Unflinching faith

The venture is still clearly in its early laps and even now accounts for only a small fraction of his business. But his new expansion decision has come at a time when nobody was expecting any big investment from the tycoon in the market in the light of the losses his Chinese operations registered in 2004-05. But the visionary that he is, Murthy has clearly seen the hidden potential of the market.

The tycoon strongly feels that the centres will not only help cash on the opportunities in this fast growing market but also provide critical resource pool for Infosys global operations in the future.

Core competence

D. N. Taneja, the Delhi-based real estate baron has tied up with Fun Republic, Zee Network8217;s entertainment arm, to come up with a shopping cum family entertainment complex in Delhi. With several successful projects in Delhi, Gurgaon, Panipat, and Moradabad under his belt the tycoon of course had little problem in convincing Subhash Chandra8217;s Zee bosses for an equal stake partnership. This is the first project of Fun Republic in the northern part of the country and will be a one-stop entertainment shop for residents of the cash rich West Delhi area. The tycoon expects a daily footfall of 10,000 but of course counts heavily on the strategic location of the complex right next to the new Metro Station to achieve this kind of traffic. Having this three floor state of the art complex Taneja has quite rightly left the management of the theatres to his partner Zee Telefilms for he knows where his competency ends and where his partner8217;s starts.

More faith

Sunil Munjal is trying hard to give a fresh lease of life to his jinxed BPO business Hero ITeS. Encouraged by the fresh wave of growth in the BPO sector, he is keenly looking at inorganic growth opportunities and plans to acquire a mid-size US-based BPO Company with private equity funds helping raise moolah for the deal.

Seems like the tycoon has finally made up his mind to catch up with the lost time and he appears optimistic about increasing his BPO head count to about 6,000 in a couple of years. The tycoon is also likely to hit the IPO path during the next two years to fund these aggressive growth plans. He appears to have travelled some way since his troublesome start in ITeS when foreign partners were deserting him one after the other. But he never quite lost heart fully realising that his partners terminated their relationships because of their own internal problems, not because of problems on his side. He now expects operating margins to go northwards as most of his new clients belong to the high-margin arena.

With Hero IteS reporting its first full year of profit and more importantly 100 per cent revenue growth over last year, the tycoon seems on the recovery path.

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