Monday, June 30, 2008

India Inc. at Digital Inspiration

India Inc. at Digital Inspiration

Retail in news

Posted: 30 Jun 2008 01:56 AM CDT

Over the weekend, there were lot of happenings centered around the retail sector. With news, announcements and plans coming up of various players. Here is a snapshot of all.

Future Group is restructuring its Big Bazaar operations by splitting it into two entities. One would be B2C format while another back-end operations, which would be operated through a JV with foreign cash and carry retailer.

Big Bazaar is also scaling up its operations by taking its tally to 350 stores by 2011 up from 91 currently. It will also have 3 formats - large stores under Big Bazaar Supercentres, standard onces under Big Bazaar and smaller marts named Big Bazaar Express.

A couple of more internal decisions include integrating operations of Big Bazaar, Food Bazaar, Home Solutions Retail and KB’s Fair Price Shops to bring more efficiency. It has also dropped plans of opening its rural cash and carry format, KB’s Wholesale Market.

Vishal Retail would be opening 70 more Vishal Megamart stores at a cost of Rs.700 crore by year end to take its tally to 190. It is also planning to launch loyalty cards to attract customers.

UK’s Arcadia Group is believed to have partnered Tata Group’s Trent for bringing its high-fashion apparel and accessory retail chains, Topshop and Topman. Arcadia may also bring other known brands such as Miss Selfridge, Burton, Evans, Dorothy Perkins and Wallis into India later.

Reliance Retail is planning to open a chain of stores to retail mobile phone handsets and compete with established players like Subhiksha Mobile, Hotspot and Essar-Virgin’s The MobileStore.

Spencer’s retail will open 22 Spencer’s Hyper and 425 Spencer’s stores this year. It will also launch fashion and accessories brands to diversify its focus from a pure food retailer to a fashion brand.

Apparel retail chain Globus will open 74 more stores this year to take its tally to 100 stores by 2010.

Italian apparel chain Benetton is setting up 20 new outlets in tier II and tier III cities across the country by the end of next year.

Subhiksha is going to become a listed company as it will merge itself with Blue Green Constructions and Investments Limited and change its name to Subhiksha Ltd. It will also increase its presence by opening 3000 stores in 250 cities up from 1480 stores currently.

Wadhawan Lifestyle Retail is in talks to bring 20 global brands into India and looking at having 4 retail business verticals of international and luxury brands, integrated departmental store chain, specialty electronics chain and value segment.

Lifestyle, a part of Dubai-based Landmark Group, will open 38 exclusive stores more up from its current tally of 18 stores during the next 4 years at an investment of Rs.500 crore.

The only noticeable omissions include announcements from Bharti-Walmart and Aditya Birla Retail.

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Thursday, June 26, 2008

India Inc. at Digital Inspiration

India Inc. at Digital Inspiration

Deccan may be renamed as Kingfisher Max

Posted: 26 Jun 2008 09:38 PM CDT

Kingfisher MaxAfter changing name from ‘Air Deccan’ to ‘Simplify Deccan’, a fresh round of name change is expected to happen with the new name most likely to be ‘Kingfisher Max’.

And with growing ATF prices, the low-cost model certainly does not seem to work for now, as a result the low-cost characer of the airline would also go and it would operate on sectors with high load factor and low operating costs.

Also, Kingfisher Airlines would be operating the international flights retaining the premium class tag.

Another likely scenario is that the listed Deccan Aviation get reverse merged with Kingfisher and eventually changes its name to Kingfisher Airlines. source

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Wednesday, June 25, 2008

India Inc. at Digital Inspiration

India Inc. at Digital Inspiration

Book Your iPhone 3G with Airtel or Vodafone India

Posted: 25 Jun 2008 01:51 AM CDT

vodafone-airtel-iphone Finally some good news for iPhone lovers in India. For the first time, there is an official communiqué regarding iPhone launch from Bharti Airtel and Vodafone India on the same.

The only issue still remains is that both Vodafone and Airtel would launch the iPhone 3G model in India although India has only 2G compatible networks, so some of the features may not work.

Vodafone is giving option of pre-booking the iPhone through its website whereby you could be the among the initial ones to own it once its launched in India this year.

Reacting to Vodafone's pre-booking announcement, Airtel quickly launched their own page where iPhone fans can register for future updates about iPhone availability and price.

