Computers Today, November 1-15, 2000; Country Buzz, pg2

Chennai-based computer animation major Pentamedia Graphics Ltd has signed an agreement with Film Roman, a leading player in television animation in the US, to acquire 51 per cent stake in the latter. The US firm is promoted by Phil Roman, a recipient of 10 Emmy Awards. With last year's turnover of close to $50 million, Film Roman is a major independent broadbased production company and animation studio.

In another significant development, Pentamedia and Broadcast Worldwide have entered into an agreement towards the Internet broadcasting of TARA (Television Aimed at Regional Audiences), a latent entity of Broadcast Worldwide. An agreement between the two corporates was signed recently by V. Chandrasekaran, chairman and CEO of Pentamedia, and Rathikant Basu, CEO of Broadcast Worldwide.

SDRC Unveils E-business Initiative

SDRC India Pvt. Ltd, a CAD/CAM/CAE solutions provider, has announced its new corporate strategy for providing Internet-based solutions to its customers. The company has launched Web-based solutions to enable manufacturers create products better, faster and cost-effectively with its offerings-E-mechanical design automation, E-collaboration products, E-product knowledge management and E-business integration. SDRC is also expanding its development centre in Pune and setting up training centres across the country in association with NIIT, Narender Reddy, country manager, SDRC, said.

"Rapid growth is also expected in the engineering services segment, especially with large multinational companies either setting up or outsourcing design and development work in India," Reddy added.

Trigyn Sets Eyes on Australia For M-commerce Solutions

Former Hewlett-Packard India chief Suresh Rajpal-promoted Trigyn Technologies (India) Ltd, a provider of Internet-centric software solutions and services, has identified Australia as an area of focus for its M (mobile)-commerce products and solutions. It has appointed Egility Ltd, Australia, as its value-added reseller (VAR) of its latest eVector, a 3G product, and other E-business solutions in Australia and New Zealand.

eVector is a leading OMAMP (open multi-access messaging platform) which allows users to access any information on multiple devices like mobile phones, PDAs, the Net, and CTI through multiple channels like SMS and WAP. "Egility is the first VAR for eVector and will focus on the New Zealand and Australian markets," said Rajpal, CEO, Trigyn Technologies. "We propose to sign up VAR's for eVector, especially in Asia-Pacific, Europe and the US," he added. Trigyn Technologies, a Mumbai-based public limited firm listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange and the National Stock Exchange, was formed after a merger between Leading Edge Systems and eCapital Solutions in January 2000.

Visual Quest Intros Multimedia Apps For Cell Phones

After receiving and sending E-mails over cellular phones, now it's time to watch video and hear music on your handheld devices. Hyderabad-based WAP start-up company Visual Quest India has developed a platform called Visualmove, which will enable full multimedia experience for the users of mobile phones. The platform will enable mobile users to use applications such as video E-mail, news broadcast, movie clips, video confereencing, interactive games and M (mobile)-commerce.

Says Birad Yajnik, managing director of Visual Quest, "We are the first to pioneer this revolutionary technology in Asia over wireless networks. At present, the first-generation applications are ready to be deployed on the Visualmove platform, while commercial applications will be ready for deployment in the next six to eight months."

Visualmove is network- and device-independent software platform which enables delivery management and viewing of full-motion video and audio over wireless networks.

Intercept Gets $2 m VC Funding

Chennai-based online marketing company, Intercept Consulting, which claims to do over 3 million ad impressions per day on various Web sites in the country, has received a venture capital (VC) fund of $ 2 million from New York-based investment bankers, Westbridge Capital. The VC fund, which is being run by Indian entrepreneurs, has made its first investment in an Indian firm through Intercept and is also planning to focus more on Indian firms in the next few months.

Says S. Ramakrishnan, co-founder of Intercept, "This is our first round of funding. The money will be used primarily for three activities, namely customer service, improvement in technology (R&D of new products and services), and for customer understanding. The focus is also on physical growth. We will be entering four cities apart from the four cities where we already have a presence." Intercept has also come out with a novel scheme to incubate newer ideas through its programme called 'click & contribute', "aimed at fueling the dreams of any first-generation entrepreneur". The model will also be promoted by serving ads on Web sites surfed by up and coming entrepreneurs using Intercept's proprietary AdCept technology.

Intercept will incubate one firm for six months from over a dozen applications that have been received. The entrepreneur is provided with office space and other related facilities.

Summit Infotech Falls Back On Software Development

Summit Infotech Ltd, a Delhi-based company best known as a major distributor of publishing software and related products, has embarked on an aggressive and elaborate restructuring process. The firms's focus will be a lot more on software-marketing, customisation and development. To this effect, the company has been divided into two divisions. Summit Information Technologies (SIT), which was earlier a separate firm, is now a division of Summit Infotech. It will take care of the software products, their enhancement, development and marketing. The firm expects 70 per cent of this division's revenues from exports.

The second entity, the distributon and systems integration division, will look after distribution of third-party products from firms such as Umax, Kodak, Adobe, and WebTrends. Summit will be making an investment of around of Rs 16 crore in the firm, a major chunk of which will go into software development.

Explaining the reason and logic behind this shift in focus, Summit managing director Rakesh Kapoor said, "Summit started as a software development firm. We developed a multi-lingual software, Indica. Down the line, we diversified into distribu- tion and software took a back seat. We thought now is the right time to show work to our prospective customers and make use of the technologies we have developed to generate more work."

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