Godrej Properties to develop residential project in Gurgaon

Godrej Properties, the real estate development arm of the Godrej Group, has entered into a Development Agreement with M/s Oasis Buildhome Pvt. Ltd. to develop a 13.76 acre property situated on Northern Periphery Road (NPR) in Sector 88A/89A, Gurgaon

G
The Mumbai-based real estate developer will develop a residential project in 
Gurgaon 

Godrej Properties Limited (GPL) (BSE scrip id: GODREJPRP), the real estate 
development arm of the Godrej Group, has entered into a Development Agreement 
with M/s Oasis Buildhome Pvt. Ltd. to develop a 13.76 acre property situated on 
Northern Periphery Road (NPR) in Sector 88A/89A, Gurgaon. The project will be 
developed as a premium residential group housing project and is expected to offer 
1.2 million sq. ft. of saleable area. 

This well located parcel of land has strategic access from the existing Pataudi Road 
and the NPR. Upcoming road infrastructure will further enhance the connectivity of 
the project to Delhi and other parts of Gurgaon. 

The company is currently developing two residential projects in Gurgaon, Godrej 
Frontier and Godrej Summit, and has recently added a new project in Okhla, New 
Delhi where it plans to do a premium residential development. As with most Godrej 
Properties projects, this project is being done as a joint venture. 

Mr. Pirojsha Godrej, Managing Director & CEO, Godrej Properties said, “We are 
happy to add this new project in Gurgaon to our development portfolio. NCR is an 
important growth market for us and this is the second new project we've entered in 
NCR in FY14. The project fits well with our strategy of growing our presence in 
India's leading real estate markets and we will aim to replicate the success of our 

previous projects in the Gurgaon market.”

http://www.moneycontrol.com/mccode/news/article/article_pdf.php?autono=930331&num=0

source:- http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/announcements/godrej-properties-to-develop-residential-projectgurgaon_930331.html

Unitech group's UCP gets bids up to Rs 2,700cr for Gurgaon SEZ

NEW DELHI: Unitech Corporate Parks, a Unitech group firm listed in London, has received bids of up to Rs 2,700 crore from six companies, including Blackstone, for sale of its IT Special economic Zone (SEZ) in Gurgaon.

Listed on London's Alternative Investment Market and set up to invest in commercial real estate of India, UCP has 60 per cent stake in the Gurgaon SEZ comprising 3.6 million sq ft commercial space. Unitech has remaining stake in the SEZ.

UCP has given the mandate to property consultant Jones Lang LaSalle India to find out potential buyers.

According to sources, UCP, which has put the Gurgaon SEZ on the block, has received bids from US-basedprivate equity firm Blackstone, Singapore's sovereign wealth fund GIC, investment firm Xander group, Canada's pension fund CPPIB, Kotak Group and Maple Tree.

The maximum bid was of Rs 2,700 crore, sources said, adding that the company is expecting the deal value to go up because of interest. The reserve price has been fixed at Rs 2,500 crore.

A Unitech spokesperson declined to comment when asked about the bidding process.

The deal is expected to be announced by the end of this month or early next month, sources said.

Unitech is expected to garner Rs 1,100-1,200 crore from this deal and the amount will be used to retire debt and fund construction of projects, sources said.

UCP raised about 360 million pounds by issuing and placing its Ordinary Shares on the AIM of the London Stock Exchange in December, 2006.

It had invested in six commercial projects in India in partnership with Unitech, of which five are in the nationalcapital region and one in Kolkata. UCP has 60 per cent stake in these properties while Unitech has 40 per cent. That apart, Unitech holds 12-13 per cent stake in UCP.

http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-08-05/news/41093203_1_unitech-group-firm-ucp-unitech-corporate-parks

Delhi leads world in real estate price rise: Study

India has witnessed the sharpest appreciation in real estate prices in the last couple of years, according to data from the Global Property Guide, an organization which collates real estate data from across the world.

