Andhranews

Hyderabad, Aug. 13: LifeCell, a cord blood stem cell banking firm, expects to begin work at its transplant centre in Chennai later this year, even as it is firming up plans to launch a similar centre in Mumbai, senior company officials said.
“We have a tie-up with the Sri Ramachandra Medical College and Research Institute in Chennai under which we have set up India’s first Stem Cell Transplant Centre in Chennai. It is expected to launch its operations soon,” said Mr J. Ramanan, a director of Asia Cryo-Cell, the company that owns LifeCell. The transplant centre will focus on umbilical cord blood.

Mr Ramanan said the stem cell transplants will be conducted by experienced stem cell transplant specialists. According to Mr Prasad Mangipudi, vice-president, marketing, of Asia Cryo-Cell, the cell transplant centre will initially focus on haematological and oncological ailments and expand to other areas in a phased manner. Mr Ramanan said cord blood stem cells have been used to treat certain kinds of leukaemia, Hodgkin’s disease and other types of lymphoma. He said cord blood stem cell transplants, in which the diseased cells are first excised and the healthy cord blood stem cells are introduced in and around the excised tissue, had shown to have more chances of success than bone marrow transplants.

Meanwhile, Asia Cryo-Cell would be expanding its cord blood collection centres in the country from the current 16 to cover most states. “We have collection centres in most of the major cities. The blood is stored in our sterile facility in Chennai,” Mr Mangipudi said. Mr Mangipudi said Asia Cryo-Cell, which has a technological collaboration with Cryo-Cell International of the United States, had signed up nearly 3,000 people from around the country who were storing cord blood, which is rich in stem cell.

The cord blood is usually discarded along with the umbilical cord and the placenta after birth. LifeCell collects the blood from a newborn’s umbilical cord immediately after delivery, and cryogenically stores it for future potential medical uses. Mr Ramanan said Asia Cryo-Cell is promoted by Mr S. Abhaya Kumar, who is also the founder of the Chennai-based Shasun Drugs and Chemicals, while Mr R. Thayagarajan, chairman of the Shriram Group, is chairman of the company.

Washington, Aug. 13: As Coca-Cola and Pepsico lose their fizz in India, the US government and business leaders are warning of potential fallout on investment in the booming country of a billion-plus people. The soft-drinks giants are suffering a publicity nightmare in India after an environmental group alleged that their sodas contain toxic levels of pesticides, leading to full or partial bans in six Indian states. The clamour against Coke and Pepsi has been an unwelcome reminder to some in the United States that India, despite more than a decade of economic reforms, remains a hazardous place to do business.

“This kind of action is a setback for the Indian economy,” under-secretary for international trade Franklin Lavin said. “In a time when India is working hard to attract and retain foreign investment, it would be unfortunate if the discussion were dominated by those who did not want to treat foreign companies fairly,” he said.

Mumbai, Aug. 13: People affected by natural calamities will have continued banking services, following guidelines issued by the Reserve Bank of India to all scheduled banks who have been given various options. The RBI instructions include facilitating opening of new accounts by persons affected by natural calamities, especially for availing relief given by government/other agencies and cheque clearing services and supply of cash.

The guidelines were issued as a follow-up of the recommendations made by an internal working group set by the Reserve Bank to look into the whole gamut of issues involved in restoration of banking services in areas affected by natural calamities, in addition to the existing standing instructions providing relief to such persons. In areas where the bank branches are affected by a natural calamity and are unable to function normally, banks may operate satellite offices, extension counters or mobile banking facilities.

Further, to satisfy customer’s immediate cash requirements, banks could consider waiving the penalties for accessing accounts, such as, fixed deposits and restore the functioning of ATMs at the earliest or make alternate arrangements for providing such facilities.

