 3M became an equal joint venture partner of Carborundum in Wendt India. Both hold almost a 40% stake each. But Carborundum objected to the deal, saying it had the first right of refusal to buy out shares of  Wendt GmbH (a German arm of Winterthur, which held the stake). Carborundum then moved the Company Law Board.

“They are expecting it to be at market and market plus premium, which is completely unacceptable because they bought it at a price of 12.8 million (Rs 85 crore) for their 40%,” Srinivasan told analysts in a conference call recently. Carborundum has now asked a court to appoint a valuer.

Another way of resolving it, he said, will be if 3M agrees to sell Wendt to Carborundum as per the fair valuation report of KPMG, based on which it acquired the Winterthur stakes.

“This is a fair way forward and in line with their argument that they did not violate the law of the land at the time of transaction, and that it was only a consequential event and not the intended target,” he wrote in an email. Wendt India posted a standalone net profit of Rs 3.5 crore in the third quarter, down from Rs 4.4 crore in the year-ago period. Revenue increased to Rs 24 crore, from Rs 22 crore.

Its shares have risen over 32% so far this year. If and when 3M’s exit comes, it will be the first time Wendt India will be without a foreign partner in the 32 years of its existence. It started in 1980 as a JV between Wendt GmbH and the House of Khataus. In 1991, Cumi replaced the Khataus. But the Murugappa group isn’t worried about this.

“There have been three ownership changes in five years at the Wendt GmbH that end with all its attendant uncertainty, disruption and changes. Wendt India has in the process learnt to live without the support of foreign JV partner. The eventual sellout of the 40% stake by 3M will only complete the process running for five years now,” said Srinivasan.

He added: “The old Wendt GmbH team with which Wendt India worked well for 27 years is all but gone in the repeated ownership changes. Today, it’s lawyers who are talking, not engineers and technocrats who worked with the joint venture all these years. Carborundum has all along ensured that Wendt (India) is well managed and well run.”

source: http://www.EconomicTimes.IndiaTimes.com / News> News by Industry> Cons. Products / ET Bureau / March 09th, 2012