Property prices in Delhi witnessed the steepest appreciation of roughly 60%, when compared to cities from 43 other countries, for which figures were available from that organization. Interestingly, while this data set has information only for Delhi in India, official data on Indian cities suggests that Jaipur has seen an ever faster rise in residential property prices of 67% over this period.

Delhi's 60% rise in property prices over the past two years is nearly 20 percentage points higher than Brazil's Sao Paulo, which is the second fastest rising international property market. From the first quarter of 2011 to Q1-2013, Sao Paulo, the largest city in the Americas in terms of population, witnessed a 43% increase in real estate prices.

Hong Kong, the third fastest rising market for the same period, saw its property prices going up by 33%. Dubai also appears to be in a recovery phase after the bust of its early 2000s property bubble. The city witnessed a 29% increase in its real estate prices in the last year. The West Asian city had witnessed a marginal decline in prices between Q1-2011 and Q1-2012.

In the past two years, for which comparable data is available, only 12 of the 43 countries saw double-digit growth in property prices. Most of these are emerging economies, not surprising given the fact that Europe has been battling the century's worst recession. Other countries where property prices went up by more than 10% are Turkey, Estonia, Philippines, Norway, Iceland, Indonesia, South Africa and New Zealand.

The data indicates that property prices in America, the world's largest real estate market, are increasing as its economy recovers. The US real estate market saw prices appreciating by 9% between Q1-2012 and Q1-2013 after declining over the previous year. Similarly, Beijing's property prices too registered 8% growth during Q1-2012 to Q1-2013 after dropping in the previous year.

Other large economies which have witnessed a positive growth in property prices in the past two years are Germany and Japan, where real estate prices increased by 8% and 3% respectively. However, in Germany property prices fell by almost 2% over the last year after increasing by 9.8% between Q-1 2011 and Q1-2012.



http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Delhi-leads-world-in-real-estate-price-rise-Study/articleshow/21610114.cms?














The property market remains sluggish in other large economies. While France, UK and Russia saw stagnant real estate prices in the past two years, most other European countries are witnessing steep fall.

In Croatia, Netherlands and the PIGS countries prices have fallen by more than 10% during this period. The PIGS (Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece - Southern Europe's most troubled economies) are witnessing the worst fall in property prices. Spain and Portugal witnessed a 15% decrease in property prices while in Greece they fell by 21%. Data was not available for Italy.

In India, nearly all cities have witnessed an upswing in property prices. RESIDEX, the NationalHousing Bank's property price index, indicates that only two of the country's 15 big cities have witnessed a fall in property prices since 2007- the base year of the index. (RESIDEX is also the source of Global Property Guide for Indian real estate data)

Except Hyderabad and Kochi which witnessed decrease in real estate prices the property market has appreciated across the country and many markets have witnessed growth, even better than Delhi.

Faridabad, Pune, Kochi, Bhopal, Mumbai and Chennai have witnessed higher rise in property prices when compared to Delhi. In the six years from 2007 to 2013 property prices have more than doubled in Delhi, Faridabad, Pune, Kochi, Bhopal and Mumbai while they have trebled in Chennai.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Delhi-leads-world-in-real-estate-price-rise-Study/articleshow/21610114.cms?

Real-Estate - news

After real estate, hospitality and healthcare, the Ansal API plans to foray in the education sector in a big way. The Ansal Medical Institute in Jaipur would be set up with an investment of Rs 10 cr in a span of two years from now in collaboration with the Hope Medical Institute in the US.


Financial consultancy firm Grant Thornton and Credai Bengal will hold an interactive session on the current real estate scenario, the regulatory environment and financing options on 26 July 2011 at The Bengal Club Kolkata at 6 pm.  



http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Real-Estate/news/

Facebook changes your News Feed again

MENLO PARK: Facebook's quest to be a personalized newspaper for the internet age continued on Tuesday with tweaks aimed at making sure members spy hot stories from their friends.

Changes to the leading social network's formula for figuring out which posts will be of interest included "bumping" up potentially intriguing stories that went unnoticed during prior visits to Facebook.

