HCL Tech Q1 net income down 36 percent at Rs 76.2 crore
Shiv Nadar-promoted-HCL Techn-ologies has recorded a 36 percent drop in its net income to Rs 76.2 crore for the first quarter ended September 2002, as compared to Rs 119.8 crore in the corresponding quarter of the previous year, according to generally accepted accounting practices (GAAP) of the US. As compared to net income of Rs 104.3 crore in the previous quarter (April-June 2002), the net income of the company has gone down by 27 percent in the first quarter this year (July-September 2002).

The company however, has registered a growth of 19 percent in its gross revenue at Rs 442.4 crore during the quarter against Rs 372.3 crore in the same period in the previous year.

vMoksha Tech aims doubling sales
IT services company, vMoksha Technologies is looking at doubling business next fiscal to $18 million. A large chunk of the turnover would come from its main customer S1 Corporation, for which the company has opened a new development centre in Pune. “We will be turning profitable in 2002-2003 and generating cash,” Pawan Kumar, chairman and CEO of the one-and-a-half-year old angel-funded vMoksha said.

India Life Hewitt has APAC ambitions
India Life Hewitt has set up a new SBU (Strategic Business Unit) which will take care of the company’s plans to roll out its service offerings in the Asia Pacific market. India Life is India’s largest niche process outsourcing player that specialises in two areas—private pension management and payroll administration, exclusively for over 250 marquee clients.

As per the company’s Asia-Pacific (APAC) roll-out plan, India Life will extensively leverage Hewitt’s client base in the region given its established presence in the global market. While Hewitt already offers similar process outsourcing services, especially in the area of benefits consulting, payroll administration would be the new services India Life will actively push overseas. Hewitt holds a 37 percent stake in India Life.

ITES Industry gets itself a multi-lingual strategy
Foreign languages other than English would account for almost $570 milion (up to 10 percent) of the total ITES market by 2005, according to industry experts. At present, almost 100 percent of the India ITES activites pegged at over $1.4 billion are in English.

Nasscom has estimated that the Indian ITES industry will gross over $5.7 billion by 2005 (based on a conservative year-on-year growth of 65 percent by Nasscom).

ERP on top of the heap in IT job market once again
The demand for enterprise resource planning (ERP) skills, which was at its peak three years back in 1998, has again reached on top of the list of software skills that are in vogue now a days. However, this may not mean a spurt in ERP software product business as the reasons might be a little different this time, according to industry experts. ERP professionals, who were recruited for fresh application implementation earlier, are now in demand for fine-tuning and integration of already deployed ERP applications to maximise return-on-investment of the user companies.

Genesys bags $7.8 million mapping solutions contract
Genesys International Corporation, a niche engineering and IT services player, has bagged a $7.8 million contract for providing comprehensive mapping solutions for the state of Florida (USA). This order is unique as it is the first time that a complete end-to-end digital mapping solution has been outsourced to any company in India.

Aptech net rises to Rs 2.34 crore
IT education company Aptech's net profit for quarter ended September 30, 2002, rose toRs 2.34 crore, as against Rs 1.06 crore posted in the quarter ending June 30, 2002. The net profit was mainly boosted on the back of sharp fall in employment and administration expenditure. Income from operations for the reporting quarter stood at
Rs 41.11 crore, a company release said.