Hyderabad, Aug. 13: Reliance Industries Ltd’s retail venture Reliance Retail has mega plans for Andhra Pradesh, which would serve as a test and debut market by this year-end for the Mukesh-Ambani-led business group. The Rs 25,000-crore retail plan, which was dubbed as India’s answer to Wal-Mart by Newsweek recently, would kickstart from 6 hypermarkets in Hyderabad, move on to Ahmedabad and then cover 1,500 cities and towns in the country.

“Reliance through its associates or a third party has leased and in some cases bought land spread across 30,000 to 50,000 sq. ft at Uppal, Kukatpally, East Marredpally and on the Jubilee Hills-Madhapur stretch,” sources in the know told this newspaper.

The plan does not limit itself to Hyderabad but also includes the top six cities in the State that covers Visa-khapatnam, Vijayawada and Tirupati. “For the Andhra retail venture, likely in December, a management team has been set up reporting to a CEO-level executive who monitors the daily affairs,” the sources said.
Reliance has closely guarded its location-specific details in Hyderabad as it is bound to lead to a 15-20 per cent appreciation in land prices, which has been the case of the Satellite area in Ahmedabad. Reliance plans to set up 160 hypermarkets which would sell grocery, white goods, apparel and FMCG products.

Further, 300 superstores and close to 500 supermarkets which would market fresh fruit, meat, and vegetables have also been planned across the country. The target, according to a senior executive of a real estate consultancy, is to have 5 lakh sq. ft of retail space for hypermarkets in Hyderabad.

The size and scale of the Reliance venture is by no means small. Therefore, sources indicate that buyouts of existing regional retail players in the State
for the smaller format entry can’t be ruled out as Reliance readies its greenfield hypermarkets which on an average take 8-10 months to be functional. The advent of Reliance Retail would require proper supply chain logistics and cold storages, a space that Adani is looking at in Andhra Pradesh with their new venture — Adani Agr-ifresh Ltd — which would supply high-quality fruits and vegetables by putting in place an integrated product-handling system.

Venkat Jasti is vice-chairman and managing director of Suven Life Sciences Ltd., a pharmaceuticals company. Mr Jasti, who did his masters in phamacology from the United States, is also vice-chairman of the Pharmaceutical Export Promotion Council, set up by the Union ministry of commerce, and had earlier served as president of the Bulk Drug Manufacturers Association. Mr Jasti set up Suven Life Sciences on returning from the US — where he owned a chain of pharmacies in the State of New Jersey — in the early nineties.

Excerpts from an interview :

How are exports of Indian pharmaceuticals shaping up this year?

There has been a 15 per cent growth in the first quarter of 2006-07, over the previous-year quarter. The growth has been steady and we expect the trend to be sustainable in the near future.

Which are the segments that are witnessing higher growth — formulations, bulk drugs or generics?

Export growth is there in all segments, but currently generic drug exports are higher. But this is, I believe, coming at the cost of the value of the exports, in absolute terms. Generic drug manufacturers have been offering discounts of up 90 per cent, in the US market, to get volumes. Sure, it is still profitable, adding to volume and topline growth, but the reckless undercutting is hurting Indian pharmaceuticals industry.

What’s Pharmexcil doing to rectify the situation?

Pharmexcil is involved only in promoting exports from India. It has no role to play in how the exports are priced. Everybody wants volumes, but this may prove to be unhealthy for the sector in the long-term.

Do you think it is a good idea for the government to impose price controls on drugs?

No, it is not a good idea. It will impact the industry badly, and drugs could become scarce, leading to higher prices.

How has Indian pharma benefited from the patent law which came into force last year?

It has helped in clearing the air a bit about India. But there is a lot of hesitation on the part of foreign drug companies about the intellectual property regime in India, because while we have a patent protection law in place, a lot more needs to be done by the government and the industry before contract research and manufacturing will find traction in India.

And what would that be?

