Creating bonds across Solar and Digital India

From Solar India to Digital India, the Asia-Pacific offers India a wide scope of tie-ups. ′India Global Business′ highlights some of the key ones this year. Adani eyes Australian solar plant India's port-to-power and energy conglomerate, the Adani Group, is looking at constructing a utility-size solar power project in Australia's Queensland province. Jayant Parimal, chief executive of the group's renewable energy business, said: “We have applied for a licence (to set up a large solar project) but it would be too premature to comment on anything more.” The group's renewable energy arm, which has a 40MW solar power plant, will also scale its capacity to 800 MW by March 2016, Parimal revealed during the India-Australia Energy Dialogue led by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). While Adani specialises in developing coal-powered installations, the company has also invested resources in renewable energy - planning utility-scale PV sites in Jharkhand, and Andhra Pradesh, among others. M&M to tie up with Chinese firm

Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) plans to tie up with a Chinese company to manufacture Ssangyong vehicles for the China market. The company is re-thinking the strategy for its loss-making Korean automaker Ssangyong Motor Co and putting a planned push into the US on hold to focus instead on China. Pawan Goenka, executive director, M&M, said that making cars in China would mean Ssangyong could lower its prices there, and it made sense to focus on expanding sales in an existing market before going to the United States and building a distribution network from the ground up. He said: "China is easier to look at right now because Ssangyong already has a presence there. We have some traction and need to ramp up our products for local manufacturing." Pune soft-tech firm enters Australia

Pune-based Persistent Systems has acquired Australian Salesforce partner and cloud application development firm, PRM Cloud Solutions. The soft-tech company's founder, chairman and managing director Anand Deshpande said: “This acquisition further strengthens our ability to lead our customers on their journey to digital with salesforce as one of those key platforms.” PRM is a cloud application development firm and a partner of US-based Salesforce.com, a cloud computing firm that sells customer relationship management software, Persistence Systems said in a statement. Ashish Bhuta, head of sales for Australia, Persistent Systems, said: “PRM has local expertise in building new digital experiences for organizations in Australia.” Based outside Perth, PRM primarily focuses on healthcare, construction and property management, with its key customers including Honda, Rio Tinto, Furniture Options, Breast Cancer Network Australia (BCNA), Synergy and Work Power. IOC forays into Myanmar

Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), the country's oil and gas corporation, has entered into a bid for the rights to store, import and distribute petroleum products in Myanmar. The company said: "We have put in a bid to enter fuel marketing and retail business in Myanmar.” Last year, the state owned petroleum products enterprise, Myanmar Petroleum Products Enterprise (MPPE) had invited companies to form a venture for petroleum project through a tender. Also a separate tender for cooking gas and LPG was declared and IOC bid for it. MPPE plans to tie up with foreign companies and will hold 51 per cent of the equity in the company to expand the business and rehabilitate existing facilities. Singaporean firms, Puma Energy Group and BB Energy (Asia), and a consortium of Japan′s Marubeni Corporation and Tokai Holdings has also bid along with IOC.