Beijing: China is notorious for its knockoffs. But now comes a knockoff of one of the gods of American ingenuity: Steven P. Jobs.
In a country where products like iPhones are made but rarely invented, Lei Jun - entrepreneur, multimillionaire and professed Jobs acolyte - is positioning himself and his company as figurative heirs of Jobs. The Chinese media have nicknamed his company, Xiaomi, the "Apple of the East."
The title is a stretch, by almost any measure. But Lei nonetheless is carefully cultivating a Jobsian image here, right down to his jeans and dark shirts. He is also selling millions of mobile phones that look a lot like iPhones. Chinese consumers - and deep-pocketed investors overseas - seem to be believers.
And yet Lei's biggest believer may be himself. He bounds onto podiums to introduce new cellphones. He proclaims things that may, to many, sound outlandish. For instance:
"We're making the mobile phone like the PC, and this is a totally new idea," Lei, Xiaomi's chief executive, said during an interview at the company's spacious, high-rise headquarters here. "We're doing things other companies haven't done before."
That might come as a surprise to Apple and Samsung Electronics, the twin giants of smartphones. But Xiaomi (pronounced SHAO-mee) did sell $2 billion in handsets in China last year. It is emerging as a force in China, the world's largest mobile phone market, and it expects its revenue to double this year.
Lei, for his part, hardly discourages comparisons to Apple and Jobs. To the contrary.
And why not? Founded by a group of Chinese engineers three years ago, his company sold 7 million mobile phones last year by using designs that mimic the look and feel of the iPhone and using marketing that seems right out of Apple's playbook.
It's no surprise that entrepreneurs aspire to create a Chinese Apple. Many talk about moving China beyond the dead end of assembling devices for other companies. So far, however, true innovators have been scarce. At best, they have adapted others' technology to the Chinese market.
Lei has attracted believers because no company's annual revenue has reached the $1 billion mark in China faster than Xiaomi, not even Amazon, which took five years to get there. Xiaomi did it while earning a profit.
Its backers include Qiming Venture Partners, the venture capital arm of Qualcomm and Digital Sky Technologies, an investment firm run by Yuri Milner, an early backer of Facebook, Groupon and Zynga.
Xiaomi, which is privately held, says an initial public offering is years away. But the company is worth $4 billion, according to its latest round of financing last June. If that valuation holds up, it would make Xiaomi one of China's most valuable technology companies, behind Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent and Netease.
The company caters to young, college-educated people who want a smartphone but cannot quite afford one, people like Lu Da, a 26-year-old education consultant in Shanghai.
"I chose Xiaomi because it's good value for the money," he said.
Skeptics say the company produces low-price iPhone imitations with no significant software or hardware advantages. They also say the company faces stiff challenges from Apple and Samsung, which are in a position to offer low-price smartphones. The marketing power of bigger local handset makers like Lenovo, Huawei and Taiwan's HTC, which together recently sold about 25 percent of all smartphones in China, cannot be discounted either.
Whether the company succeeds, its rise has solidified Lei's reputation as a startup wizard. Part entrepreneur and part startup investor, he spent more than a decade at the Chinese software company Kingsoft and took it public in 2007. (He remains chairman and holds a $300 million stake.)
He also invested in a string of successful software and Internet companies, including YY, an online social platform that went public on the Nasdaq stock exchange in the United States last year and is now worth $1.63 billion. One of Lei's earliest successes came in 2004, when Amazon paid $75 million to acquire his e-commerce company Joyo.com.
"Lei Jun is a phenomenal entrepreneur," said Kai-Fu Lee, the former Google executive who now runs Innovation Works, a Beijing-based firm that invests in Chinese startups. "He's insightful about user needs and markets, and now he has this incredible desire to create a household brand in technology."
Lei has revealed little about his personal life, but he has nearly 5 million followers on Sina Weibo, a sort of Chinese Twitter, and is treated like a celebrity in technology circles.
He grew up near Wuhan, a gritty industrial city in central China, and studied computer science at Wuhan University. It was during college, in 1987, he says, that he read a book about Jobs, and decided to emulate him.
"I was greatly influenced by that book, and I wanted to establish a company that was first class," Lei said. "So I made a plan to get through college fast."
