IDENTIFIED AT INDIA-FRANCE ECONOMIC CONFERENCE

NEW DELHI, January 25, 2008. The Session on ‘Towards a Cleaner and More Efficient Energy Scenario’ at the India-France Economic Conference: Synergies for the Future, saw the participants agree on the need for creating India-specific business models to tackle the exponential growth of peak power demand in the country in the next five years and beyond.

The need of the hour, it was felt, was to localize the cost structure to compete with local players and imports from China, focus in high technology areas and build local capacities in the areas of project management upskilling the workforce.

The session was chaired by Dr. Kirit Parikh, Member, Planning Commission. It was addressed by Dr. R K Pachauri, Director General, TERI; Mr. S Majumdar, Director, Projets, Power Grid Corporation of India ; Mr. Karim Vissandjee, CFO, Areva T&D, France; Mr. Rathin Basu, Country President & MD, Areva T&D, India; Mr. R V Shahi, Chairman, Energy Infratech & former Power Secretary; Mr. Arthur De Montalembert, Vice President, International & Marketing, Areva; Dr. Prem C Jain, CMD, Spectral Services Consultants; and Mr. Jean-Pascal Tricoire, CEO, Schneider Electric.

Dr. Pachauri called for deep cuts in emission levels by Indian industry and reduce the intensity of energy use. France, he said, had successfully deployed a twin strategy of energy efficient supply options, including the use of nuclear energy and improvement in technology to management demand. India, he said, needed to now focus on efficient management of its power demand along with augmenting supplies.

The session identified the emerging opportunities for investors in coal production and gas and renewable supplies. In order to meet the projected growth on coal production from 470 mmtpa in 2007 to 620 mmpta, opportunities will open in open cast mines growth and extension, clean cola technologies, imports, ports, logistics an handling, and underground mines cost reduction.

In gas, opportunities are seen in the production and transportation equipment, exploration, oilfield services and equipment, distributed generation and LNG for peaking power.

In renewables, the growth potential is pegged at over 100 GW, for which investors need to look at solar photovoltaics, bio-fuels and bio-mass and wind equipment and operations.

The session on ‘IT/Telecom: Convergence Scenario for India’ pinpointed the factors for success for operators in India. These are: leveraging economies of scale to purchase equipment cheaper than elsewhere in the world, reducing the minimum cost of mobile ownership steadily, leading to a rapidly expanding addressable market; innovating with business models to serve low-end customers, including counter-intuitive ideas such as higher tariffs for lower ARPU customers and innovating with network and IT outsourcing to manage costs and improve predictability, which helps indirectly in raising capital.

The session was chaired by Mr. Kamal K. Singh, Chairman & MD, Rolta India Ltd. It was addressed by Mr. Pawan Kapur, CEO Bharti Teletech Ltd.; Mr. Thierry Pasquet, Executive Vice President, Thomson; Mr. Tanmoy Chakrabarty, Vice Presient & Head, Global Government Industry Group, TCS; and Mr. Philippe Germond, CMD, Atos Origin

In IT Services and BPO, the state of play is such that demand for offshore ITS/BPO continues to be robust; Remote Infrastructure Management is the next big wave; domestic market for ITS/BPO becoming very important; players are smaller than global peer s but more profitable; industry consolidation is likely to accelerate; and despite wage inflation, costs are being effectively managed.

The participants felt that the key drivers for convergence between IT and telecom were ease of usability, easy customer interface, low prices, and multilinguism.

The issue of manpower shortage in the IT industry also came to the fore with participants calling for reform of the education system. At present, Indian companies are focusing on job rotation to retain talent and address the problem of attrition.