• India can be Prime Healthcare Destination: CII Report
• Goa's Ancestral Houses to Boost Heritage Tourism
• India's Secret Weapon to Beat China

• Admiral Ramdas gets Magsaysay for Peace Efforts
• American Spends 45,000 on Indian Food!
• Premji, Ambani in Fortune Power List

With internationally recognised healthcare professionals, holistic medicinal services and low cost of treatment, India can attract over one million health tourists every year, according to industry body CII. The country offers a unique mix of indigenous systems such as yoga, ayurveda and meditation and western medicinal systems like allopathy. This, along with world class experts and the cost advantage, can help attract over a million patients and earn $five billion every year, a CII release said. While a heart surgery costs $30,000 in the US, it costs $6,000 in India. Similarly, a bone marrow transplant costs $26,000 here compared to $250,000 in the US, the release said adding that India should leverage its competitive strength to promote medical tourism. About 1.5 lakh patients had come to the country last year and the chamber along with Indian Healthcare Federation is working with tour operators for promoting packages to attract more medical tourists. CII and IHCF would also suggest a list of reputed hospitals in major cities with details of service and an indicative uniform price band in major specialities, it said. This would facilitate foreign patients seeking treatment in the country, the release said.Citing the example of Thailand, CII said India should aggressively publicise its traditional medicinal system and health services in association with the tourism authorities.

Courtesy: The Asian Age, August 16, 2004

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Global sportswear major Adidas is looking at India as a global manufacturing hub. The company has planned to set up a production facility for apparels in the country, which would serve as a base for its global requirements. Christophe Bezu, chief executive officer, marketing and sales division, Asia Pacific, Adidas, said, "As part of the company's global strategy, the procurement division is looking at setting up an apparel manufacturing facility in India. The company has short-listed several locations in the country for setting up the facility, he added. "India has a strong base for apparel manufacturing and along with that there is a cost advantage in manufacturing and exporting products from India," Andreas Gellener, managing director, Adidas India, said. The company is planning to set up more outlets to strengthen its distribution network. "We are looking at segmenting our range of products systematically and will introduce new 'localised' models," he added. The company is also planning a recruitment drive to "reinforce our team in India". Tendulkar included in global campaign Adidas has included Sachin Tendulkar in its global campaign "Impossible is Nothing" and plans to feature him across cricketing nations and the Asia-Pacific region. Adidas is the first global company to borrow an Indian name to sell its products outside the country. The campaign also features David Beckham, Muhammad Ali, Ian Thorpre among 10-12 other Adidas's global ambassadors. Although the current campaign will feature Tendulkar only in the cricketing countries and the Asia Pacific region, the company is looking at including him in its other global campaigns.

Courtesy: The Business Standard, August 13, 2004

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Indians' proficiency in English will help it ward off a potential threat from China in the outsourcing space, in spite of the latter's advantage of having cheap skilled labour and a market eyed by multinationals, according to global research and advisory firm Gartner. "China will not trounce India in the near-to medium-term, as the country has a good hold on English, which is the de facto standard for IT and technology services," Gartner India vice-president (Research) Partha Iyengar said. "India's 300-year history as a British colony and the use of English as a national language, means it has a huge population of native speakers to draw on, that China cannot match," he said. "This is a major advantage," Iyengar said adding the English-speaking outsourcing space accounts for 85 per cent of the total offshoring market. Moreover, Chinese cannot use the Queen's language without the help of an interpreter and while translating, the crux of the conversation is lost. This ends in most of the deals falling flat in that country, he said. China has an ample supply of trained engineers and had produced over two lakh graduates in 1999, which is more than three times than that of the US. They also work for a lower salary, of $500 in Shanghai, as against $700 in Bangalore and $5,000 in the US, he said.

