The regulator also stated that the guidelines have been a non-starter as M&A activity has not taken place despite the industry being in dire need for consolidation. Moreover, the telecom operators were also demanding changes in the M&A rules citing them as difficult. The Vodafone India Chief said, that the companies should be allowed to buy the assets of a particular firm rather than the complete firm which has a lot of debt in its accounts.

The Government has eased the M&A rules and have and has also allowed mergers between firms with up to 50 percent combined market share. Prior to this the telecom companies were allowed to merge if the combined market share of the firms does not exceed more than 40 percent in any circle of the nation.

Speaking about the service, Ashish Gulati, Country Head India said, “These initiatives help us to increase the awareness about our products and services. Telit solutions are well tailored and offer quality performance which sets new standards in the field of m2m technology. These technical sessions provide us an opportunity to gain better understanding of the needs of our partners and customers in the market.”

The Telit m2mAir Cloud & deviceWise – modules feature embedded APIs that are compatible with the well-known Telit on-board AppZone and Python environments. They help in reducing hundreds of lines of code to 16 simple AT commands to move data automatically between remote devices in the field and relevant applications. All the necessary developer resources and support are included and an Evaluation Kit is available for rapid prototyping of custom m2m and IoT device solutions.

The m2mAIR Cloud also features comprehensive management and configuration capabilities to connect, collect, and control anything with bi-directional data transfers between remote devices and the Cloud.

Speaking about Obi Mobile, John Sculley, co-founder and managing partner at Inflexionpoint, says, “The smartphone industry growth in emerging markets is soaring at +32% CAGR in 2014. It is vital to have very disruptive price points for success in emerging markets. At Obi, we are brand builders and sales channel builders on a global scale. We can be profitable at more aggressive price points than other multinational brands as we use youth-centric positioning and excellent partner relationships, such as Jumbo, which will differentiate us from other global brands.”

Commenting about the deal, Amit Rupchandani, Managing Director for the MENA region at Obi Mobiles, said, “We have earmarked substantial investments for expansion in the MENA markets, and are working to identify the right partners who have the capabilities to carry forward our vision. Jumbo Electronics has been one of the strongest players in the region’s consumer electronics industry for several decades now, and has a proven track record of reaching a growing population of smartphone adopters. We believe their position as a trusted retailer and distributor will help us tick off our targets for the region in the most efficient manner.”

On the other hand, on being associated with Obi, Vishesh Bhatia, chief executive officer at Jumbo Electronics, said, “Jumbo is pleased to be chosen as the exclusive channel partner for Obi Mobiles. A great addition to our brand portfolio, Obi offers a refreshing new take on smartphone technology that will appeal to the large section of young smartphone users in the country. With the smartphone industry in the region rapidly maturing to a multi-brand structure, new devices are more easily seeing acceptance and curiosity among consumers. We will look to leverage this trend, and in addition, reinforce our commitment to Obi through a dedicated sales and marketing team that will drive the brand identity across this market.”

Obi Mobiles entered into the Indian market this year and now it is all set to establish its footprint in the Middle East and Africa markets in phase two of its global expansion plans. Along with this the company will be unveiling its products by the end of September.

Talking about the new centre, Nikhil Jain, CEO, Elitecore Technologies says “The Centre of Excellence will work towards our company’s vision of enabling our customers’ ability to market its services on time and bring utmost customer satisfaction and differentiate their services. The CoE will play a major role in our global expansion strategy”.

He also added, “Elitecore will strengthen its product delivery, professional services and bring in more expertise continue servingour project management capability as per latest industry standard to bring in operational efficiencies, quick turnaround time (TAT) and reducedTCO.”The Pune Centre of Excellence will tap top Industry professionals from Pune”.

One of the leading India e-commerce portals Snapdeal.com will hire 1,000 software engineers and will also set up three new development centers in the country. Furthermore, the company is planning to invest in building proprietary disruptive technologies, which will enhance the shopping experience for the consumers. This hiring is seen as a backbone for the company as the e-retailer is nearing the $2 billion milestone in its annual sales.

At present, the e-retailer has the user base of 25 million and a seller base of 50,000, which the company aims to double in the next six months. The company will be holding its hiring process in Banglore, which will mark the setting up of the second development center for the firm. Snapdeal already has a development center in the NCR region which is set open within 45 days. Along with this the company is planning to open the other development centres at Pune and Hyderabad.

As reported by the Times of India, Rohit Bansal, co-founder and COO, Snapdeal said that, in the next one year the software engineers will formulate the huge part of the company’s employee chain at present the company has 300 engineering employees. He also highlighted that the development centers will concentrate on the areas related to supply chain, consumer and supplier facing technologies, big data, and mobile. However, mobile will be the main focus as most of the Snapdeal sales are generated through mobile phones.

The company will be picking up the engineers from IITs and NITs and will prefer the candidates which come with 3 to 20 years of work experience.

