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Doha Bank may check into Mumbai |
Qatar-based Doha Bank, which entered a strategic alliance with IndusInd Bank, plans to open two branches in India, with one expected to come up in Mumbai in September-October for which the bank is targeting a deposit base of $50 million within a year. The bank is also interested in making a strategic investment and picking up equity stake in Indian banks subsequently.
Through its alliance with Doha Bank, IndusInd Bank plans to focus on the business opportunities generated by expatriate communities in Qatar, starting with NRIs. The bank will aim at big corporates and not the small and medium enterprises. We hope to attract $50 million in deposits, largely from NRIs.” Currently, there are 1,70,000 NRIs in Qatar. |
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Cobraman honoured |
| NRI entrepreneur Karan Bilimoria, founder and CEO of Cobra Beer, has been honoured with the ‘Man of the Year’ award at the 2006 UK Drinks Business Awards. Bilimoria’s Cobra Beer also won the highly coveted Business Excellence Award for the second year running. The judges commended the company for its “continuing high level of innovation and creativity” in recent product launches of Cobra, including Cobra Lower Cal and King Cobra. “We are absolutely delighted to receive these two awards from The Drinks Business,” the Hyderabad-born Bilimoria, who has so far won several awards including Outstanding Achievement Award for 2005, said. “It is particularly satisfying for us to have retained the Business Excellence Award we won last year as I feel this is a true measure of the company overall. The fact that we have won this award two years in a row is fantastic,” he said. |
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Dubai deports Indian workers |
| Eighty-six workers, mostly Indians, were deported from Dubai for allegedly attacking their colleagues, who had broken a five-day protest for better wages. The construction workers of Besix, the Dubai-based Belgian company were deported on Monday. As many as 8,000 Besix labourers had stopped work on May 16 across the UAE demanding better wages. Some protestors beat up 50 of their colleagues, lightly injuring the men, after they went to work, effectively breaking the strike, an official was quoted as saying by the Gulf News. The protest halted work on about 17 projects, including on Burj Dubai, causing a direct loss of Dh 5 million (Rs 6,22,30258) and an indirect loss of between Dh10 million (Rs 12,45,70,770) to Dh15 million (Rs 18,68,97,400) to the company. |
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Delhi fest in Moscow |
| A three-day Delhi cultural festival was held in Moscow from May 30, with a gala evening of Indian vocal and instrumental music. The inaugural speeches of Delhi chief minister Sheila Dixit and Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov at the prestigious International House of Music, a new “gem” of the post-communist Russian Capital’s glittering attire, reminded of the bonhomie, which existed in days of ‘Hindi-Russi Bhai-Bhai’. Mayor Luzhkov recalled the days when as a young boy he used to take keen interest in India’s fight for independence and how he along with millions of Soviet people rejoiced when India became free. Recalling the Russia visits of great Indian leaders Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi, Mayor Luzhkov vowed to carry forward the mission of peace and democracy in the world with Delhi. Agreeing with the Moscow mayor that Indo-Russian relations go back to the India voyage of Russian merchant Afanasy Nikitin over five centuries ago, Dixit noted that great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy’s influence on Mahatma Gandhi has “become part of Indian history”. |
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Indians top Bee |
| Indian-American students have made a clean sweep of this year’s National Geographic Bee by winning the top three places in the prestigious quiz contest. Twelve-year-old Bonny Jain of Moline, Illinois, emerged the winner in the Bee on Wednesday, clinching a $25,000 college scholarship and also a lifetime membership of National Geographic Society. Neera
Sirdeshmukh, 14, of Nashua, New Hampshire, came in second place, while 13-year-old Yeshwanth Kandimalla from Georgia came third. Jain managed to answer 26 out of the 27 questions posed to him. For the winning question, he was asked to name the mountains that extend across much of Wales, from the Irish Sea to the Bristol Channel, to which he correctly answered “Cambrian Mountains”.
Jain, who represented Wilson Middle School, had finished fourth in the geography bee last year. The eighth-grader is also a three-time winner of The Dispatch and The Rock Island Argus’ Regional Spelling Bee and will compete in the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington next week.
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| ICICI bank gets more NRI business in Bahrain |
| India’s largest private sector bank ICICI has garnered a significant market share of the NRI retail business in Bahrain since launching its operations in the country in October 2004. The bank also launched various value-added services for its customers in Bahrain such as online remittances and the visa debit card, he was quoted as saying by a local newspaper. The bank continued to build on its existing presence in various geographies as well as enter new markets, Sharma said. In addition to providing credit and trade finance solutions to Indian companies, ICICI was expanding its international retail franchise through technology-based banking services, he said. |
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