Frugal engineering - Indian Firms Shift Focus to the Poor
This kind of innovation can serve all Bottom of the Pyramid markets. In Latin America about 25% percent of the people (130 or so million) live on less than $2 a day.
WSJ.com
India’s many engineers, whose best-known role is to help Western companies expand or cut costs, are now turning their attention to the purchasing potential of the nation’s own 1.1-billion population.The trend that surfaced when Tata Motors’ tiny $2,200 car, the Nano, hit Indian roads in July, has resulted in a slew of new products for people with little money who aspire to a taste of a better life. Many products aren’t just cheaper versions of well-established models available in the West but have taken design and manufacturing assumptions honed in the developed world and turned them on their heads.
For the farmer who wants to save for the future, one Indian entrepreneur has developed what is, in effect, a $200 portable bank branch. For the village housewife, a wood-burning stove has been reinvented to make more heat and less smoke for $23. For the slum family struggling to get clean water, there is a $43 water-purification system. For the villager who wants to give his child a cold glass of milk, there is a tiny $70 refrigerator that can run on batteries. And for rural health clinics, whose patients can’t spend more than $5 on a visit, there are heart monitors and baby warmers redesigned to cost 10% of what they do elsewhere.
Such inventions represent a fundamental shift in the global order of innovation. Until recently, the West served rich consumers and then let its products and technology filter down to poorer countries. Now, with the developed world mired in a slump and the developing world still growing quickly, companies are focusing on how to innovate, and profit, by going straight to the bottom rung of the economic ladder. They are taking advantage of cheap research and development and low-cost manufacturing to innovate for a market that’s grown large enough and sophisticated enough to make it worthwhile.
GE’s chairman, Jeffrey Immelt, on a recent tour of Asia, outlined how the global giant is restructuring to take advantage of what he calls “reverse innovation.” While in India this month, he said the innovations in medical equipment [in India] could eventually help bring down the cost of health care in the U.S.
Indian PM calls for national food processing strategy
Opportunity to transfer knowhow from Chile, Argentina, Brazil to India in this regard.
ap-foodtechnology.com
Central to his plan was the introduction of a simplified tax structure to stimulate the food processing industry.“I recognize we need to look at the tax structure,” said Singh. “Primary agricultural commodities are mostly exempt from taxing but processed foods are subject to multiple levies. There is an urgent need to rationalize and simplify the tax structure [for processed food].”
This, Singh hoped, would bring India’s low level of food processing in line with other nations. The country [India] currently has a food processing level of about six per cent, compared with up to 80 per cent in the developed countries and more than 30 per cent in most other Asian and Latin American countries, he said.
Technorati Tags: food processing, India
Developing countries need $83 bn a year to feed 9.1bn people in 2050
Primary agriculture investment needs include some $20 billion a year earmarked for crop production and $13 billion for livestock, the FAO said in a paper ahead of a forum on how to feed the world in 2050 it is due to hold on 12 Oct-13 Oct in Rome.A further $50 billion a year would be needed for downstream services, such as storage and processing facilities, it said. Most of this investment would have to come from private investors: farmers buying seeds, fertilisers and machinery and businesses investing in processing facilities, the agency said.
On top of this, public investments are needed in agriculture research and development, in big infrastructure projects such as building roads, ports, storage and irrigation systems as well as into education and healthcare, the FAO said.
Up to $29 billion of the $83 billion projected annual net investments in agriculture would need to be spent in the two countries with the largest populations — India and China.
Sub-Saharan Africa would need about $11 billion, Latin America and the Caribbean region would require some $20 billion, the West Asia and North Africa $10 billion, South Asia $20 billion and East Asia $24 billion, it said.
TCS eyes 6-7 deals over $100 mn in Latin America
TCS eyes 6-7 deals over $100 mn in Latin America
India’s largest IT firm Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), is eyeing six-seven deals worth over $100 million in the Latin American region.“Some of these deals are from Mexico and Brazil, from verticals like telecom, banking & insurance, retail and manufacturing as well,” said Gabriel Rozman, head of emerging markets, TCS.
Further, as a part of its continued expansion plan across Latin America, TCS has set up its delivery centre in Argentina. This is the eighth centre for the company in the region at a cost of $2 million (around Rs 10 crore). The centre, spread over 10,000 square metres, will initially employ 250 professionals, but has the capacity to house 1,000 people.
TCS recently announced the opening of a centre in Queretaro Mexico, in addition to centres available in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Mexico. This is also the third Global Service Center for BPO in Latin America in addition to the TCS facilities in Chile and Uruguay.
Technorati Tags: IT, TCS, Latin America
India Outperforms China In Auto Exports
In Latin America, engineering and manufacturing capabilites of Indian companies need to be showcased in a big way. So, far I have seen too much emphasis on textiles and handicrafts. Overall, areas where Indian IP is strong like engineering, specialty chemicals need more exposure in Latin America. In the auto sector, there is an opportunity for smaller Indian auto component manufacturers to have more tie-ups with their counterparts in Argentina and Mexico.
RTTNews -
Suzuki Motor Corporation, Hyundai Motor Co., and Nissan Motor Co. are making India as a marketing hub for overseas sales of mini cars, as incentives lift demand for smaller, fuel-efficient autos. This year India outperformed China in auto exports and poses challenge to Thailand and South Korea, as an alternative production center in Asia., media reports said.The Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers data say India’s exports of mini cars and hatchbacks gained 44% between January and July to 20,138. Total exports, including vans, sport-utility vehicles and trucks, rose 18% to 229,809. Cars are exported to over 100 countries (excluding the US and Japan markets).