"It is hard for users to get back to old things; you have to scroll through things you have already seen," Facebook News Feed team engineeringLars Backstrom said while discussing the latest changes.

"We wanted to make it so people weren't missing important stories that didn't make top slots but were just below the fold."

Signals weighed in the machine learning algorithm were modified to bump-up a story considered more interesting than fresher material that formerly got priority simply for being newer.

"We tweaked the model," Backstrom said, noting that about 30,000 signals are balanced in the algorithm.

"Instead of just taking the new stories, we would take all stories that were new to you, that you haven't seen, even if it isn't the freshest."

A test of the change showed that the number of stories people read in News Feeds rose to 70% from 57% with "bumping," according to Facebook.

"Story Bumping is going to be a really nice tool for people if they... are sitting with a Facebookaccount and have run out of things to look at," said Facebook vice president of product Chris Cox. "It will bump up new stuff."

News Feeds were also modified to take into account the "last actor" a member interacted with and then give that friend's posts temporary priority since they seem to be up to something interesting.

"We wanted to capture your current state of mind as you were using Facebook," Backstrom said.

"A lot of signals are long term, such as the relationship with each friend; we wanted a real time factor."

Facebook's ranking software assigns numerical scores to the roughly 1,500 stories typically eligible for delivery to a member's News Feed and displays the top 300.

Powerful factors for ranking are relationships, along with how often a member comments, shares, "likes," or otherwise acts on posts of friends. Hiding posts sinks content from that person in News Feed rankings.

"Our goal is to create the best personalized newspaper for each of our readers," Backstrom said.

Facebook engineers are experimenting with ways for News Feeds to better handle chronological posts, such as a friend firing off play-by-play updates from a sporting event.

Backstrom's team meets each Tuesday to brainstorm ways to improve the Facebook News Feed, with worthwhile ideas tested internally among workers or with a tiny fraction of the social network's more than one billion members.

"It starts with intuition and then that gets written into code as a feature," said Cox. "Then we look at interactions."

Ads displayed as promoted posts in News Feeds are handled separately from content generated by people's friends or family members at Facebook, according to the ranking team.

"We figure out the most relevant News Feed with the organic content, and then, as a newspaper or television programme might do, we create advertising slots," said Facebook product manager Will Cathcart.

Backstrom compared the job of ranking News Feed posts to the challenge faced by internet search engines Google or Bing when it comes to quickly determining optimal results for queries.

"Facebook is one of the only places where you have a problem on the same scale as what Google or Bing is doing but you have to use different techniques because of the personal aspects of it," Backstrom said.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/social-media/Facebook-changes-your-News-Feed-again/articleshow/21672099.cms

http://globalnews.ca/video/628587/business-e-commerce

http://globalnews.ca/video/628587/business-e-commerce

11th Hour Veto Saves Older iPhones, iPads From ITC Ban

Apple has snared victory from the jaws of defeat with a little help from the Obama administration, which vetoed an International Trade Commission ruling in favor of Samsung. A presidential veto of an ITC ruling is a rare thing -- the last one came in 1987 -- but there was more at stake in this decision than the usual tit-for-tat in the companies' long-running patent war.

In a surprise move, the Obama administration overturned a decision by the International Trade Commission to ban the import of certain older Apple products after it found that they infringed on certain Samsung patents. The administration made the announcement on Saturday, one day before the ban was set to take effect.

U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman supplied several reasons for vetoing the import ban, including "technical policy considerations" and their "effect on competitive conditions in the U.S. economy and the effect on U.S. consumers."

A Surprise Decision

Although Apple and other tech companies fiercely lobbied for the veto, it still came as a surprise. The last time the president overturned an ITC decision was in 1987. The fact that Apple is an immensely popular company has led to rampant speculation that the Obama administration caved purely for political reasons.

It is easy to see how that conclusion could be reached, said Matthew Woods, an attorney with Robins Kaplan Miller & Ciresi. "These types of decisions don't happen very often, and the fact that the Obama administration is weighing in at this late date in the decision making process is also something to note," he told MacNewsWorld.

