ACC is proud to announce that the prestigious Sumant Moolgaokar Technical Institute at Kymore has completed 50 years while simultaneously marking a new beginning for the institute as it reopens with a fresh mandate and a whole new educational curriculum.

The Kymore Engineering Institute was established in 1957, with the aim to train young men in specialized trades to become artisans, foreman and first line supervisors to meet the needs of the company. Kymore is located in Katni district of Madhya Pradesh. KEI was later renamed as Sumant Moolgaokar Technical Institute in honour of its founder the late Dr Moolgaokar.

SMTI has had a distinguished track record of producing more than 3000 Artisans and Foreman trainees who have put in valuable service in ACC and other cement plants in India and abroad. Training at SMTI was respected and valued as being superior to that provided at various Industrial Training Institutes in the country. A certificate from SMTI was respected in industry and often assured ready placement. Most of the alumni comprised children of employees, workers and members of the local community around ACC’s cement plants.

SMTI’s fresh batch is made up of 80 students who are all ITI qualified. The new course at SMTI aims to complement the education provided at ITI’s. Students will receive specialized technical education to develop them to occupy technical and supervisory positions in Electrical, Instrumentation, Diesel and Fitting trades in cement plants. The course duration is one Year at the institute and six months of on-the-job training at any one of the cement plants. The curriculum has been updated to incorporate technological advancements made by the Indian cement industry in recent years. The faculty comprises engineers with considerable experience in ACC’s cement plants or in the field of technical education.

Presiding at a commemoration and relaunch ceremony, Sumit Banerjee, Managing Director, said “Training is integral to our organizational vision. The reopening of this institute is only one instance of the many steps ACC is taking in this direction. We are giving special thrust to people development, learning, sharing of knowledge and best practices and learning.”

The company plans to spend over Rs 8 crores on various education, training and knowledge management initiatives including Rs 2 crores earmarked for SMTI. The programmes at the Regional Training Centre in Jamul, Chattisgarh are being redesigned completely so as to offer professional technical courses of relevance to manufacturing sectors such as cement. A state-of-the-art Learning Centre is coming up at ACC’s Thane complex. ACC also proposes to partner with Government and industry associations to upgrade some ITI’s located near its plants.

Dr Rajen Mehrotra has joined ACC recently as its Chief Knowledge Officer to help steer the company’s knowledge agenda within and beyond the company. Dr Mehrotra has had considerable experience in industry and as an academician. Prior to joining ACC, he was with the United Nations-International Labour Organisation as Senior Specialist on Employers’ Activity for South Asia.

Eight Indian companies expected
To Emerge as Challengers to the World’s Leading Companies

S&P Global Challengers Class of 2007 Spans 37 Countries; 10 Sectors; includes
India’s ACC, Hotel Leela Venture, Indian Hotels, Jain Irrigation, Lakshmi Machine Works, Marico, Siemens India, Titan Industries

LONDON, May 10, 2007 – Standard & Poor’s, the world’s leading index provider, published today a listing of 300 mid-size companies that are expected to emerge as challengers to the world’s leading blue-chip companies. Eight Indian firms have been included in the annual S&P Global Challengers List?, which identifies mid-size publicly traded companies that exhibit the strongest internal and external growth characteristics.

The 2007 class of S&P Global Challengers has representation across 37 countries and all 10 GICS sectors. The country contributing the most members is Japan, followed by the United States and then the United Kingdom. Regionally, the Americas represent 22.67% of the list’s composition, followed by Asia/Pacific (41.67%), Europe (33.33%) and Middle East/Africa (2.33%). Looking at sector representation within the 2007 list, Industrials lead the charge, followed by Financials and Consumer Discretionary.

“In the Darwinian sense, mid-caps are truly positioned in an evolutionary “sweet spot,” having survived beyond their start-up phases and offering stability as well as rapid growth opportunities in the future,” says Srikant Dash, Index Strategist at Standard & Poor’s. “Mid-cap firms can be thought of as having overcome the “growing pains” of small firms and thus a lot less risky than small-cap start-ups. The class of 2007 offers the best potential pool of companies that could become tomorrow’s leaders.”

The S&P Global Challengers List? is Standard & Poor’s response to needs of consultants and marketers analyzing global growth trends or seeking client engagement opportunities, strategy formulators assessing future partners or competitors and product providers structuring investment vehicles that offer exposure to fast growing mid-size companies. It is based upon a robust methodology that applies consistent standards to multiple countries. The attributes used to identify the companies are three-year share price appreciation, sales growth, earnings growth and employee growth.

A paper outlining the structure, methodology, and constituents of the S&P Global Challengers List? can be found by visiting www.standardandpoors.com/indices.

About Standard & Poor’s Index Services
Standard & Poor's Index Services, the world’s leading index provider, maintains a wide variety of investable and benchmark indices to meet an array of investor needs. Its family of indices includes the S&P 500, an index with $1.45 trillion invested and $4.45 trillion benchmarked, and the S&P Global 1200, a composite index comprised of seven regional and country headline indices. For more information, please visit www.standardandpoors.com/indices.

About Standard & Poor’s
Standard & Poor's, a division of The McGraw-Hill Companies (NYSE: MHP), is the world's foremost provider of financial market intelligence, including independent credit ratings, indices, risk evaluation, investment research and data. With approximately 8,500 employees, including wholly owned affiliates, located in 21 countries, Standard & Poor's is an essential part of the world's financial infrastructure and has played a leading role for more than 140 years in providing investors with the independent benchmarks they need to feel more confident about their investment and financial decisions. For more information, visit http://www.standardandpoors.com.