Jayesh Shroff, who helps manage around $7 billion of assets, including car maker shares at SBI Asset Management Co in Mumbai, said: “There is a worldwide shift toward fuel-efficient, compact cars. This offers a huge potential for India and it can emerge as a leader in the small car segment.”
Technorati Tags: auto, manufacturing, small cars, india
Chile’s Silicon Valley
The information technology industry is constructing a new research and development hub for software: Santiago, Chile. The Latin American capital has the attributes that have made emerging markets attractive to outsourcers, such as cheap wages; dependable, state-of-the-art infrastructure; and government incentives. While Chile’s small labor force will hinder its rise, the country also boasts an outsize pool of highly educated computer engineers and a time zone that’s synchronous with the U.S. East Coast.Tata Consultancy Services has increased its software application development in Chile by over 30% in the past three years. Another Indian company, Polaris Software Lab, which works with Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and Microsoft (MSFT), among others, just opened a credit-card software development center in Santiago and expects to be up to 100 employees by yearend.
“We think of Chile as the specialized neurosurgeon of IT outsourcing,” says Douglas Gattuso, a managing director at Miami-based IT consultant Neoris USA, which has a 125-person office in Santiago. “Mexico, Argentina—they’re the general practitioners.”
Good Outlook for Brazil, LatAm
A survey by Brazil’s Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV) business school and Germany’s Institute for Economic Research Institute (Ifo) shows that the economic outlook for Latin America in the coming six months is good.
The Economic Climate Index (ECI) for July 2009 shows that Latin America is entering the recovery phase of the business cycle, with Brazil recording the second highest economic climate index in the region. The ECI rose to 4.0 points in July from 3.6 points in April. A breakdown of the findings shows that while the Present Situation Index (PSI) is still low, the Expectations Index (EI) increased to 5.4 from 4.6 points between April and July.A special survey was conducted to evaluate how the experts perceived the legal and administrative restrictions on foreign firms in their respective countries. Peru, Uruguay and Chile have been classified as countries without restrictions. Low restrictions have been attributed to Colombia, Brazil, Paraguay, Bolivia and Mexico. High restrictions were associated with Argentina, Venezuela and Ecuador.
Technorati Tags: latin america, trade, economic trends
Northern India’s Vanishing Water
Add this to the potential causes for water wars. More reasons to consider agriculture outsourcing in Latin America to hedge risk as crop areas in Punjab shrink as a result.
via Science Daily
Using satellite data, UC Irvine and NASA hydrologists have found that groundwater beneath northern India has been receding by as much as 1 foot per year over the past decade – and they believe human consumption is almost entirely to blame.More than 109 cubic kilometers (26 cubic miles) of groundwater disappeared from the region’s aquifers between 2002 and 2008 – double the capacity of India’s largest surface-water reservoir, the Upper Wainganga, and triple that of Lake Mead, the largest manmade reservoir in the U.S.
People are pumping northern India’s underground water, mostly to irrigate cropland, faster than natural processes can replenish it, said Jay Famiglietti and Isabella Velicogna, UCI Earth system scientists, and Matt Rodell of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.“If measures are not soon taken to ensure sustainable groundwater usage, consequences for the 114 million residents of the region may include a collapse of agricultural output, severe shortages of potable water, conflict and suffering,” said Rodell, lead author of the study and former doctoral student of Famiglietti’s at the University of Texas at Austin.
Study results will be published online Aug. 12 in the journal Nature.
Technorati Tags: agriculture, india, water wars
Congress may push India’s IT firms to Mexico with H-1B
As Indian firms fight the threat of H-1B restrictions, IT services companies might not leave their fate to politics. In an effort to reduce their need for visas, they may look to increase their presence south of the border.Indian IT firms have boosted operations in Mexico in recent years to serve Latin American and U.S. customers. One advantage to doing so involves the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which enables Mexican and Canadian professionals to work in the U.S. without an H-1B visa.
In other words, Indian firms could send employees to Mexico, and then move some of their Mexican workers to the U.S. under the auspices of the treaty. The Mexican workers would not need an H-1B visa to work in the U.S., though they would need what’s called a TN visa. That visa is available to Mexican and Canadian nationals who qualify under a number of professional categories and meet specific education and experience requirements.
Unblocking Panama canal’s bottleneck
Panama has steamed ahead with a massive expansion of its canal to keep trade between Asia and North America flowing through the waterway.It has revealed bids for the main contract in a $5.25bn plan to widen the canal, clearing the way for one of the world’s largest and most lucrative infrastructure projects. The Panama Canal Authority, an autonomous government agency, ended months of speculation by determining the “best-value” bid from three rival consortiums, signalling the almost certain winner.
The consortium, led by Spain’s Sacyr Vallehermoso and Italy’s Impregilo, significantly undercut its rivals with a $3.12bn bid to build new locks that will double the canal’s capacity and accommodate a new generation of super-size container ships.
The new locks, one on the Atlantic entrance, the other on the Pacific Ocean, will consolidate central America’s isthmus as a gateway for global trade.
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