After finishing his coursework in two years, he joined Kingsoft, a Chinese software company. A talented engineer with sharp marketing skills, he worked his way up into the executive ranks, and was named chief executive in 1998.
At Kingsoft, he also found time to set up Joyo.com and to become an angel investor in dozens of other companies.
"He has vision," said Liu Ren, a longtime friend who runs an investment fund. "He sees trends earlier than others and is always ready to adjust. For instance, Joyo started as a downloading platform and at the beginning YY was just doing RSS subscription."
With $41 million in initial financing, Lei teamed up with a former Microsoft and Google engineer, Bin Lin, and five other engineers to set up Xiaomi in a small office on the outskirts of Beijing.
Work began in 2010 on a software platform for the phone adapted from Google's Android system. The company also sought out many of the same suppliers and contract manufacturers that worked with Apple, including Qualcomm, Broadcom and Foxconn.
In August 2011, Xiaomi introduced its first smartphone, the Mi-1, which sold out in two days. The Mi-2 was released last August, and sold out so quickly that some analysts claimed Xiaomi was creating artificial shortages to generate buzz through "scarcity marketing."
To lower costs, the company cut out middlemen and distributors, selling directly through its website. The marketing was not just innovative for China, the company said, but allowed Xiaomi to sell smartphones for just half the price of the iPhone or Samsung Galaxy phones.
Xiaomi also outsources designs and features online from its so-called Mi-Fans, and releases a new version of the operating system every Friday, to add new features and keep the Mi-Fans excited.
"For a startup it's quite impressive what they've achieved," Sandy Shen, an analyst at the research firm Gartner, said. "But the question is: how are they going to grow their market share beyond the narrow segment they've targeted?"
Many technology analysts and investors in China say that the company's valuation is a bubble and that it will be difficult for Xiaomi to maintain its growth.
Lei insists his company could sell more than 15 million phones this year. Xiaomi - like Apple - is also looking at television.
Lei, listed by Forbes as one of China's wealthiest entrepreneurs, worth $1.7 billion, has already helped create three multibillion-dollar startups in the last decade. Little wonder, then, that he comes across as confident, even a little cocky.
"We're not just some cheap Chinese company making a cheap phone," he said. "We're going to be a Fortune 500 company."
(Xu Yan contributed research)
© 2013, The New York Times News Service
Bhubaneswar: A man who was declared "dead" by his father 11 years ago in Odisha was on Tuesday found alive, police said.
The bizarre incident came to light after the crime branch of Odisha Police traced Gajendra Kumar Kar in his home town of Berhampur in Ganjam district, about 180 km from Bhubaneswar and arrested him.
He was arrested as his father's complaint that he was kidnapped and murdered was found false, he said.
According to crime branch police, Kar's father Bhikhyakari had filed a petition in the local court seeking a probe alleging that his son had been kidnapped and murdered by a gang of four people on November 14, 2002.
He had also accused Gajendra's wife Geetanjali of being a member of the gang, a senior official of the crime branch told IANS.
On the direction of the court, the local police lodged a criminal case on March 12, 2007, he said.
The crime branch announced a cash reward of Rs.50,000 for furnishing information about the whereabouts of Gajendra.
Based on credible information, a team of the crime branch traced Gajendra and arrested him on Tuesday, he added.
Source :ndtv
New Delhi: Rickshaw-pullers, rag pickers, sanitation workers and taxi drivers are among a host of unorganised sector workers who have been brought under the ambit of the national health insurance scheme in a decision taken by the union cabinet on Tuesday.
The Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY) would be extended to rikshaw-pullers, rag pickers, mine workers, sanitation workers and autorickshaw drivers and taxi drivers.
A total of 13.68 lakh rickshaw-pullers, 11.63 lakh rag pickers, 17.79 lakh mine workers, 10.08 lakh sanitation workers and 35.39 lakh autorickshaw drivers would be covered under the scheme, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram told reporters after the cabinet meeting in Delhi.
The total financial implications for extension of the RSBY to rikshaw-pullers, rag pickers, mine workers, sanitation workers and autorickshaw drivers and taxi drivers, would be around Rs.210 crore for the year 2013-14 and Rs.419.89 crore from 2014-15 onwards.
The RSBY is being implemented in 28 states/union territories and more than 3.44 crore smart cards have been issued as on March 31. The target for the year 2013-14 is to cover 3.60 crore below poverty line families.
