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Pepsi Food to invest Rs 1.25 billion

Pepsi Food India, a leading player in food processing sector, will invest Rs 1.25 billion in Karnataka, taking its total investment in the southern state to Rs 2.65 billion, company president P M Sinha has said.

Speaking on the prospects of food processing in the country on the second day of the Global Investors' Meet, or GIM, in Bangalore, he said that the company had so far ploughed Rs 18 billion ($ 450 million) of investment in India, covering the states of Karnataka, Maharasthra, Kerala and Punjab.

The food-processing industry in the country faced a challenge of branding though the industry had a vast resource to exploit, he said. Despite the Gulf countries being neighbors, India was unable to exploit the market, especially in the area of meat and poultry product as it lacked quality and brand.

Philips: Philips Software centre chief executive officer Bob Hoekstra in his address on India's potential in software' said the huge pool of English-speaking and computer-literate graduate workforce with cost-effective labour had made India a preferred destination.

The shortage of skills in Europe and the US in some specific area and the overall support to the industry from the government would boost the sector further, he added.

BPL: Rajiv Chandrasekar of BPL Telecom in his presentation on the 'Telecom sector' said the telecom sector needed a $ 142-billion investment. The IT-related service alone would account for $ 87 billion, he added.

He said the demand for fixed telephone connection would grow to 75 million, while the Internet connection would touch the 25-million mark.

Even though the sector went through a very bad patch, with the National Telecom Policy in place more investment would be forthcoming.

Apart from power sector telecom sector was the lone sector which had received foreign direct investment, or FDI, more than $ 4 billion in the last few years.

The sector is poised to grow with 3G licences for wireless applications. Broadband and Internet provide other sources for investment, he added.

UNI

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