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PayPal has picked up space at Futura IT-park on OMR, Chennai’s IT corridor. Paypal is a US-based, eBay owned company, which offers internet based money transfer service. It allows individuals to send and retrive money and make payments for purchases on eBay and other e-commerce websites.

It is said to have handled over $37 billion in transactions in the year 2006, and reportedly had over 133 million customers.

Mr.Tss Krishnan, COO of a Real Estate told that they were pleased to have a prestigious brand like eBay and its affiliate to be associated with Futura IT-park. He also said that this only emphasises that Chennai continues to be a sought after destination amongst IT majors in the world.

According to a recent report by Cushman & Wakefield, Cehnnai witnessed office space demand of six million sq.ft in the year 2006. It was largely driven by requirements from IT and ITES sectors.

Intel corporation, the world’s leading chipmaker is planning to enter into a new segment in the Indian market portable technology devices which can be used for different purposes like gaming, internet access, automobile accessory, among others.

Though an exact classification of thest devices would be difficult, these would be products which are portable with a smaller form factor than the conventional laptops. Intel corporation’s South Asia MD Ramamurthy Sivakumar said that they were looking at entering that segment in India quite soon.

He said these would be devices which are general purpose products and could have 5-7 inches screen size with a longer battery life. These products will be built around the Intel Technology architecture. These portable small form factor devices have already found their place in the market with the most popular being the gaming devices. Other than these, there are other devices which are portable audio and video players, providing high quality digital images.

Intel corporation has already introduced a small form factor laptop called the Classmate PC essentially targeted at the school segment. this device has seen its development dont in its India R&D centre. Intel India has already tied up with HCL infosystems to maufacture the Classmate PC and other hardware players are expected to be part of this programme.

Mr.Siva Kumar said that the Pc market opportunity has expanded exponentially in India over the last 5-6 years from the top 5-6 metros to over 300-plus cities and towns.

The Indian IT companies are buckling under the pressure of the appreciating rupee, their revenues have dipped this quarter. But, inverstors still opt for IT firms which have a greater share of their revenues emanating from the domestic market. These companies are at a lesser risk as fat as the rupee appreciation issue is concerned. There are some Indian IT companies whose major chunk of revenues is garnered from the domestic operations.

The list has names like Tulip IT services, CMC, NIIT, Rolta India, 3i Infotech and Tata Elxsi, who are less prone to the forex fluctuations and at the same time demonstrate moderate to rebust operating profitability. These IT companies are niche players, like Rolta lays special emphasis on engineering solutions and geospatial information services.

Tulip focuses on corporate data communications and network connectivity solutions, NIIT is engaged in IT education, 3i has significant presence in the banking, insurance and financial domain. This sets them apart from their IT exporter counterparts who are mainly into applications development and maintenance services.

Rolta has an operating margin to the tune of 42.4 percent as if has 65.5 percent of its revenues coming from the domestic operations. It is higher as compared to the average operating margin of the top IT palyers from their domestic operations. These are few companies which have taken average of the booming domestic economy, and investors can surely look forward to them.