Source:ndtv
Wipro has bagged a five-year deal from Dubai-based Majid Al Futtaim Ventures LLC, the IT major said in a statement on Tuesday.
As part of the engagement, Wipro will support the implementation of an ERP solution and provide managed services, including infrastructure platforms and applications support, it said.
No financial details were disclosed.
Founded in 1992, Majid Al Futtaim group of companies is one of the leading shopping mall, retail and leisure pioneers, with operations in 12 countries and has over 24,000 employees.
Majid Al Futtaim Ventures develops and operates leisure and entertainment facilities at Majid Al Futtaim malls, including Ski Dubai, in addition to growing its brand portfolio within third-party malls across the region.
Wipro's managed services offering will involve supplying the hardware, hosting it and enabling data centre and disaster recovery on cloud for Majid Al Futtaim Ventures.
This will ensure improved asset management, operational efficiency, robust back office operations and business continuity, it said.
As part of the ERP implementation, Wipro will also engage with Majid Al Futtaim Ventures to set up a finance shared services centre, thereby allowing transactional accounting operations to be standardised, more controlled, effective and efficient across the business.
"This engagement will further strengthen Wipro's positioning in the Middle East market, a key focus area for us in the past decade. We are confident that our global solutions will enhance and streamline the business processes at Majid Al Futtaim Ventures and propel their further growth," said Mukund Seetharama, Wipro's general manager and business head of the Gulf.
Source:ndtv
Ingvar Kamprad, creator of Swedish furniture retailer IKEA, is to take another step back from his company as the youngest of his three sons takes a key board role in a gradual handover of power.
Mr Kamprad, 87, who founded the business in rural south Sweden 70 years ago, stepped down in 1986 as chief executive of IKEA, which has become the world's biggest furniture group, famous for its flat packs and do-it-yourself assembly.
He will now leave the board of a key company within the business - Inter IKEA Group - and his youngest son Mathias will take over as its chairman.
"I see this as a good time for me to leave the board of Inter IKEA Group," Mr Kamprad said in a statement on Tuesday, referring to the company which owns the IKEA brand and which collects 3 per cent of IKEA stores' sales worldwide each year.
"By that we are also taking another step in the generation shift that has been ongoing for some years," said Mr Kamprad, a billionaire, who has been resident in Switzerland since the 1970s.
The Kamprad family still controls the complex corporate structure that makes up the IKEA empire and Mr Kamprad himself keeps a tight grip behind the scenes.
Ingvar chairs the Dutch-registered Stiching INGKA Foundation, which controls IKEA Group, the owner of 302 of the 343 IKEA stores worldwide. He is also on the board of family-controlled Interogo Foundation in Liechtenstein, which in turn owns Inter IKEA Group.
Mathias is also an Interogo board member and has held various positions in the Kamprad-founded groups, but like all the Kamprads he has kept a low public profile.
In a sensational display of disciplined fast bowling, India knocked Australia cold in a warm-up match the Swalec Stadium here on Tuesday. Umesh Yadav took five for 18 as Australia collapsed to 34 for six wickets by the end of the 12th over, never to recover again in pursuit of a 309-run target. India won by a massive 243 runs, their second victory is as many practice matches, ahead of their first ICC Champions Trophy game against South Africa on Thursday. On Saturday, India had defeated Sri Lanka by five wickets at Edgbaston, Birmingham.
New Delhi: Senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley today said to NDTV that Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi's popularity among party cadres "is self-evident" and that he has "a special place in the BJP's campaign."
His comments come as a group of leaders within the party, allegedly led by veteran LK Advani - are lobbying hard though unsuccessfully, to prevent Mr Modi's ascension to the very top of the BJP, and his selection as the party's presumptive prime minister.
Mr Jaitley said allegations of Mr Advani's campaign against Mr Modi are "unfair." But as part of his strategy to check Mr Modi's growing stature, Mr Advani had approached former BJP president Nitin Gadkari to head an election management committee, which will decide the campaign and strategy for crucial state elections over the next few months. That is a post that the BJP's parent body, the Rashrtiya Swayamsewak Sangh or RSS, wants assigned urgently to Mr Modi to signal his VVIP status to his detractors.