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Saturday, June 21, 2008

India Inc. at Digital Inspiration

India Inc. at Digital Inspiration

Reliance Capital to use cross-selling for increasing finserv biz

Posted: 21 Jun 2008 08:59 AM CDT

Anil AmbaniFollowing the model adopted by global conglomerate like GE, Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group is using the database of its customers, shareholders and employees of ADAG companies to cross sell its financial products through Reliance Capital Services.

RCS would be a 100% subsidiary of Reliance Capital and would sell insurance and consumer finance products to 17.5 crore customers which includes 5 crore RCom subscribers, 3 crore Reliance Energy customers and 70 lakh customers under entertainment banner 'Big'.

With this, ADAG would become the first business group in India to leverage the strength of its existing stakeholders to expand business.

The move may help Rel Capital to reduce its costs as distribution and customer acquisition costs are quite high in financial service industry, plus it would immediately get access to potential customers with minimal marketing efforts.

Reliance Capital to use cross-selling for increasing finserv biz - Digital Inspiration | FAQ | RSS

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Thursday, June 12, 2008

India Inc. at Digital Inspiration

India Inc. at Digital Inspiration

ADAG eyes Zee’s Essel World

Posted: 12 Jun 2008 01:56 AM CDT

Essel WorldOne of the first and largest amusement parks in India, Essel Group's 'Essel World' is drawing interest from Anil Ambani's Reliance Entertainment.

Reliance Entertainment wants to create entertainment zones around the country and Essel World fits perfectly into its fold due to its suitable location and nationwide popularity.

Even Essel Group has been considering exiting the venture due to various reasons. Firstly, the returns are insignificant due to high capital expenditure costs and then there is growing competition from malls and multiplexes.

Similarly due to protest, Zee group was not able to scale up the size of its entertainment venture leading to disinterest in the venture.

Recently, Reliance Entertainment also struck a deal to build Giant Wheels across India.

If indeed, ADAG buys Essel World, then most likely the prefix Essel would be replaced either by 'Big' or 'Reliance'. source

ADAG eyes Zee’s Essel World - Digital Inspiration | FAQ | RSS

Taj Hotels shifts focus to luxury hotels

Posted: 12 Jun 2008 01:07 AM CDT

Taj Mahal Hotel105 year old Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces having 59 hotels in the luxury, leisure and business segment is going for a rebranding of its properties to preserve the exclusivity of the Taj brand.

All hotels under the luxury segment would have the prefix 'Taj' to it while the leaisure and business hotels would have a new brand name and endorsed using the Taj name.

Initially the rebranding would be done for Indian hotels and later extended to overseas ones. The move will help customers of Taj Hotels in distinguishing the hotel and relate with the features of the hotel.

This move by Taj Hotels is much akin to global practices as followed by Starwood, Marriott and Carlson hotels. Even Indian chains like Oberoi and ITC Hotels have separate identity for different hotel segments.

The move makes sense for Taj too as it gets major revenues from its luxury properties and this step may help it to concentrate its brand and business on these specific properties. via

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Wednesday, June 11, 2008

India Inc. at Digital Inspiration

India Inc. at Digital Inspiration

Idea-Spice-Telekom Malaysia deal - What is the best case scenario?

Posted: 11 Jun 2008 03:29 AM CDT

Idea Spice TM MergerThe much written about stake sale of Spice Communication is still witnessing its own turn of new permutations and reports for the exact contour of the deal, though nothing has been officially confirmed.

One thing which emerges from the news reports is that the Modis would exit Spice for sure by selling its entire stake. The reason being, that Spice is a loss making company with limited operations in Karnataka and Punjab, inspite of being among the oldest telecom player in India. Also Modis need money for pursuing its bid to buyout stake in Sony Entertainment Television.

As far as Idea Cellular is concerned, Spice is the best fit for its operations as it does not have its own operations in Punjab and Karnataka, and through Spice it would get 4.4 million customers and 900MHz spectrum making it fifth largest mobile operator above Tata Tele.

As far as Telekom Malaysia is concerned, it would like to grow its Indian operations as it complements its operations in other South East Asian nations.

The likely scenarios for the deal are that Idea buys out entire stake held by Modis and Telekom Malaysia get proportional stake in Idea Cellular which works around 5.8% stake.

Another possibility is TM buys stake in Idea, then Idea buys out Modi's stake and merges Spice with Idea.

This deal is a likely possibility as it's a win-win situation for all, as Modi will get his desired amount while Idea will maintain its majority stake and also get benefit of experience and expertise of Telekom Malaysia. And for TM too, it makes way for pursuing its Indian operations.

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