The STAR India-Bennet, Coleman & Company (BCCL) combine, Subhash Chandra's Essel Group and TV 18's HomeShopping 18 are among those who will air home shopping channels in the next couple of months.
The move brings an additional 15 per cent of the retail medicine market worth over Rs 4,000 crore (Rs 40 billion) under direct price control. All domestic companies, including drug majors like Ranbaxy, Cipla, Lupin and Dr Reddy's, have syrups and tonics in their product portfolio.
By the year-end, Mumbai and its suburbs will add 15.4 million square feet of office space, more than the commercial space now available at the sprawling Bandra Kurla Complex or seven times the office space at Nariman Point, the city's business hub.
Realty FII norms, which were recently put outside the purview of Press Note 2 (2005), are vague about pre-IPO investments.
With anti-competitive practices of global pharma companies increasingly coming under regulatory scrutiny internationally, Indian public interest groups and the domestic medicine makers complain that India's competitive laws are not equipped to face a similar situation of monopoly in the sales of patent protected medicines in the country.
Over 300 life-saving medicines may become cheaper by at least 25 per cent, if the finance ministry considers a proposal by its chemicals and fertilisers counterpart to provide customs and excise duty waivers on all drugs that are part of the National List of Essential Medicines. The chemicals and fertilisers ministry proposal has been supported by pharma companies, who have also agreed to pass on the benefits of such waivers by slashing retail prices.
Reliance, Lifecell and Cryobank have emerged leaders in the stem cell banking sector.
Drug makers join the chyawanprash bandwagon with sugar-free variants.
Ashok Piramal Group company Peninsula Land has inked a property deal worth Rs 1,200 crore (Rs 12 billion) with Essar Realty Holdings, the realty arm of the Essar Group, to sell and lease premises at its upcoming IT park named Peninsula Technopark on LBS Marg in Kurla. The deal was signed recently, according to sources.
Fitch, one of the largest design consultancies in the world that has designed stores of Wal-Mart, Target, Marks & Spencer, Best Buy and Tesco among others, is betting big on India's organised retail sector. Already in the country to serve clients such as Aditya Birla Retail, Reliance Retail, Tatas and so on, Fitch plans to treble the number of staff and open new offices in the country.
Refusing to divulge identity of the companies, sources indicated that three of them are based in Delhi and the remaining are in Maharashtra.
The price regulatory pharma body has set limits to the extent pharma companies can increase the price of medicines in a year.
While Lehman will invest Rs 500 crore and hold 75 per cent in the JV, Peninsula Land will subscribe to the remaining equity at an investment of Rs 200 crore, according to sources.
India's retail industry, which is in the middle of rapid growth, has already scripted success stories fit to be the subject of a Bollywood film.
Karmayog, a leading NGO which recently carried out a CSR rating of top 500 Indian companies, says that only two drug companies - Dr Reddy's and Lupin - have done work on this front. While the two firms scored three out of five, 30 other drug firms failed to perform satisfactorily. Nine of the companies, including leading ones such as Nicholas Piramal, Panacea and Glenmark did not score at all.
Private insurers are planning to launch property title insurance covers in India soon. Foreign investment is therefore likely to enter the Indian real estate market.
As real estate investment trusts (REITs) are set to become a reality in the country, small and medium property developers, who constitute 80 per cent of the total realty industry, can now breathe easy.
Rathod, an IP professional attached to a global generic pharmaceutical company, draws hundreds of readers from across the IP space to his genericpharmaceuticals.blogspot.com.
Even as a lack of clarity in regulations is preventing Indian medical device manufacturers from making their presence felt in the $2 billion domestic medical equipment market, foreign players, mostly from the United States, are increasingly finding the country a preferred destination.
Days after medical representatives said their employers were flouting the government's drug-pricing norms, the pharmaceutical industry has decided to clip their wings. These companies want them to be no longer recognised as "workmen," a classification that gives them the right to form trade unions.
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