Govt Announces Measures to increase the interest in SEZs

The government on Thursday announced measures to invoke interest in Special Economic Zones (SEZs) and to increase investment.

Anand Sharma, Commerce and industry minister also gave hint that steps to boost gems and jewellery sector are likely to be announced next month. But the important segment of the “package" that was announced by Sharma was the move to divide the minimum area requirement for the territories.

Those setting up IT zones will not even have to worry about the minimum land requirement of 10 hectares; flexibility has been offered to other developers as well.

For companies importing capital goods, the government promised simplified norms,
under EPCG. This is provided exports by them were six times the duty saved in the import of machinery.

Exporters demanded more from AEPC chairman seeking a cut in the interest rate interest and resumption of drawback payments. Kris Gopalakrishnan CII president demanded that the interest subsidy should be extended to all sectors.

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Commercialization of Health Care: Good or Bad?

In a country like India, till date, there are remote places, where medical facilities are not available, even the minimum. There are many more villages, which are in need of a doctor and a clinic to attend to the minimum health problems. Till date there are many people who are struggling to earn money just to fill their stomach. In such circumstances, commercialization of health care is definitely not a welcome change.

Those who can afford can always afford going to private hospitals for treatment. But what about those millions of people, who are struggling every day just to earn for the food. What if, they have some illness? In India more than half of the populations are middle class and lower middle class. What they earn is just sufficient to meet their minimum needs. What happens to their life, if they encounter some health problems?

If we look at it this way, the commercialization of the health care is not at all a welcome aspect. Especially for a country like India. But as in other cases, there is other side of this coin also. The government always, will not be in a position to provide all the latest equipment and treatment facilities to the public. Especially in all the remote areas. So, if they allow commercialization of the health care for some critical illnesses, where the private people will provide facilities and treatment, and charge a sum for that, as per the necessity and the cost of the treatment.

Then in this case, commercialization is good because people can access better treatment and latest medical procedures, which Govt. cannot provide. But even in this case, even though the latest treatment methods, best Doctors, are made available to the public. What is the use, if they cannot pay for it or if it is beyond their reach? So, in any case, commercialization of the health care is not a welcome change.

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HDFC Bank Wins 2012 Celent Model Bank Award

Press Release

Mumbai, Maharashtra, India and North Carolina, United States, Wednesday, July 04, 2012 -- (Business Wire India) -- HDFC Bank (NYSE:HDB; NSE:HDFCBANK) wins the 2012 Celent Model Bank Award in the "Customer Service Initiative" category for delivering great customer experience across channels including branch, phone banking, contact centers etc.

HDFC Bank does not believe in designing a product/process and look for customers. Instead it always puts the customer at the center while designing various products/process to meet customer needs. The key difference lies in "Customer Centric approach" versus "Product centric approach". Bank focuses towards identifying customer niches to design specific products to meet their requirements and emphasis is on "acquiring through bricks" and "serve through clicks".

HDFC Bank always believed in "One Bank" vision and had invested in the right technology since inception. It is one of the few Indian Banks to have put in place a dedicated "Service Quality and Lean Sigma Team" which imbibes the power of Lean Sigma to transform processes and abreast technology to provide continuously improving customer experience across channels. With a view to ensure consistent experience across channels and to enhance 360 degree view of customers, it partnered with CRMnext in 2007. The bank realized that in today's environment only unparallel customer experience could provide a sustained edge much needed to maintain profitable growth while increasing number of customers, transactions and resultant balance sheet size.

"The idea was to completely transform the customer experience by creating a single common platform across the bank for strategy execution. Driving improvement in Service Quality needed adequate focus on process reengineering, behaviour change as well as technology support. We needed a CRM system with scalability given the large data volumes, 55,000+ user base, workflow complexities, integration, synchronization and incremental updates was a big challenge. Our CRMNext solution added value to execute our vision without any compromise." said Ratan Kesh, Senior Vice President and Head Service Quality, HDFC Bank.