Courtesy: The Economic Times, August 09, 2004

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An American has splashed out 45,000 pounds (67,000 euros, 83,000 dollars) for an eight-course meal for friends at one of the world's finest Indian restaurants, the Daily Telegraph reported on Saturday. The Michelin-starred Tamarind, in the tony Mayfair district of central London, where an average full-course meal goes for 45 pounds or so, said the tab was far and away the biggest it had ever seen. Its manager Rajest Suri said the anonymous spendthrift was a regular customer from New York who wanted to celebrate the opening of an exhibition of his watercolours at a London gallery. "There were about 90 guests, of whom about 60 had flown over from America specially," he was quoted in the Daily Telegraph as saying. The menu included king prawns marinated in ginger, paprika and Ajwain wine; wholewheat crisp and lentil dumplings and lamb served with creamed black lentils; tandoor-smoked aubergine pulp; and braised saffron rice. Dessert was a reduced milk dumpling with pistachio. "The host's only concern was that the evening was quite exceptional," Suri said. "There was no limit on how much he was prepared to spend." Steep as it seems, the bill only equalled, and did not surpass, that for an equally grand dinner at celebrity chef Gordon Ramsey's Petrus restaurant in London three years ago. For comparative purposes, 45,000 pounds in London can buy more than 5,750 chicken tikka masalas, delivered to your home or office -- one for every day of the year for the next 15 years and a bit beyond.

Courtesy: Hindustan Times, August 07, 2004

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Goa will no longer be only sand and sea. The state's new tourism minister, Mathany Saldanha, is persuading local people take up heritage tourism in their ancestral houses. The government is set to implement a scheme framed two years ago, that will give low interest finance and other support to owners of ancestral houses under the heritage tourism scheme. Mr Saldanha sees this activity as self-sustaining and a source of livelihood for people, apart from providing financial support to preserve age-old heritage. "We have large number of houses in Goa which can be converted into heritage houses," he told the state Assembly recently. According to estimates by INTUC, the Delhi-based heritage body, there are around 1,000 such houses in Panaji and around 5,000 in the entire state of Goa. Some of these are big palatial mansions. The issue was debated extensively at a joint seminar organised here recently by Travel and Tourism Association of Goa, body of private stakeholders in tourism and Indian Heritage Hotels Association. There are suggestions from some heritage lovers that since the owners of some of such houses are unaware about how to preserve and maintain heritage aspect, it is advisable to hand over the same aspect to some heritage groups. However, Mr Saldanha says he will not encourage displacement of ownership instead government will help the owners, provide guidance for maintenance and marketing of their heritage property.

Courtesy: The Economic Times, August 07, 2004

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Retired Admiral Laxminarayan Ramdas, a former Navy Chief of Staff, has been awarded this year's Ramon Magsaysay Award for International Understanding. The Magsaysay Trust board made the announcement on Monday. Adm. Ramdas shares the honour with Pakistani journalist and human rights activist Ibn Abdur Rehman. Both are members of the Pakistan-India People's Forum for Peace and Democracy, or PIFPD, and have been recognised for "reaching across a hostile border to nurture a citizen-based consensus for peace between Pakistan and India," the award committee said. Adm. Ramdas told The Asian Age that the award was in recognition of the forum's efforts in spreading peace. "Although people work only for fulfilling their mission, any such honour makes us believe that our work is being appreciated." He said that since the forum started working, the people-to-people relationship in both countries had improved. The award committee said Adm. Ramdas and Mr Rehman had been working to bring peace on both sides of the border. The forum was started in Lahore in September 1994 by Mr Rehman and Adm. Ramdas, along with 24 other Indians and Pakistanis, to create a platform for public dialogue.

Courtesy: The Asian Age, August 03, 2004

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Three Indian corporate heads, including Azim Premji of Wipro, have been chosen as "the most powerful people in business in Asia's Power 25 list." The other two are Mukesh Ambani of Reliance Group and Nandan Nilekani of Infosys. According to the latest issue of the Fortune magazine, Premji has been ranked tenth while Ambani is 13th and Nilekani 23rd. Last year, India had only one corporate chief in the prestigious list. "Our picks are magnets to be watched", writes Fortune in its second annual list of the world's most powerful people in business. "India, too, is spawning powerful moguls. With a racing economy, a highly skilled technical workforce, and the ability to easily export goods and services, India is coming into its own," the magazine said.

Courtesy: Hindustan Times, August 02, 2004

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