India News Briefs

IBM launches India Smart Centre
IBM India has announced the launch of the India Smart Centre, a virtual toll-free service centre to provide services and support to small and medium businesses in metros and small towns. The centre, the first one of its kind, will provide easy to use repair and restoration services for IBM desktops and notebooks. The India Smart Centre provides a large infrastructure of toll-free telephonic support and is equipped with the state-of-the-art facilities and highly skilled product specialists to help resolve service and technical issues telephonically. Customers have to dial a toll free number 1600-44-6666 to access the service across India.

Wipro arm gets ISO certification
Wipro 01 markets, the e-sourcing and e-procurement division of Wipro Infotech, has received an ISO 9001:2000 certification for the processes of its e-procurement services. Wipro 01 markets is a 60-person strong division and has till date conducted over 450 reverse auctions with a transactional value of Rs 720 crore and has added 89 customers across 140 categories.

Kenoir to open training centres
Singapore-based Kenoir Embedded Systems School will open training centres offering courses related to embedded systems in India in partnership with Singapore-based solutions company eACT technologies. The first centre will come up in Bangalore, followed by centres in Pune, Chennai and Hyderabad. The company has earmarked a total investment of Rs 10 crore for this task.

EFI sets up R&D centre in Bangalore
US-based Electronics for Imaging (EFI), a provider of imaging solutions for network printing, has set up an R&D centre in Bangalore. The centre will employ 50 people to start with and this is expected to double to 100 by end-2003. The centre will act as a hub for EFI to expand into the growing Asia-Pacific market. EFI has been present in India since January 2001 and has 45 customers in India. The centre will aim for quality certification for its products and services during the next 18 months. EFI will also roll out a partner program by October 2003. EFI had acquired Unimobile, and the company’s engineering team was primarily located in Bangalore, making EFI’s expansion in the region a corollary.

Datacons MFund deployed in MIM
Malaysian investment management company MayBan Investment Management (MIM) has chosen Datacons’ MFund suite of products to address its end-to-end business needs. MIM manages assets over $600 million across 120 portfolios. Datacons MFund will help improve MayBan’s internal processes as well as help MIM provide better service levels and thus attain a distinct competitive edge in the Malaysian investment management scenario.

HVB implements i-flex solution
i-flex solutions has announced that HypoVereinsbank Group (HVB Group) is rolling out i-flex’s flagship FLEXCUBE banking solution. Ranked as one of Europe’s top five banks, HVB Group selected i-flex after stringent evaluation of leading banking solution providers and products. With the agreement, i-flex gains important momentum in Germany and across Europe for FLEXCUBE, slated to replace a number of HVB Group’s existing back-office systems across their international locations.