Mr Gadkari has reportedly made it clear to Mr Advani that he does not want to take sides in the battle between the camps that are for and against Mr Modi .
The strife within the BJP's senior leaders, many of who aspire to be the party's prime ministerial candidate, is likely to be discussed at a meeting of senior BJP leaders that begins in Goa on Saturday.
Over the weekend, the internal conflict was hung out to dry in public as Mr Advani appeared to put down the Gujarat chief minister by suggesting that his counterpart in Madhya Pradesh, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, has performed better.
Yesterday, the BJP president Rajnath Singh said that Mr Advani's remarks had been misinterpreted.
Source:ndtv
New Delhi: Actress Jiah Khan, who died in an apparent suicide on June 3, was heartbroken after a failed relationship, said police. Jiah, 25, reportedly dated Suraj Pancholi, son of actors Aditya Pancholi and Zarina Wahab, who was questioned by the police for three hours today. Aditya Pancholi was also questioned at Juhu police station.
Suraj was the last person Jiah spoke to on the night of June 3. They spoke over telephone a number of times yesterday, with the last call being made at 22.53 PM which lasted for two minutes.
A post-mortem revealed that Jiah hanged herself between 11 and 11.30pm, soon after she last spoke to Suraj. Her body was discovered by her mother. No suicide note was found.
Preliminary investigation has revealed that Jiah and Suraj dated for about a year and that Jiah had recently become depressed after discovering that Suraj, who is studying acting, was in a new relationship.
"Jiah was said to be very possessive about Suraj. Last night they exchanged text messages on their cell phones. Suraj also sent her a bouquet which she did not accept," sources told PTI.
Jiah's mother Rabiya Amin told the police that Jiah had gone to Hyderabad on June 2 for an audition which did not go well and where Jiah was advised to lose weight. She also said that Jiah was unhappy about the lack of film offers and that she was considering switching careers to interior designing.
Jiah, real name Nafisa Khan, made her Bollywood debut in Ram Gopal Varma's Nishabd in which she played a teenager in love with her best friend's father, played by Amitabh Bachchan. The film released in March 2007 and received mixed reviews for its provocative content but Jiah was noted for her confidence, attitude, and sex appeal. She was also nominated for athe Filmfare Best Debut award.
She then appeared with Aamir Khan and Asin in in A R Murugadoss's Ghajini (2008), the Hindi remake of the director's Tamil film of the same name. Jiah played the pivotal role of a medical student who investigates and then befriends a businessman with amnesia.
Her last film was Sajid Khan's Housefull in 2010 with Akshay Kumar, Deepika Padukone, Riteish Deshmukh and Lara Dutta. She had a two-film deal with UTV Motion Pictures and a three-film deal with Ghajini producer Madhu Mantena.
On Twitter, colleagues reacted with shock and grief.
One of the first reactions was from her first co-star Amitabh Bachchan who tweeted: T 1128 -WHAT ...!!! Jiah Khan ??? what has happened ? is this correct ? unbelievable !!!
Director Ram Gopal Varma, who gave Jiah her first break in Nishabd, tweeted tellingly: The last time I met her jiah told me that everyone around her makes her feel like a failure.
Bipasha Basu said: #Rip Jiah Khan!God bless her soul!
Shahid Kapoor, with who Jiah had been cast in Chance Pe Dance before being replaced by Genelia D'Souza, tweeted: Shocked n saddened to hear about jiah khan... Very disturbing... RIP... may her soul rest in peace
Source:ndtv.com
New Delhi: Sources in the Delhi Police on Tuesday said that underworld don Dawood Ibrahim and his close aide Chhota Shakeel are suspects in the IPL spot-fixing case.
In a sensational twist to the scandal, Delhi Police said that Sreesanth and two players were acting at the "command" of the underworld don and his aide, among India's most wanted, as it invoked the stringent MCOCA against 23 accused in the case.
Police claimed it has "concrete" evidence like
intercepted telephonic conversations to link Sreesanth and some others with D-company.
Under MCOCA, the accused face a maximum sentence of life imprisonment along with fine of Rs five lakh. Police's disclosure came in a court which extended till June 18 the judicial custody of Sreesanth and 22 others against whom Maharasthra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) was invoked. A total of 26 people have been arrested by Delhi Police since May 16 in the case.
