News , Views and More

Will Bharti - Walmart hit the Indian Mom and Pop shops , No if Sunil Mittal is to be believed. As per him only “some inefficient” onces will be hit . The one who cannot sell there stuff for cheap will go out of business , well surely none can match Bharti - Walmart as no one is buying millions jumper from vendors.

Looks like Oracle is gearing up for Indian Retail , this was bound to happen considering the size of Indian Retail . This is good for Indian retail players as Oracle will bring the technology competencies and best practices implemented worldwide. Retailers will be able to keep cost down by leveraging technology.
SAP and IBM should also announce there strategy sooner as market is to big for them to ignore.

India Today some time bad covered a story on which IT company has biggest chance of being the first 10B $ Indian company , HT has covered a good story on how big 5 TCS , Infosys , Wipro , Cognizant and HCL are taking divergent path for growth . Wipro and TCS are emphasizing on acquisitions for there growth Infosys , Cognizant and HCL taking an organic path for creating competencies . Underling features is all the companies have realized that in order to move forward the strategy should be doing highend work like moving into consultancy or focusing on competency based work.

Infosys is grappling with talent crunch as per HT , this was bound to happen reason being high attrition rate and growing competition with the likes of IBM and Accenture for retaining talent. With NASSCOM already raising concerns for quality of Engineers coming out the problem seems to be more serious .

It will be interesting to see what innovative polices Inosys bring in the future to keep the talent .

With NYSE buying stakes in NSE looks like world is formally taking note and India officially is a emerging market. In simple terms what it means is people can buy WalMart shares through NSE and can trade any NYSE listed company on NSE. This will also make the NSE more efficient leveraging the NYSE competencies .
Buzz is already around whether BSE the oldest stock exchange in Asia will follow the similar route and let NASDAQ enter India , means one cay trade stocks of Apple and Microsoft on BSE.

iPhone is finally launched , first question that comes is , will it be a hit in India , considering that most of the stuff from Apple is of higher price Apple has not made penetration in India barring iPod which is hip and has made some penetration.
India being the fastest growing marking telecom market in the world and Indians being very mobile savvy my guess it will capture the market though price is on higher side 500$ (24000 INR) but considering the features it offers it will definitely dent the market where Nokia is a bigger player. I am sure prices will come down in next two three years when production reaches to the full capacity.
Who knows once Indians try there hand on Apple it might just tempt more Indians to try there hand on Apple products.

I am just waiting.

Of so many reports published on India there is one more report which talks about how India will be top nation by 2025.
Interesting points are though China is ahead of India by 10 years , India is catching up fast .
India is also making good use of the capital as china has invested twice more in last 10 years still with growth more by only 50% .
But what could stop India from reaching there ? Not surprisingly no one but ourself with religion dividing the country and 50% + people staying below poverty line.
Good thing is people are taking note of us .

Per HT , verdict is already out on who will lead the race for Retail in India . Reliance & Walmart-Bharti will be leading the pack followed by Birla’s and Tata’ s . Surprisingly there are sympathetic words for Pantaloon as it doesn’t have the deep pockets required.
Not surprisingly neighborhood retailers were told not to ask there kids to continue in this as future looks bleak for them.
These are interesting observations but Pantaloon group being first in the market and being a pure play retail player definitely looks to be for big run (my 2 cents ) . As stated by Kishore Biyani that Retail war will be fought in media in 2007 and on ground in 2008 let’s wait for time.

Per ET Ranbaxy is in fray for buying Merck generic business valued in billion dollars , if this goes through it will make Ranbaxy third largest pharma player in the world and will also be the biggest deal for Indian player .
There couldn’t be a better news for brand India in 2007 if this goes through .

Having bought a house from Mantri and Sobha developers (Still waiting for possession) in Bangalore thought it will be good to narrate the experiences.
Mantri I bought earlier and found dealing with them much smooth as there customer representatives are much amicable and usually accommodate delay in payments compared to Sobha there customer rep’s are bit aggressive and probably depends on there brand to carry them through as Sobha has good vibes in bangalore compared to Mantri , with Sobha they don’t accommodate any delay in payment and will pose fine upto 18% for any delay .
With Mantri some bargaining is possible on cost of the flat but with Sobha bargain is no-no .
Mantri gave possession of the houses in advance and with Sobha delivery is a concern as it is getting delayed which was anyway told by my friends earlier who bought house that Sobha projects normally gets delayed .
Quality wise haven’s seen anything yet from Sobha as still waiting for the possession but Mantri quality is above average and so is priced accordingly .

Sobha factor the quality in price so it’s case of what you get is what you pay.
Overall for people looking for house and has boiled down to these two developers my suggestion would be to consider how long are you eager to wait and what is the budget you have in mind as Sobha is on higher side and there projects gets delayed .

Hope somebody finds this experience valuable. Leave comments for any other insight .