Apple to acquire Beats Music & Electronics

Tech giant Apple will acquire music service Beats Music and Beats Electronics for $3 billion, a move aimed at strengthening its music services portfolio. Speculation about the deal started earlier this month with the size estimated at $3.2 billion says Sachin Karpe.

The deal with Beats also marks a departure for Apple, which has a reputation for developing new products rather than buying up smaller firms - a method preferred by rivals Google. Beats co-founder Jimmy Lovine, who made his name as chairman of the Interscope Geffen A&M record label, welcomed the deal and told that he believed that Beats always belonged to Apple. Adding Beats will give Apple fresh star power in music and the ability to get more ad revenues from streaming including mobile. Mobile music revenues in the US totaled $1.68 billion in 2013, according to the research firm eMarketer, which estimates that figure will increase to $2.52 billion this year.

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Sensex up 70 points ahead of RBI policy meet says Sachin Karpe

The benchmark BSE Sensex rose over 70 points in early trade as funds and investors made fresh buying ahead of the RBI's bi-monthly policy review. The wide-based National Stock Exchange (NSE) index Nifty moved up by 15.75 points, or 0.21 per cent, to 7,378.25 says Sachin Karpe.

The Sensex had gained 467.51 points in the previous session on the back of slight improvement in HSBC Indian Manufacturing Purchasing Manager's Index (PMI), a measure of factory production in May. The 30-share barometer gained 70.89 points, or 0.29 per cent, to 24,755.74 with stocks of consumer durables, metals, IT, realty, oil and gas and power sectors leading the rise. Brokers said increased buying by participants before the Reserve Bank of India's bi-monthly monetary policy review on Tuesday boosted the sentiments says Sachin Karpe. Besides, a firming trend on the other Asian markets also supported the upside. 

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Journey of Superstar Rajinikanth - Sachin Karpe

CMC to focus on expanding Education & Training segment in FY15

Subsidiary of Indian’s largest IT company, CMC Ltd is looking to expand its Education and Training business segment in FY15 by entering the vocational training market domestically as well as internationally. There are special initiatives going on in the company to focus and grow to make it a broader base of knowledge management says Sachin Karpe. CMC Limited is a leading systems engineering and integration company in India, offering application design, development, testing services and asset-based solutions in niche segments through turnkey projects for mission critical systems. CMC has also been expanding its service presence in international markets offering offshoring advantages and delivering value through service level-based and project scope-based deliveries. The company’s Education and Training segment is the smallest revenue generator of the four strategic business units it has. The company has  started a pilot project in vocational training in construction management and retail management segment in Hyderabad and Pune. The company will be launching pilots projects in this quarter in Delhi and Mumbai. 

The company has increased spending for this segment but not very significant as of now. As, it is a pilot project, it is too early to talk about total spending on this segment. CMC also plans to spend more on research and development in the current financial year and will keep a budget 15% higher from last year. As part of its vision to be among the top 20 global companies by 2020 through its CMC, Sachin Karpe says the company has laid a strategy to move towards its goal in the current year. The company intends to provide services to advanced markets and technology and solutions for the emerging markets. The emerging economies like Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Africa do not have systems integration at all and so there is a great business opportunity there to tap these markets to create solutions from ground-up.

For the advanced countries, CMC has the skill and domain knowledge where it can position for outsourcing or automation services or SMAC integration. The company’s Education and Training segment is the smallest revenue generator of the four strategic business units it has. In the quarter ended March, this segment reported consolidated revenues worth Rs 13.77 crore compared with Rs 77.44 crore from IT enabled services and the highest of Rs 398 crore from the systems integration segment. The customer services segment churned Rs 119.82 crore in the period under review says Sachin Karpe.

Sachin Karpe Shares Fiscal Deficit in India

Every time economists sense India is or will be in trouble, the phrase fiscal deficit often pops up. While some experts believe that fiscal deficit is positive that helps the country grow, conservatives think otherwise, favoring a balanced budget policy. For example, economist John Maynard Keynes believed that deficits help countries climb out of economic recession. On the other hand, fiscal conservatives feel that governments should avoid deficits in favor of a balanced budget policy says Sachin Karpe. Fiscal deficit is the difference between the government’s expenditures and its revenues (excluding the money it’s borrowed). A country’s fiscal deficit is usually communicated as a percentage of its gross domestic product (GDP). 

According to the data released by Controller General of Accounts (CGA) on Friday, the fiscal deficit during April-January 2013-14 worked out to be Rs 5.32 lakh crore or 101.6 per cent of the revised estimates. Fiscal deficit was sharply higher than the revised estimate, but revised estimate of 4.6% of GDP will be met as told by finance minister P Chidambaram. In the interim budget of February, the Congress-led government had revised the full-year fiscal deficit target to 5.25 trillion rupees says analyst Sachin Karpe. However the month of March might see some fiscal surplus. 

According to Mr D K Joshi, the deficit was projected at 4.8 per cent of GDP and it stuck to this number, unless sharp corrections happened in March. Finance Minister P Chidambaram was optimistic and said that analysts all over the world look at fiscal deficit numbers while looking at stability of the economy. The economy is officially projected to grow 4.9 per cent in 2013-14 the second year in a row when the economy would expand below five per cent says Sachin Karpe. Government spending, inflation and lower revenue are among some of the main factors that lead to fiscal deficit. Like India, many developing countries are making an effort to resolve big fiscal deficits. On the bright side, for India, foreign investments and inflow of remittance from Indians living overseas has helped avoid very high deficits. Many economists consider the revenue deficit a more serious problem than the fiscal deficit because it means the government is borrowing to meet even its consumption expenditure. Fiscal deficit has been a key concern for credit rating agencies and RBI is likely to be on alert when it pays its debt says Mr. Karpe.

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