"Since the accused persons were acting on command of people based abroad like Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar and Chhota Shakeel who have a continuous past record of organised crimes, provisions of MCOCA have been invoked against the accused," police told Additional Sessions Judge Sanjiv Jain.
The court, in its order, referred to the approval granted by Joint Commissioner of Police Special Cell for invoking section 3 and 4 of MCOCA and also a report citing reasons for the same.
"It has been stated that the approval for invoking MCOCA has been accorded by Joint CP (Special Cell) on the premise that the arrested persons/accused through extensive use of electronic and via media were in communication with each other and with their other associates, who are still absconding, including those associates who are based abroad.
"The illegal organised betting syndicate in India is being controlled by persons based abroad. The arrested accused persons have been found playing role of conspirators while others have been found acting as facilitators," the court quoted from the report.
"This organised crime syndicate besides controlling illegal betting was indulging in fixing performance of players and also the rates of betting," police told the court.
Under the MCOCA, charge sheet can be filed within maximum period of 180 days as against 60-90 days under provisions of IPC. The police custody can be extended till 30 days under MCOCA whereas under IPC, it can only be extended for 15 days.
The accused face a maximum sentence of life imprisonment along with fine of Rs 5 lakh under section 3 of MCOCA while the jail term can go upto ten years along with fine of Rs one lakh and properties of the accused can also be attached under section 4.
"There is an organised crime syndicate from the underworld to bookies to players acting in tandem. In this case, force and threat, besides coercion, are used against players and one of the arrested has two cases which the court has taken cognizance of. Also, the accused have gained moneterarily," a senior police official said.
The official associated with the probe said they had enough telephonic intercepts which showed the bookies had made calls to Dubai, Karachi and other cities of Pakistan to fix and alter betting rates.
Efforts were also underway to nab a Hyderabad-based person who could lead to the door of another cricket team whose players were allegedly involved in spot fixing, he said.
A hunt has been launched for apprehending this person who was named by bookie Mohammed Yahya, arrested in Hyderabad, during his questioning, he said. In its report to the court, police said Dawood's syndicate was using musclemen and henchmen like Sheikh Shakeel to threaten people to fall in line with their directives.
It is stated that Chota Shakeel has a past of continuing unlawful activities in an organised manner as defined under MCOCA.
"Keeping in view these facts and the investigation is in progress, all accused persons are remanded to judicial custody till June 18," the court said. The accused were earlier booked for cheating, criminal breach of trust and criminal conspiracy.
The court also directed issuance of production warrant for June 10 for Ramesh Vyas, who was arrested in Mumbai, after police said he was in direct contact with Dawood Ibrahim and was handling the betting syndicate in south India.
Source :ibnlive
New Delhi: In a crucial hearing in the Aarushi Talwar-Hemraj double murder case today, a Ghaziabad court will finally decide if the trial against Aarushi's parents, Rajesh and Nupur Talwar, can proceed further.
For the past few weeks the court has been recording statements of the parents, who have been accused in the murder case. Based on the over 800 questions put forth to the couple, the court will take a view whether a case stands against them.
On May 28, the Supreme Court had rejected a plea by Rajesh and Nupur Talwar seeking to summon 14 witnesses, including former CBI official Arun Kumar, in the trial.
Mr Talwar wanted the trial court to summon the 14 people who the CBI had dropped as prosecution witnesses so that his lawyer could cross examine them.
"Once again the Supreme Court declined to interfere on a petition filed by Mr Talwar. They have approached that certain witnesses have to be called as court witnesses but it was rejected. The court said the Talwars can summon them as defence witnesses," said CBI's counsel, Rajiv Nanda.
Earlier this month the Supreme Court had declined to hear the plea by the dentist couple, who are both accused in the double murder, and took objection to their approaching the court bypassing the Allahabad High Court. The Talwars' petition seeking re-examination of the witnesses has been rejected by the special CBI court where the case is being tried and the Allahabad High Court.
14-year-old Aarushi was found brutally murdered in the Talwars' Noida residence on May 16, 2008. The body of their domestic help Hemraj was found the next day from the terrace of the house.
According to the CBI, Rajesh and Nupur Talwar are the main accused in the double murder. The agency claimed there was no evidence of any third person entering the Talwars' premises on the night of the crime.
Source:ndtv.com