CRM at HDFC Bank allows creation of a unified customer view by interfacing with various sources including the data warehouse thereby providing a comprehensive 360° view of customers across various channels like branch, phone banking, etc. Today HDFC Bank has more than 25,000 on CRMnext who have a comprehensive and relevant 360° customer view which has multiplied cross-sell and up-sell capabilities at all customer touch points.

CRMnext also enables system driven contact strategies based on customer bands to ensure aligned actions and quality interactions across all customer touch-points. Various systems integrated to provide event based triggering such as large deposits, channel usage, etc. Marketing team continuously generates cross-sell offers and next best products to be sold. This has resulted in HDFC bank having one of the highest product holding ratios per customer in the industry.

"At CRMnext, our focus has been to deliver high impact transformational CRM solutions. We enable our customers to execute their strategy, holistically on a single platform, thereby creating sustainable competitive advantages for them. We feel proud to be a part of the entire customer experience transformation initiative at HDFC bank." Nishant Singh, Director, CRMnext.

Thanks to bank's focussed Service Quality drive and CRM initiative, Bank's customer base has witnessed a huge increase alongwith significant increase in the leads, higher conversion ratio and reduction in TAT. First pass rate has gone up and Bank's Service Quality Rating improved leading to many-fold reduction in customer complaints.

About CRMnext

CRMnext is a specialist Customer Relationship Management product company with focus on ultra-scalable installations. CRMnext team has proven track record of delivering High-Impact CRM solutions in their key practice vertical of Banking, Insurance, Media, and Telecom. Unlike commodity CRM, CRMnext has been widely recognized as a proponent of strategy driven implementations. For more details visit www.crmnext.com

About HDFC BANK

Promoted in 1995 by Housing Development Finance Corporation (HDFC), India's leading housing finance company, HDFC Bank is one of India's premier banks providing a wide range of financial products and services to its 25 million* customers across hundreds of Indian cities using multiple distribution channels including a pan-India network of branches, ATMs, phone banking, net banking and mobile banking. Within a relatively short span of time, the bank has emerged as a leading player in retail banking, wholesale banking, and treasury operations, its three principal business segments.The bank's competitive strength clearly lies in the use of technology and the ability to deliver world-class service with rapid response time. Over the last 17 years, the bank has successfully gained market share in its target customer franchises while maintaining healthy profitability and asset quality.As of March 31, 2012, the Bank had a distribution network with 2,544 branches and 8,913 ATMs in 1,399 localities.

For the quarter ended March 31, 2012, the Bank's total income was INR 88.8 billion (`8,880 crore) as against INR 67.243 billion (`6,724.3 crore) for the quarter ended March 31, 2011. Net revenues (net interest income plus other income) were INR 48.803 billion (`4,880.3 crore) for the quarter ended March 31, 2012, as against INR 40.952 billion (`4,095.2 crore) for the corresponding quarter of the previous year. Net Profit for the quarter ended March 31, 2012, was INR 14.531 billion (`1,453.1 crore), up by 30.4% over the corresponding quarter ended March 31, 2011.

The Bank's total balance sheet size increased by 21.8% to INR 3,379.09 billion (`337,909 crore) as of March 31, 2012. Total deposits were INR 2,467.06 billion (`246,706 crore) as of March 31, 2012.Total income for the year ended March 31, 2012, was INR 325.3004 billion (`32,530.04 crore).Leading Indian and international publications have recognized the bank for its performance and quality.

For more information please log on to: www.hdfcbank.com

About Celent

Celent is a research and a consulting firm offering unbiased analysis of the current industry trends, market sizes and competitors in the market to assist financial institutions, vendors, and consulting firms formulate comprehensive business and technology strategies. With extensively experienced in-house analysts, Celent publishes research reports identifying trends and best practices in financial services technology. A member of the Oliver Wyman Group, which is part of Marsh & McLennan Companies [NYSE: MMC], Celent offers strategic advice and market insights on a global basis.



CONTACT DETAILS
Rahul Sheth, +91 (22) 42688270, rahul.r.sheth@crmnext.com

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