As I said, the Indian pharma industry should get its act together, and stop undercutting each other. They should invest in upgrading their R&D and manufacturing facilities. For its part, the government should bring in strict regulations on drug approvals, which is at the same time simple. Right now, we have too many regulations and too many committees from whom the industry should get approval for clinical testing, or new drug testing. It takes a lot of time, sometimes as much as six months, to get even a proforma approval.

This is because we have the same committees handling every aspect of pharmaceuticals, pharmacology, and biotechnology. These committees don’t have specialists with knowledge of different aspects of the pharmaceuticals industry. The government needs to hire such specialists and pay them market wages. More importantly, as I said, the regulatory regime should be strict but fast.

Everybody in the pharma industry, in India and abroad, keeps talking about contract research and manufacturing services, CRAMS, being India’s strength. But, apart from the occasional project by some MNC, contract research is yet to become widespread. Why is that?

First, because of the hesitation among Big Pharma. But that is slowly disappearing, and I believe that more than contract research, there will be a lot of action in collaborative research in India, in the coming years. In collaborative research, foreign companies will work with Indian firms to develop new drugs, or New Chemical Entities (NCEs). They will need to form joint research committees to address various stages of development of the NCEs. India, I believe, has the skills to emerge as the research hub for NCEs in the next few years.

Why should Big Pharma look for collaborative research in India, when they can as well set up their own R&D units, as some MNCs have indeed done?

The cost factor for one. But the biggest reason is that we have a vast pool of skilled scientists and companies who can do research in NCEs. Please remember that original research is no longer the exclusive preserve of Big Pharma. You have a whole lot of small companies in the US who are doing some serious research and innovation in NCEs. Big Pharma is working with such companies because their own drug pipeline is under strain, and their profit margins are under pressure as more and more drugs are going off-patent, which in turn is helping generic drug companies, including Indian generic drug manufacturers.

Will clinical trials be another segment of the drug development chain which will grow in India?

Yes, it will. Because our people are drug-naive. They do not use many drugs, unlike in the developed countries where the level of medication among the populace is high. This interferes with the testing of a new drug. By contrast, a lot of Indians hardly use drugs. But, again, before the clinical testing comes into India in a big way, the government and the industry should work, separately and together, to bring in some checks and balances, to ensure that the clinical trial process is not abused. These steps would include a regime on insurance cover for people taking part in clinical trials.

Hyderabad, Aug. 13: “Fiscal technology” is expected to be a growing segment in India’s tax regime because the sheer volume of businesses grappling with the value-added tax is overwhelming, industry sources say. “In the so-called ‘fiscal countries’, the authorities have chosen fiscal technology to answer one of the most demanding problems of taxation: the problem of efficiently controlling the VAT payable by hundreds of thousands of small retail outlets. This problem is bigger or more evident in developing countries or countries that have a predominately small to medium sized businesses and no heavy or large-sized industry on which to base their tax revenue,” says Mr C. Krishna Sastry, managing director of Fortune Informatics Ltd, a software product firm.

According to Mr Sastry, fiscal technology in its basic form is not only a technology but rather a legally defined way that defines and controls several key aspects of the way business is done in the retail sector. “For the fiscal technology to really have any meaning, let alone be productive in VAT/tax fraud elimination, there are a number of key elements that have to be in place, the most important being specific legislation that states that everybody in the retail business can only receive payments by issuing a legal receipt using only approved retail equipment,” says Mr Sastry.

Referring to the technology, R. Nand Kumar, vice-president of Fortune Informatics, who was involved in deploying the technology in Kenya, says that the key to the success of the technology is that fiscal law should ensure that every cash register or POS printer must be equipped with a non-erasable electronic memory in which, at the end of every business day, totals for tax collected and turnover are stored.
“The security specifications are such that the totals stored and later retrieved from the fiscal memory are considered trustworthy and indisputable.

