The domestic market is witnessing a boom with the increase in demand for online gifts by NRIs.Online florists Ferns 'N' Petals which offer delivery of fresh flowers to almost any location in India gets the maximum hits on its website by NRIs. "About 70 per cent of our online business comes from NRIs and apart from flowers there is also a great demand for chocolates, cakes and gift hampers," says Rajiv Bose, general manager, e-commerce, Ferns 'N' Petals.

Financial controller of Caterpillar, Aditya Aggarwal, sitting at his plush condominium on Orchard Road, Singapore makes his relatives feel his presence in the capital by sending them gifts through the online shopping portals. "I try to send flowers when it's my sister's birthday or send my family chocolates and champagne on festivals," he says. Apart from their own website, Ferns 'N' Petals also feature on other websites that cater to a larger client base. Greeting cards and gift major Archies has tie-ups with indiatimes.com and tajonline.com for their online business. "Online shopping is a useful tool because you can be anywhere but still remain close to your loved ones by sending them gifts that they will cherish," says Youhan Aria, head corporate communications, Archies.

He adds, "It costs peanuts as compared to shipping a gift item, also it is a local product for local delivery. This cuts down on production cost and the benefit is extended to the customer in terms of cost."Of the total online business that Archies has, 30 per cent is provided by NRIs, says Aria. And the biggest event in the calendar, according to Rajiv Bose, is Valentine's day followed by Mother's day, Rakhshabandhan and Diwali.

Aria says that people in India like to add gifts with chocolates or sweets, so most portals offer gift hampers or combo packages. "There is no difference in the price of the products available online or in the local market, there is only an additional charge for delivery," explains Aria.For Aditya Aggarwal online shopping is the most convenient way to shop. He says, "Most NRIs have large disposable incomes, and it is very easy for them to sit comfortably at home and order a gift to be delivered anywhere in the world."

According to him the most popular websites for online shopping are wallmart, yahoo, ebay and amazon.com. Aditya Aggarwal believes that one can get good offers on the internet as there are many sites where people auction their goods. "Shopping online is value for money, because you have so much on offer and that too at reasonable prices." He adds, "It is not only the customers who benefit from the websites but also the portals who make huge money."

India is emerging as a key hub for complex designing of semi-conductors, from Application-Specific Integrated Circuit chips to Field Programmable Gate Array chips to chips used in PC gaming and high-definition TV, with multinational companies moving critical design functions to cities like Hyderabad, Noida and Bangalore.

Says Mr Akshya Prakash, managing director of the Xilinx-CMC India Development Centre, a partnership between the $1.3 billion Xilinx, Inc., of the United States and CMC Ltd, a subsidiary of Tata Consultancy Services, "India has the skill sets to develop ASIC and FPGA chips, and the 55 chip design engineers working at the centre are involved in developing programmable chips for Xilinx clients around the world."

According to Mr Prakash, the demand for ASIC, which are designed for specific uses, are on the decline, while the demand for FPGA chips, which can be customised to a clients requirements, was increasing substantially. "We decided to partner with CMC for the India Development Centre in Hyderabad because they have the expertise in embedded software, and we could ramp up the operations faster for high-end R&D in hardware. The IDC has developed 20 IP cores, which are pre-defined off-the-shelf hardware modules, in the past 20 months of operation. This constitutes nearly 10 per cent of the 250 IP cores developed by Xilinx," Mr Prakash told this newspaper on the sidelines of 19th International Conference on VLSI Design, currently underway here.

"The engineers here developed a Control Area Network controller which is used to control the functions of a motor car’s dashboard. The CAN controller is being deployed by BMW in its cars," he said.According to Mr David E. Orton, president and CEO of the $2.2-billion ATI Technologies, Inc., a Canadian company developing graphics, video and multimedia products for desktop, workstation and notebook PCs, digital televisions, cellphones and game consoles, of ATI Technologies’ development centre in Hyderabad, "The 125 engineers in Hyderabad are crucial to the development of chipsets and chips for high-definition TV, a segment in which ATI has a 60 per cent market share."

Mr Orton said that with the increasingly important role the Hyderabad centre was playing, ATI would be ramping up the headcount to 200 by August this year. Echoing the sentiments of Mr Orton and Mr Prakash, Dr Aloknath De, head of the telecom unit of STMicroelectronics Pvt Ltd, the Indian subsidiary of the $8.7-billion Swiss semi-conductor company STMicroelectronics, said, "The centres in Noida and Bangalore, which together have over 1,500 engineers, develop cutting-edge System-on-a-Chip technology for the company’s global clients, including mobile handset firms."

"The teams in India helped in developing a two megapixel camera which is installed in some mobile phones, and in the nomadic platform for wireless mobile multimedia, which will allow both audio and video contact in mobile calls," Dr De said.