Writankar Mukherjee, The Economic Times Kolkata, April 23, 2012 Hair stylist Jawed Habib, who runs a chain of more than 300 salons across India, plans to take his venture global in a strategic partnership with Procter & Gamble, the world's largest consumer goods company. Procter & Gamble will not pick up equity in the venture, but will provide bridge financing and help identify locations as well as the kind of services to offer and how, said Habib who has finalised plans to set up three salons in London and one in Singapore. "Our initial thrust will be Europe and we…
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Vishal Krishna, Businessworld Bangalore, April 21, 2012 On 10 April, the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) under the commerce ministry issued a circular to clarify the grey areas in foreign direct investment (FDI). While the note titled ‘Consolidated FDI Policy’ answered some key questions around foreign investment in multi-brand retail, it also put a question mark over the e-tailing business in the country. The note says: “E-commerce activities refer to the activity of buying and selling by a company through the e-commerce platform. Such companies would engage only in business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce and not in retail trading, inter…
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Prince Mathews Thomas, Forbes India New Delhi, April 20, 2012 All Ajay Jain wanted was for people to buy his photographs. Though he was an engineer and an MBA and had worked in various industries ranging from IT to media, his passion lay in travel and photography. But he was not able to sell enough of his pictures through exhibitions. So he started a gallery and started marketing it online. Yet, nothing really worked. That’s when the 41-year-old decided to transform the gallery in South Delhi’s Hauz Khas Village into a café with wi-fi, coffee, tea and cookies. The attraction…
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Meghna Maiti , Financial Chronicle Mumbai, April 17, 2012 Futurebazaar.com, the online retail venture of India’s largest organised retailer — Future group is supplementing its business-to-consumer (B2C) business with a business-to-business (B2B) initiative. This marks a major departure from its initial B2C positioning. The Kishore Biyani-controlled group aims to extend the concept of offering deals, leveraging centralised warehousing and inventory management and volume purchases to companies; in an effort to tap into the corporate gifting market. “We will offer companies a wide range of products and killer deals on orders such as 100 units of a LCD TV or jewellery…
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Pia Heikkila, The National Mumbai, April 15, 2012 An average apartment, basic amenities and interiors in need of modernisation, is for rent in Worli Seaface in Mumbai. "The apartment is suitable for a family or company executives," reads the property agent's blurb. Monthly rent? A mere US$17,000 (Dh62,442). It's even worse for those Mumbaikars daring to dream of buying their very own home. According to various agents, anyone with a budget of less than half a million dollars for a small one/two-bedroom apartment will be priced out of south, central and west Mumbai all together. That seems quite lot in…
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