Patni Computer Systems Ltd. will be expanding its telecom business unit, hiring over 200 people at its centre here, Neeraj Gupta, head of the unit, said. The centre currently has 300 people, Mr Gupta said, adding that work on the Patni Computer’s campus in Hyderabad was on track.

The company will be setting up the campus in 30 acres of land. Mr Gupta, who became head of the TBU at Patni Computer after his company, Cymbal Corp.. was acquired by Patni in November 2004 for $68 million, said the telecommunication business was a crucial one for the company because of the large opportunities in the segment.

"Our model is a mix of onshore and offshore, which gives us better margins. While our onshore professionals work with clients to design complete solutions for them, the software coding and support is done from our units in Hyderabad and Pune. The onshore-offshore teams work in a collaborative environment," he said.

Mr Gupta said the TBU had deployed nearly 70 engineers to develop integrated solutions for The Carphone Warehouse, the United Kingdom’s largest independent retail of mobile communications. "CPW is planning to enter the telecom space, offering telephony and broadband in the U.K. Patni Computer signed the contract for developing the telecom infrastructure, the IT backbone and mobility applications for CPW," Mr Gupta said.

Chennai has emerged as the most attractive city for offshoring, beating traditional top cities like Gurgaon, Faridabad, Noida or NCR, Bangalore and Mumbai. Hyderabad follows as a close second-most attractive city. Kolkata is emerging as a credible alternative to cities with more established offshoring services industries. These key findings were released by A.T. Kearney on Saturday, the global management consultancy firm in their Indian City Services Attractiveness Index 2005.

The cities have been benchmarked as attractive based on three major categories of financial costs (compensation costs, infrastructure costs, cost of living); people skills & availability (availability, educational skills & attrition rates); and the business environment (city infrastructure, quality of life and government support).

Chennai emerged as a clear leader across all categories followed by Hyderabad, NCR and Bangalore.

Nine Indian cities of Chennai, Hyderabad, NCR, Bangalore, Mumbai, Kolkata, Pune, Kochi and Jaipur were assessed for their attractiveness for placing offshoring services.

According to Mr Mohit Rana, principal, communication & technology practice, A. T. Kearney, Gurgaon, they see a "trend of vendors developing Tier 2 locations as the Tier 1 are expensive." Mr Arjun Sethi, principal, BPO & offshoring, A. T. Kearney, New York, said, "The A. T. Kearney study as expected reflects that the Tier 2 cities have a significant cost advantage.

Retail investors appeared to have taken a shine on new fund offers from mutual fund houses in the past six-eight months, after a hiatus of nearly 10 years, fund managers said.

This, the fund managers feel, has been fuelled by increased retail participation from the so-call Tier 2 and Tier 3 towns around the country. And retail investors appear to favour systematic investment plans (SIPs) with close to 80,000 to 1,00,000 SIP accounts being added every month by fund houses.

Mr Rajesh Bhojani, president (sales) at UTI AMC, said: "Retail participation is growing at a healthy clip and the pattern is more pronounced in equity funds. This comes after retail investors had decreased their allocation to MFs in the last 10 years, but now that has changed for the better." "Retail participation is bound to grow as there still exists huge untapped potential," Mr Bhojani added.

Although foreign institutional investors (FIIs) are still the major players in MF arena, the retail push is on a high and numbers do back this trend. "Out of the spread of Rs 80,000 crores in equity funds right now, about 80 per cent has come from retail investors. And with more retail investors making a start with MFs through the SIP route, AMCs are adding about 80,000 to 1,00,000 SIPs every month," Mr Bhojani said. UTI MF raised nearly Rs 1,200 crores with its latest fund offer, UTI Contra Fund and had seen about three lakh investors participating in its leadership fund, which raised close to Rs 2,100 crores.

With the stock market chugging along nicely, AMCs have seen their funds under management soaring, and if the trend continues, collections in the first six months of this calendar year can overtake last year’s collections, industry experts feel. In the first three months this year, domestic mutual fund houses mopped up nearly Rs 19,100 crores vis-a-vis Rs 24,000 raised in 2005.

Such has been the response for new products this year that Reliance MF raised a record Rs 5,750 crores for its equity fund, from nearly 9.5 lakh investors. Sources in the industry feel almost 80 per cent of the amount raised came from retail investors. Similarly, the SBI Bluechip Fund, which collected Rs 2,850 crores, had received about seven lakh investors.

"There has been a definite shift. Mutual funds were focusing only on corporate and HNI clients, but they are shifting their attention towards retail investors," noted Ms Sonam J. Udasi, senior analyst, JM Financial, which raised around Rs 200 crores.