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| Summer
2006 Vol. 7, No. 2 |
 Lotus Temple, New Delhi |
Interactive Composition Corporation
Acquired by Macmillan India BY SCOTT JOHNSON
In
March 2006, Macmillan India Ltd. acquired 100% of the shares of Interactive
Composition Corporation. With the change in ownership, our new company
name will be ICC Macmillan. Now four months into the relationship, we
have started imple-menting a wide range of new plans to grow and improve
our services. At ICC Macmillan, we are excited about the considerable
opportunities within Macmillan India and are looking forward to sharing
these opportunities with our customers.Macmillan India, Managing Director Rajiv Beri has commented, “This is a strategic acquisition, as it enables us to achieve two major objectives of having a significant presence in the U.S. and acquiring premier U.S. book publishing customers. It also places us in the big league of full-service providers in the book publish-ing market.” Following this strategy, Beri has put ICC Macmillan in charge of North American operations for the broader Macmillan India group. Neeraj Malhotra, formerly managing director of ICC’s Indian subsidiary, has also been named senior vice president of book services for all Macmillan India divisions. core vendors. ICC Macmillan’s challenge, and great opportunity, is to meet this need while maximizing service quality. For ICC, the acquisition will provide financial and technological support as we strive to meet growing customer demand for an expanded range of services. Initial plans focus on strengthening existing services, identifying synergies within the combined companies, sharing institutional knowledge, upgrading technology, and adding staff to meet customer require-ments. Through these efforts we expect to quickly and effectively add capacity and services for publishers in both print and electronic media. To provide more specifics, ICC Macmillan is currently in the process of adding 150 new employees and focusing substantial energy on training processes. Extensive planning has gone into employee sourcing methods, as well as measures to maximize employee retention. We believe this emphasis on employees and their vocational education will provide for effective growth and consistent service quality as we scale the business to meet demand. We believe that publishers will increasingly require economical, high-quality content services, and would like to see a growing range of products produced by a manageable set of capable core vendors. ICC Macmillan’s challenge, and great opportunity, is to meet this need while maximizing service quality. We are also implementing several technological initiatives. Atechnology survey was completed, resulting in newer hardware and software throughout our New Delhi production facility. Macmillan India’s technical staff has also contributed to significant workflow improvements for XML-based products, both in InDesign and 3B2. Perhaps most exciting is the variety of new services we can now offer at ICC Macmillan. Through our eMacmillan division, we now offer a wide assortment of IT and multimedia production capabilities. We are particularly interested in presenting eMacmillan’s e-learning services to our existing customers. We welcome questions and comments from our cus-tomers during this period of growth and change. With new services and a larger staff, our overarching goals remain the same: consistent, high-quality production with atten-tion to people and relationships.  |
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List of Services
Offered by ICC Macmillan
BY JIM LINK
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 Chennai Art University, Chennai |
Visiting India
BY DAVID ROBERTSON
Seasoned travelers
have a built-in checklist for countries they visit. Requirements naturally
change depending on your location. For those of us who have been visiting
India over the last ten years, we’ve seen how it has gone from a
reasonably busy business center to an absolutely booming juggernaut. The
infrastructure is building quickly to include more flights to key centers,
as well as expanding airports.Also, with 500% more business visitors than
ten years ago, an abun-dance of new hotels are springing up in every major
city. Tourism is also on the increase which affects everything above.Before you depart, there are a few administrative and medical essentials to be undertaken. You will need a visa, which may be a one-off visitor’s or tourist visa but if you are likely to be returning once or twice in the next two years, it is smart to obtain a multi-entry visa.The website of the Indian embassy has visa forms that you can print and file accordingly. You will also need a letter of invitation from the firm you are visiting, unless you are on a tourist visa. The best way to book hotels is to contact the company you are visiting as they may have special rates with good local hotels. They will also advise you on what’s best. Prices can be similar to central Manhattan hotels but corporate rates can help. Top class interna-tional hotel groups are found in every major city Your doctor will advise you on the minimum requirements for immunization. See a doctor at least two weeks before you travel as some injections may give you some temporary side effects. Daily flights to India are increasing from many major cities in the U.S. and abroad, but watch the prices. If you are on a tight budget, it may be more appropriate to fly to India via Dubai or even Sri Lanka. There is even a direct flight now between Chicago and Delhi. Better to go through a travel agent if you have connecting flights. Another thing to remember is that if you are arriving at Mumbai or Delhi, allow at least 45 minutes for a transfer to either the domestic or international terminal. |
 Akshardham Temple, New Delhi |
The best time to travel to India is between December and
March. It is not too hot, the monsoon has usually finished, and the
air quality is good. At this time of year, however, Delhi in particu-lar become fogged in during the morning, which can affect flights in and out of airports. If you love spicy food then a visit to India will put you in seventh heaven. Be careful, though, of eating any food (such as salad or ice in drinks) that has come in contact with water. Not to worry, bottled mineral water is in abundance. Imported alcohol is expensive but domestic wines and beer especially are pretty good and inexpensive. When traveling to India, you must find time to do some sight-seeing. The Red City of Jaipur, the Red Fort in Delhi, the Taj Mahal in Agra, the Golden Temple in Amritsar, and the Himalayas as seen from India (if you can’t actually make it to Nepal) are all good bets! However, the most enjoyable part of any trip to India is interacting with the people. They are genuine and friendly, and when they say they want to help you, they really mean it. Enjoy your visit! |
 Raju Sharma |
Interactions ...with ICC
Macmillan Staff
BY DAVID HEATH
According
to Jim Link, the technical guru of ICC’s Portland office, Raju Sharma
is "the go-to guy for anything even slightly esoteric."Raju has worked in the publishing industry for twelve years, the last eight with ICC. He is an expert in creating stylesheets, for many years a mainstay in technical and textbook publishing. He is currently working in all types of markup languages and XSLTs, and most recently has become heavily involved with 3B2 production, which is completely based on XML workflow. Raju is thus in the vanguard of the movement to a paperless future in which students will download their textbooks directly to their laptops. These books will have all the features of tradi-tional texts but will also offer active links to source materials, alternate images, quizzes and other interactive features, and even 3D images. Raju is from Punjab, where he received his diploma in Computer Sciences from Arya College in Ludhiana. He also studied Advanced System Management at the National Institute of Information Technology in Delhi and graduated in the ART stream from Delhi University. His wife Charu, who hails from the beautiful city of Chandigarh, also has a diploma in Computer Sciences and graduated with Maths honors from Punjab University. These days, though, her main occupation is caring for their two children, son Vaibhav (5 years old), who attends Mount Carmel School in Delhi, and daughter Karishma (3 months), who has not yet begun her academic career. Raju expects to do even more extensive research and develop-ment in XML and all types of new media products, all aimed at making ICC Macmillan a world leader in publishing and new media technology. And when that happens, we’ll owe much of our success to the “go-to guy,” Raju. |