Broad Issues: President A P J Abdul Kalam visits several European nations and Research Laboratories including CERN; he also visited the house of the renowned scientist and Nobel laureate Albert Einstein and termed it as a "pilgrimage"; PSLV (India made satellite launch vehicle) launches CARTOSAT (for mapping) and HAMSAT (for HAM operations) successfully on May 5, 2005; Government of India makes map information public, ending years of unwanted control; Indian Software exports in 2004-2005 continue to grow at 30+% with $17.2 Billion for the year ending March 2005 with an additional $ 5 Billion from BPO; Infosys offers its shares to Japanese under “Public offer without listing” in Japan thru Namura, another feather in its cap; “old economy” in India is doing well too; Steel Authority of India (SAIL) net profit exceeds Infosys, TCS, Wipro and Satyam put together; the South-based truck manufacturer Ashok Leyland becomes a Billion Dollar company; GE to make India manufacturing hub and talks of $ 5 Billion India Business; Volkswagen to make “Made in India” vehicles in Vizag in the state of Andhra Pradesh; globally, French & Dutch say “NO” to the new constitution of European Union.

On the Products front, Bangalore-based Encore launches Mobilis range of PC’s in Rs 10K range for Indian rural market under New Millennium Indian Technology Leadership Initiative; Wall Street Journal & Business Week likely to have India editions soon; globally, Yahoo starts online music, undercutting others in price (Apple, Napster); AOL too joins free the e-mail bandwagon with 2GB storage space; Nokia launches Linux device 770, the first ever non-phone device from the mobile phone leader; Google adds personalized home pages; Microsoft desktop search goes live on May 16, 2005: Netscape launches Fire-fox based browser Netscape 8.0

In the Marketplace Indian Software exports in 2004-2005 continue to grow at 30+% with $17.2 Billion for the year ending March 2005 with an additional $ 5 Billion from BPO; SingTel increases Airtel (Bharti) stakes to 31%, demonstrating the continued interest by Singapore companies in investing in India; Bangalore-based Cranes acquires the US-based CAE (Computer Aided Engineering) software company EMRC; MindTree buys Linc Software; CyberMedia (publisher of Dataquest, Voice & Data) and Sasken (Bangalore-based telecom software products and technology company) take IPO route; globally, Verizon takes over MCI: Lenovo starts functioning as the new face of IBM PC

Indian IT companies Bangalore-based Cranes acquires the US-based CAE (Computer Aided Engineering) software company EMRC; i-Flex plans to cross a headcount of 10,000 by the year end, a phenomenal success for a 6-year old software product & services leader from India; MindTree to cross % 100 Million in 2005, a rare feat for a services company within seven years of its existence.

MNC IT Companies in India are growing big in numbers; in software services IBM with 23,000 has highest employees among MNC; HP has 15,000; Accenture has 13,000; EDS to double headcount in India to 5000 (Chennai & Pune); Wal-Mart talks of big expansion in India: $ 43 Billion Target retail Store starts IT division in Bangalore with a headcount of 50 that is likely to go to several hundreds soon; French IT services major ValTech sets up India operations at Bangalore and expects to be 1,000 string by 2006; EFI (Electronics of Imaging) to expand its India centre at Bangalore from 120 to 275 by 2006; products vendors are growing in India too; Microsoft Global Tech Support Centre in Bangalore grows from 200 to 400 and expects to grow further; Dell is expected to touch 10,000 by end 2005; Philips software operations to increase headcount from 1,500 to 2,500 by 2007; Sun Microsystems to double head count in its India centre at Bangalore; NetApps to double headcount in Bangalore; security major VeriSign opens India development centre in Bangalore hardware major AMD starts design centre in Bangalore and expects to invest $ 5 Million; Nokia to make mobile base stations in India; Engineering & R & D too sees lots of growth with Siemens planning $100 Million transformer unit in Maharashtra; and Taiwan-based BenQ starting a R & D Lab in Bangalore. In an unusual route to growth in Engineering R & D, ALSTOM decided to invest $ 39 Million in a joint R &D facility in Infosys.

In Telecom, Government of India allots VHF 865-867 MHz spectrum for RFID; Indian mobile ARPU (Average monthly Revenue Per User) is at Rs 400/- (compared to global $ 56), and yet profitable, showing healthy signs of the growing Indian telecom services industry; BSNL cuts international long distance tariff by 33%: Taiwan-based BenQ is starting a R & D Lab in Bangalore; Nokia to make mobile base stations in India; SingTel increases Airtel (Bharti) stakes to 31%:

In ITES, Delhi-based GECIS targets $750 million in 2007 from current $ 500 Million business

On the People front, we had some very distinguished visitors to India in May 2005; GE CEO Jeff Immelt, Nortel CEO Bill Owens, Target CEO Paul Singer, Wal-Mart CEO John Menger and BenQ Chairman Ky Lee visit India; Wal-Mart and Target CEO talk of retail becoming technology Industry; other interesting developments include Tony Blair getting re-elected as British Prime Minister; Intel CEO Paul Otellini takes over charge; CSIR Chief R A Mashelkar is invited to US to the National Academy of Science; Bangalore-based scientist CNR Rao gets Dan David Prize; two faculty members of Indian origin in USA - Subhash Khot of Georgia Tech and Radlika Nagpal of Harvard University - among the five inaugural Faculty Fellowships announced by Microsoft.

On the Education & Research front, CSIR becomes Deemed University; BITS-incubated Company launches “School Mate” to launch SMS based tracking of students’ performance by parents; Institute of Cost & Works Accountants in India (ICWA) launches e-Learning;

On the Applications, 10,000 of the 68,000 auto rickshaws in Bangalore go digital; Government has put a number of Indian language tools, fonts in public domain; hopefully it should create a spurt in Indian language content.