GE India, the $2.8 billion industrial giant, plans to invest $6 billion till 2015 in medical systems, services and IT tailor-made for rural India. Also, GE, the parent company, is looking at making India the sourcing hub for aerospace parts and healthcare products and is in the process of developing a supply chain for this.
The $6.3-billion Mahindra Group expects to grow revenues from its agri-business venture nearly eight-fold in the next five years by expanding among national and overseas retail chains, a top group official said.
Given the cut-throat competition in the FM radio space, radio companies are always on the look out for newer, untapped areas. And perhaps that is the reason why major radio stations such as Big FM, RadioCity and Fever FM have descended on the World Wide Web as well as the mobile platform.
Currently, the company is in the process of demolishing the old buildings and is expected to start construction work on the mill land by the year-end, a top company official said. The company plans to build a hotel and a commercial complex for IT and ITeS (IT-enabled Services) companies on the 20-acre land.
They have graduated from just home delivery to SMS marketing, bulk buying alliances and credit extensions.
Consider this: Kishore Biyani's Future Group, which owns the country's largest retailer Pantaloon, is converting the standalone stores of book and music chain Depot into shop-in-shops within Big Bazaar. While the number of Depot shop-in-shops has risen to 123, that of standalone stores has come down to nine. Same with UK-based footwear brand Lee Cooper.
Whether it would help these cash-starved firms to improve their profit margins is yet to be seen, but such a move would send a strong signal that the phase of price correction is over. "Developers want to send signals that they are good. But if they are increasing above 10-15 per cent, it would be irrational," said Sanjay Dutt, chief executive of Jones Lang LaSalle Meghraj, a property consultant.
Tata Housing, a unit of Tata Sons, is advancing its plans to build 15,000 low-cost dwelling units by two years. Besides, it should add 300 more houses in its Mumbai project to take the advantage of demand for such homes, a top company official said.Tata Housing had earlier planned to develop 1,000 houses under the brand 'Shubh Griha' in Bhoisar, a distant suburb of Mumbai, priced at Rs 3.9-6.7 lakh.
Real estate companies are now going to the other extreme and falling over each other to offer affordable housing at a price range of Rs 500,000 to Rs 50 lakhs (Rs 5 million). The varied pricing is a function of affordability being a relative term, depending on the location. For instance, a Rs 50- lakh (Rs 5-million) apartment in Mumbai is considered affordable housing. In a city like Nagpur, the same price will qualify for premium housing.
With confidence creeping back into the market place and rentals down up to 50 per cent, large retailers are back to drawing up aggressive growth plans. In the next one year, Aditya Birla Retail, Bharti Enterprises, Reliance Retail, Trent, Mahindra Retail and others hope to open new stores spread over five million square feet.
Speculators often leveraged volume discounts on property purchases to re-sell them at prices lower than those available to individual buyers. This created problems for realtors when demand slowed, since it put pressure on them to take a hit on margins and lower prices still further. The lock-ins are expected to be introduced mostly for mid-income projects that offer prices 20 to 30 per cent below the market and, therefore, attract more undercutting from bulk discount buyers.
DLF, Unitech, HDIL & Puravankara line up 60 million square feet of new launches. This is more than double the sales bookings in the past financial year.
Developers in the past year have restructured debt, sold non-core assets and tweaked the product mix, helping push up sales. This has encouraged investors to buy stocks of real estate companies and motivate analysts to revise price targets and upgrade the outlook on the sector. Reflecting the positive sentiment, the Bombay Stock Exchange Realty Index rose 58 per cent in the past month, outpacing the benchmark Sensitive index's gain of 27 per cent.
Developers who are launching new projects are opting for this route, as they need not pay the entire amount in one lot and owners need not forego the potential rise in value. As much as 70 per cent of land deals in the country take place through this model now, against 40-45 per cent a couple of years earlier, say property consultants.
Developers such as DLF, Unitech and Orbit are in the process of raising around Rs 5,000 crore (Rs 50 billion) in the current fiscal after they rolled over nearly Rs 9,000 crore (Rs 90 billion) debt subsequent to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) allowing banks to restructure loans to developers.
Experts say the biggest expenditure for a retailer is real estate, followed by manpower and sales and advertisement expenses.
Jamshedpur gave birth to Telco (now Tata Motors) which has just launched the low-cost Nano; Jamshedpur, according to the 35-year old Tata Housing Development Company managing director Brotin Banerjee, is what inspired Tata Housing to launch its Shubh Griha low-cost housing project in Mumbai.
Tata Housing Development Company, a unit of Tata Sons, expects to earn Rs 700 crore (Rs 7 billion) in revenue from low-cost housing in the next four years, a top company official has said.
In May last year, Peninsula forayed into the hospitality sector with a joint venture with textile maker and real estate developer, Arrow Webtex. The JV planned to build hotels in Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur, Nasik and Kolhapur in Maharashtra. There were also plans to develop hotels in Ahmedabad, Surat, Jamnagar, Mundra port, Goa and Kerala.
In an attempt to reduce costs, India's biggest wine producer, Indage Vintners, has started closing its regional offices, while centralising all sales and marketing activities at its headquarters in Mumbai.
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