For such bonanzas, prospective home buyers have a downturn to thank. Property sales have fallen 15 to 20 per cent countrywide over the last six months, owing to rising home loan rates. This has pinched the cash flows of developers, already reeling under higher borrowing costs and a range of anti-inflationary measures that restrict their flexibility to raise funds.
Bharat Petroleum Corporation (BPCL), the country's second largest oil marketing company, plans to diversify into bottled water and direct to home (DTH) services in an attempt to boost its profits.
ETAM, the French lingerie brand that has a joint venture with Kishore Biyani's Future Group, recently pulled out of Palm Beach Galleria mall in Navi Mumbai, together with six other retailers such as grocery chain Foodland Fresh and Manoranjan sarees.
Unitech, the country's second largest property developer, has raised $300 million (nearly Rs 1,290 crore) from international investors for its $600 million global property fund.
Money is the new God and spending it is the closest that one gets to nirvana. These five malls together accommodate close to 1,800 showrooms and smaller kiosks that sell almost everything a consumer could want. The number of visitors at Select City Walk averages around 2,000 on weekdays, going up to 6,000 on weekends.
Housing Development and Infrastructure, country's third largest listed realty developer, has forayed into entertainment, power, oil & gas and broadcasting, among others, either directly or by acquiring stake. The company recently acquired a 51 per cent stake in Broadcast Initiatives, promoted by Sri Adhikari Brothers. Sarang Wadhawan talks about his company's plans and projects in an interview with Business Standard.
India's premier technical institute, IIT-Bombay's golden jubilee celebrations -- to be held in New York from July 18 to 20 this year -- have stirred a hornet's nest. The reason is that Dow Chemicals is one of the main sponsors.
The company had hedged $2.5 billion as of March 2008, but unwound its position reducing its exposure to $1.7 billion as on June 30. The unwinding resulted in a loss. An analyst tracking the firm said: "This was expected as HCL Tech had a major portion of its hedges in forward cover. Since the company has unwound $540 million of forward covers, a major part of which will show up in other income.
Despite a tough economic scenario, the Indian IT software and services sector will touch the $50-billion mark in 2008-09, though the indicated growth is lower at 21-24 per cent (currency-adjusted), according to Nasscom.
The voluntary move comes a little more than a year after the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation, the central authority that approves new drugs for marketing, had asked the drug makers to withdraw the 'combination drugs' as they are 'unnecessary' and may pose health hazards. The Drugs Controller General of India had banned 294 combination drugs sold under nearly 1,053 brand names from the market in June 2007.
Food and grocery retailer Subhiksha has taken the acquisition route to list its shares on the stock exchanges. The company wants to avoid an initial public offer in view of the turbulence in the capital market.
A day after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) raised the benchmark repo rate and cash reserve ratio (CRR), leading property developers said they are mulling hiking prices of apartments and focusing on the affordable housing segment to counter the impact of a high interest rate regime.
Affordable housing, the most neglected segment of the real estate sector, is now attracting large-scale investments from developers as well as private equity funds.
Welspun USA's e-commerce plans comes at a time when only 3-5 per cent of home textile sales in the US is ordered over the Internet. The New York-based company is targeting the mid to upper end of the American home textile market, pegged around $15-17 billion. A couple of established retailers such as JC Penny have built the online retail model over the last decade.
Housing Development Finance Corporation (HDFC) Chairman Deepak Parekh on Tuesday said that interest rates may rise owing to higher inflation, but lending rates are unlikely to change in the next one month.
Adversity often brings out the best in companies, even state-owned ones. Faced with a bloated fuel bill, companies are busy devising new ways to control costs. These range from cut in travel to shift to cheaper fuels and even reduced recruitment. Power equipment maker Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd has a brand new strategy in place -- it will set up onsite fabrication units rather than transport equipment over long distances.
After Singapore, Indian property developers such as Indiabulls Real Estate and Phoenix Mills among others are looking at London, German and Australian stock exchanges to list their property trusts there.
According to Jagdish Shettigar, chairman of BJP's economic cell and former member of the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council, infrastructure, especially road building, will be a priority. It is now also certain that work on the controversial 111-km Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprise connecting Bnagalore and Mysore will be accelerated. "We have always supported NICE," said a BJP leader.
Big retail is fine tuning its strategy to win over critics and corporate social responsibility drives are providing it with the means.ITC and Reliance have already launched projects to recruit street hawkers, the main adversaries of big retail. And now Bharti Mittal has opened a retail innings of its chain, Easy Day, in Ludhiana with something similar.
The rise in raw material costs has caused a 10 per cent increase in the retail prices of fast-moving consumer goods as companies are passing on the rise in costs.
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