If a cash register or POS has no such memory the totals presented for auditing are simple electronic files that can easily be manipulated without traces,” says Mr Sastry, whose company has developed a software product that helps in adding up the VAT says. “The product ensures that each transaction is electronically signed, and the totals add up at the end of the day. This ensures that businesses don’t play games with their VAT liability, and the government gets more revenue.” Mr Sastry says that since the advent of large capacity flash memory devices, it
has became possible that fiscal cash registers and fiscal POS printer to use
the so-called electronic journal.

Mid-cap stocks outperfromed frontline peers

Overcoming all negative global cues and showing good resilience, markets continued their upward march during the week ended. Both the Sensex on the BSE and the Nifty on the NSE logged gains of over 3 per cent to close at 11,192 and 3,274 respectively. It is pertinent to note that for the first time after nearly six months, mid-cap and small-cap stocks have outperformed frontline stocks reflecting that the current rally is gaining conviction among investors.

Return of FII buying coupled with the US Fed’s pause in its two year campaign to hike interest rates and good corporate results have turned the sentiment positive. Ascending intermediate tops and bottoms, improving volumes and positive market breadth suggest bullish activity. Chartists predict for the week ahead a trading band of 10,980-11,540 for the Sensex and 3,125-3,440 for the Nifty. The crossing of 11,260 on the Sensex and 3,320 on the Nifty with good volumes may see markets gain more momentum propelling them to short-term highs. Avoid fresh positions if the Sensex and the Nifty dip below 11,000 and 3,100. Stay long with trailing stop loss to ride the rally profitably. Churn portfolio to weed out stocks with poor fundamentals. Follow the Trend. Do not buck the trend, and do not hedge. Be either long or short, but not both at the same time.

F&O SEGMENT
Heightened activity was visible in the F&O segment with volumes improving significantly. Sentiment indicators like implied volatility, open interest and put/call ratio indicate positive outlook for the week ahead. Steady build up of long positions was seen in many counters. Buy Nifty3300 strike call option for unexpected sharp returns. Buy OTM calls of stocks witnessing increase of open interest and crossing their 50-day moving averages. Among the actively traded stock futures buying is suggested in Infosys, ACC, Tata Steel, RIL, Tata Motors, IDBI, Grasim, India Cements, Dr Reddy Labs, ITC, IPCL and Hero Honda with a stop loss at Rs 1,640, Rs 832, Rs 489, Rs 948, Rs 745, Rs 56, Rs 2,120, Rs 172, Rs 1,380, Rs 166, Rs 253 and Rs 630.

Renewed action is likely in side counters like Mah.Seamless, Strides Arcolabs, NDTV, Punj Lloyd, CESC, Bharat Forge and Dabur. Punters tip Mah.Seamless, Aurobindo and Matrix Labs for sharp gains. Auto, cement, tech and pharma counters are attracting good buying at lower levels. Profit taking in bank stocks is likely to be short lived. Capital goods and metal counters are witnessing fresh buying interest.

SATTA GUPCHUP
* Tyche Inds, a low profile pharma company manufacturing a broad range of drug intermediates and nutraceuticals like Glucosamine is witnessing strong accumulation from market players. Sources indicate that the company has bagged large export orders and has also got approval of product supply to a large MNC. Buy at current levels for three figure target price.

* Combination of factors like realty value, turnaround performances and asset values has seen punters buying into low-priced counters like Today’s Writing, LN Polyester, PCS Tech, Suryajyothi Spinning, Anjani Portland, Uttam Galva, Hind Inds and HMT. Short term gains are indicated in the counters. With mid-caps and small-caps witnessing renewed buying, check out stocks showing price and volume action.

* Strong buying interest was seen in mid-cap tech and pharma counters during the week ended. Stocks like D-Link, Hexaware, Rolta, Venus Remedies, Jagsonpal Pharma, Suven Life, Ind Swift Labs and Geodesic Info have seen a surge in volumes and price on aggressive buying. Punters tip for short-term gains in Wanbury, Megasoft and Datamatics.