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NRI makes a fortune from floss |
Puneet Nanda is known as ‘Dr Fresh’ to family, friends and employees — the term is a respectful allusion to the empire he created in oral hygiene since his arrival in the US in 1998.
His company, Dr Fresh Inc, has sales of over $25 million a year and sells 1 billion yards of dental floss annually. His products range from oral care to personal hygiene (flushable sanitary napkins, baby wipes, pens to shoe shines).
He says several new products under development will take his company to the $100 million mark or above in the coming years. He currently has a plant in India, one in China and another in the United States. |
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Government to lure NRIs with high interest rate |
| The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is attempting to lure NRIs with higher interest rate on deposits with Indian banks. The RBI has recently increased interest rates on Non Resident External (NRE) term deposit accounts. From now onwards, banks can offer a return of 75 basis points over the London inter-bank offered rate for dollars, which is currently 4.58 per cent for six months. The maturity period of repatriable NRE deposits will continue to be one to three years. The changes in interest rates will also apply to repatriable NRE deposits renewed after their present maturity period. |
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Indian chess prodigies seek help |
Chess, which is known by several names, including shatranj or chadurang in India, is the product of India. Since the early part of the last century, the Russians have excelled in this game, dominating world championships.
Now, two young children, Arjun Vishnuvardhan, 14, and his brother, Gauri Shankar, 12, are creating waves in the chess world. Recently, they won the silver and bronze medals at the 2005 US Junior Open Chess Championship conducted by the US Chess Federation in Ohio.
Uskov Anton, a Russian, won the gold medal with 5.5 points out of 6 rounds. Indian prodigy Arjun scored 5 points with 4 wins and two draws. Arjun held the Russian in a draw and remained unbeaten throughout the tournament, a feat highly applauded.
Both the brothers are students of the well-known Good Shepherd International School at Ooty, a popular hill station in Tamil Nadu. The school is providing 100 per cent sports scholarship for their academic education.
Gouri Shankar, the younger brother, is the former National Under-7 Chess Champion of India, five-time British Under-11 Junior Chess Champion and two-time United States K-12 Quick Chess Champion.
He scored 4.5 points out of 6 rounds. He is the only player who got a hat trick in the British Junior Championship for three consecutive years, 2001, 2002 and 2003. He holds 15 international junior chess medals even before turning 12 years of age.
The young boys hold great promise. If the history of their performance is any measure of their ability, they will be chess grandmasters soon and bring glory to their country, enjoying worldwide recognition personally. But the journey is long and arduous. It requires additional training and skills to reach the goal. They need training that requires financial support. |
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Malaysia allows Indians to apply online visa |
Malaysia has allowed Indian nationals to apply for visas and temporary employment visas online from March 1 next year. Indian and Chinese nationals will now be able to apply for visas and temporary employment visas for Malaysia online from March 1, 2006.
Currently, Indian nationals can apply for tourist visas when they arrive at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport here. Visa approvals will also be given online. More than 115,000 Indian tourists visited Malaysia from January to June this year.
In another move to shore up tourist arrivals, foreign students in Malaysia would be allowed to work as tour guides. Students who spoke Arabic, Spanish, Korean, French, Russian and other languages were welcome to apply for temporary work permits.
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Kathuria finalises spacecraft design for tourist flights |
Chirinjeev Kathuria’s dream of tourist flights to space crossed another milestone when his company PlanetSpace finally picked a design for an eight-person orbital spacecraft that can fly back to earth.
After four years of research, the company has decided to base its next rocket vehicle on a faster-than-sound glider known as the Flight Dynamics Laboratory #7 (FDL-7). The Planet Space version of the FDL-7 is a 45-ft long glider called the Silver Dart that can carry up to eight adults.
“It is a re-usable vehicle. It can fly at least a 100 times to space,” Kathuria said. It was developed by Paul Czsyz, professor emeritus of aerospace engineering at Saint Louis University in 1964. ‘This design came out of work started in the 50s by the Air Force Flight Dynamic Laboratory. When the government decided to exclude the military from space development, the significance of this design was lost,” said Czysz, president of HyperTech Concepts and advisor to
PlanetSpace. |
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Software to predict film’s success at box office |
Hollywood might have long believed there are two big uncertainties in life —when a person will die and how a movie fares at the box office.
But now, professor Ramesh Sharda says a computer-based model he has devised could resolve at least one of those problems. To a producer, that must be sweet score, since Sharda claims his program can figure out whether a film will be a block-buster hit or an also-ran film or a dud — even before it is made.
He also wondered if his model cold ever work in India given the allegations of black money flowing into movie financing. “You should have full transparency regarding the budget before applying the model and later, an accurate box-office collections of the film,” he said.
But Sharda, an information systems specialist at Oklahoma State University, says the computer analysis model he has devised could change the way Hollywood plans and executes its movie projects.
He also said that a computerised analysis of 800 films has shown a significant level of accuracy in gauging their financial success.
Using a neural network to process the data, he explained that the film are placed in categories ranging from flop to block-buster. Among the criteria applied to a movie project are the rating producers are aiming at, strength of the cast, genre, competition from other films at the time of release, special effects, whether it is a sequel, and the number of theatres in which it will show. |
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Three Indo-Canadians among 100 physicians of the century in Alberta |
Three Indian doctors in Alberta were recently selected as part of “100 Physicians of the Century” in celebration of Centenary of Alberta, Canada. Dr Brijendra Sood, Dr Kabir Jivraj and Dr Zaheerali Lakhani were presented with plaques at gala dinners held in Calgary and Edmonton.
Two gala dinners were held, one in Calgary, Alberta on October 20 held at Palliser Fairmont Hotel in Calgary honoured 32 doctors from Southern Alberta presenting them with plaques. Dr Sood and Dr Jivraj were part of this group. On October 25 a similar event took place in Edmonton where the other 68 recipients received their plaques. Dr Lakhani was one of the awardees at this event. |
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Indian migration to the US hits a record |
| In spite of the 9/11 terror strikes and the subsequent stringent curbs and border scrutiny, immigration into the United States was the highest in the last five years. According to the figures released by the US Center for Immigration Studies in a report, 7.9 million immigrants have entered the US between 2000 and 2005, more than any other five-year period. The largest flow of immigrants, both legal and illegal, is from Mexico, the America’s southern neighbour. Some 11 million immigrants in the US are thought to be illegal. The report coincides with intense moves on Capitol Hill to take up some tough immigration proposals. A measure slated for a debate in the House of Representatives seeks to impose stiff penalties on employers who hire illegal immigrants and make illegal presence in the US a felony. |
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