Today in Tech: Polaris rejig; TCS headcount; H1B Visa Lottery & more

NS Ramnath
Updated: Apr 1, 2013 02:03:46 PM UTC

Arun Jain's plans for Polaris After the halo of Orbitech acquisition began to wane (incidentally it came to effect on April 1, 2002), Polaris (Software Labs then, Financial Technologies, now) used to hit the front pages of news papers with the boring regularity of President's Republic Day speeches, under yet another headline that said the company would soon be sold to X, Y or Z. Nothing ever came out of it.

Today, Economic Times reports that Polaris approached L&T Infotech and Wipro to see if they would buy its IT services business (The Chennai-based company also has product and cloud businesses). None of the three players have confirmed.

Polaris management has been trying to restructure the business for sometime now, hoping to unlock shareholder value. Its Price to Earnings ratio has been hovering around 5. Mindtree, which is just behind Polaris in Nasscom's ranking, has a P/E of 17. A Times of India story last month said Arun Jain, who founded Polaris and has been at its helm through its rough and eventful journey, "plans to retain the software products business with $100 million turnover and plans to scale it up rapidly."

 

TCS is now second largest employer in IT Services globally
Here are some interesting numbers from Mint report

chart_1-18

 

TCS Versus Infosys
Mint very gently suggests that Infosys is getting a little more aggressive. It has become more flexible in its pricing, and has become a little more open with partnerships. (The Bangalore based company has entered into a partnership with IPSoft). And, in a report last week, JP Morgan said TCS might be going in the opposite direction. Reason: In the last four years, there has been no notable acquisitions. Till we have more evidence, it's best to see these views as a reflection of desires and concerns, rather than of real action on ground.

 

 

H1-B Visa Lottery
The idea that life is a lottery has been around for sometime, and it's gaining ground in the recent years. (Billionaire Warren Buffett often talks about ovarian lottery. Model Cameron Russell's speech on winning genetic lottery has gone viral). So, there's something philosophical about the news that US will give out its H1-B Visas through lotteries, first time since 2008. More

 

Also of interest

A Kickstarter project that you might be interested in: Runner Without A CountryBy Bill Gallagher. A documentary about refugee Guor Marial, the Olympic marathon runner who ran in the London 2012 Olympics without a country.

AllThingsD's Peter Kafka says a lot about the big trend on the web when he writes: Is this an attempt at an attention-grabbing way of summarizing an extensively reported story someone else produced? Yep! And am I going to (respectfully) aggregate the rest of this piece? Of course!

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The thoughts and opinions shared here are of the author.

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