Reliance Jio Infocomm has entered into a Master Service Agreement with GTL Infrastructure for the purpose of tower sharing.  GTL Infrastructure in association with Chennai Network Infrastructure has 27,800 towers spread across 22 telecom Circles in India. The company has pan India tower portfolio, which will help Reliance Jio Infocomm in rolling out 4G services across the country.

Speaking about the agreement, Sanjay Mashruwala, Managing Director, Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited, stated “Our mission is to launch a pan India next-generation voice and data services. We will build the same through a judicious combination of own build and rented infrastructure. This agreement with GTL Infra is not only a step in that direction but will also help us accelerate our roll out”.

On the other hand, on being associated with Reliance Jio Infocomm, Charudatta Naik, Group CEO, Global Group said, “We are happy to be partnering with a leading 4G player like Rjio. The launch of 4G networks and the rise in the consumption of data services is a growth driver for tower companies, and we at GTL Infra are geared up to capture the opportunity.  Our portfolio will play an important role in rolling out broadband networks especially in regions like North East, and South where we hold a leadership position”.

This association will help the telco in introducing 4G services in various parts of the country. Reliance Jio is on its way to introducing 4G services in the county.

As reported by PTI, the Prasad shared the details of the program with Sikka in Berlin and has also asked Infosys to take a lead and make the programme successful.

The programme focuses on projects, which ensure that the government services are available to all the citizens electronically and people also get benefit of the latest information and communication technology present in the country. This project of the government will be implemented in phases and is supposed to be completed by 2018.

The project will cover areas like establishment of ICT infrastructure like high-speed internet at gram panchayat level, on-demand availability of government services like health, education and digital empowerment of citizens, especially through digital literacy. Prasad also stated that, Infosys can become the brand ambassador for India and can convince foreign investors to invest in the project.

The Infosys CEO Sikka appreciated the efforts of the government, and also assured full cooperation in the direction of developing a business friendly environment in general and promotion of IT sector in particular.

As per the statement of COAI the telecom operators offering GSM services has added 55.4 lakhs subscribers in August, which takes the total user base to 74.99 crore. The GSM subscriber base was accounted to be 74.44 crore by the end of July, 2014. COAI is an industry body which includes Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular. But Reliance Communications and Tata Teleservices is not part of the body.

However, Reliance Jio Infocomm has joined the body recently. As per the data released by COAI, Idea Cellular has added maximum number of subscribers to its network. 12.2 lakh users were added to the Vodafone network, which takes its user base to 17.24 crore. On the other hand, Airtel also witnessed an increase in the user base by adding 7.69 lakh subscribers.

Aircel the other GSM operator has added 9.05 lakh users to its base which makes it total base 7.48 crore. However, Uninor added 7.06 lakh users to its network which takes the total subscriber base to 4.08 crore. Taking the list further, Videocon added 1.96 lakh users and MTNL added 10,017 subscribers to its network.

SAP is all set to acquire Concur Technologies a US based expense management software maker for $7.3 billion. The company aims to expand its presence in the internet based software and cloud computing with this acquisition. In an official statement by SAP, the company will offer $129 per share for Concur and 20% premium over the September 17 closing price.

This is the biggest acquisition in the history of SAP and after this company aims to increase its users from 38 million to 50 million. Speaking about the acquisition, Chief Executive Bill McDermott, SAP stated that, the acquisition of Concur is consistent with our focus on the business network.

Concur has a huge client list of 23,000 brands, which comprises of companies, governments and universities. Along with this it also has 25 million users of its business expense and travel management software and services. This business move will help SAP to have better access to the segment of corporate finance, where it is not going so strong. After this acquisition, SAP has a 75% bigger business network as compared to the combined business network of Amazon, eBay and Alibaba.

The transaction has been approved by the Concur board and it is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2014 or the first quarter 2015, subject to shareholder and regulatory approvals.

Microsoft Corporation is all set to close its Silicon Valley research and development operation. As part of the closure the company will also be laying off 2,100 employees, as they follow the move of their CEO of cutting 18,000 staff or 14% of the total workforce. The news of the closure of the lab came into light by the employees of the company. The employees came to Twitter and started tweeting about the whole scenario.

Moreover, the company later on confirmed the move and commented that it would involve the loss of 50 jobs.  As reported by AFP, the company spokesperson also said that, Microsoft research comprises of 1,000 scientists and engineers worldwide working on new product ideas, will consolidate its US work at Microsoft’s main campus in Redmond, Washington, and in offices in New York and Boston.

The company will still have 2,500 employees after the job cut at its Mountain View Campus. The company is on a spree of cutting jobs and it will be cutting 160 jobs in California, and another 747 in the Seattle area and the total layoffs will account to 2,100 from all around the world.

This is the second time that the company is laying off the employees. Earlier in July this year the company laid off 13,000 employees as part of the plan of their new CEO. And going by the plan the company will be introducing another job cut in the coming months. The job cuts are spread to all the countries and teams.