It seems likely that the Obama administration wanted to avoid putting a stamp of approval on a decision to ban the iPhone and iPad, even though the products involved were older models, he said.

The Impact on FRAND

There are reasons for concern over what the decision means for standard setting, said Woods.

The ITC issued the ban after finding that Apple had infringed standard-essential patents held by Samsung. The argument made by Apple and its supporters was that Samsung was refusing to allow Apple to license the technology except under onerous royalty fees that had strings attached.

That is not the purpose of FRAND (Fair, Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory) terms, they argued.

The Business Software Alliance recently made this very case when it filed a brief arguing for an overturn of the ban. Companies have a choice whether they submit their patented technologies to become part of internationally recognized standards, it noted, "but if they make the choice to participate in creating such a standard and in the process commit to licensing their technologies on FRAND terms, then they should not be allowed to circumvent their original commitment by using the Commission to obtain an exclusion order which could result in extracting unreasonable royalties."

On the other hand, licensees could also game the system by refusing to pay a fair and reasonable royalty, as Samsung and its supporters maintained Apple did.

While not taking sides in this particular case, Woods did note that patent holders need to have some option or way to up the ante if licensees refuse to cooperate.

Until its ruling was overturned, the ITC provided one such way, he said.

A Move Against Forum Shopping

There is another reason the Obama administration might have struck down the ITC's ruling, Douglas Panzer of the Law Office of Douglas Panzer told MacNewsWorld.

Companies forum shop their patent cases among district courts routinely, he said, and this practice has expanded to the ITC. "People see the ITC as a way of getting products off the market sooner than they could through the courts. Also, the standard is lower because the ITC doesn't have to meet the injunction criteria."

Panzer's guess about some of the thinking that went into the veto: "What the Obama administration wants to do is say to people, 'We will not let you use the ITC as an end run for patent laws, so think twice about patent shopping into the executive branch and out of the judicial branch.'" 

- See more at: http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/78652.html#sthash.HTnstmPR.dpuf

Mr. Bezos Goes to Washington

Jeff Bezos has done something that could prove to have far greater influence than being elected to Congress. He has bought The Washington Post. "This will enable him to manage the communication of the inevitable regulation and restrictions Congress will place on digital copyrights, online taxation practices, antitrust, etc.," noted KD+E's Erik Dochtermann. And that's just for starters. 

News that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is acquiring The Washington Post, one of the top newspapers in the United States, shook the publishing world on Monday. Bezos is buying the paper for US$250 million in cash, a transaction that will include affiliated publications. Bezos is making the acquisition as an individual -- the Post is not to be part of Amazon's vast array of products and services.

Much is being said about this sale epitomizing the demise of print journalism's golden era. The Washington Post has carved an indelible mark in U.S. history, with its fight to publish the Pentagon Papers and its reporting on Watergate -- events that occurred decades ago but still resonate.

- http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/Mr-Bezos-Goes-to-Washington-78661.html#sthash.RwykIY3r.dpuf

Alibaba's new boss The rise of Genghis Khan

WHO could possibly replace Jack Ma? That is the challenge confronting the senior leadership of Alibaba, China’s biggest internet firm. The flamboyant Mr Ma has led the firm since its founding in 1999, and he has overseen its spectacular transformation from online-listings service to e-commerce powerhouse.

He shocked many by declaring in January that he would step aside at the tender age of 48 from the day-to-day operations of Alibaba. He insisted that he was getting too old to do the job properly. He is to give up the chief executive post on May 10^th, but plans to remain heavily involved in the firm as its executive chairman.

Taking a job as chief executive that comes with China’s most celebrated entrepreneur hanging around the office may seem like a poisoned chalice to most, but at least one hard-charging insider is keen on the job. On March 11^th the firm announced that Jonathan Lu, a thirteen-year veteran of Alibaba (pictured), will take the helm in May. At 43, he is hardly youthful at a company where the average age of employees is closer to 26.

Still, he is a good choice, argues Peter Williamson of Cambridge University’s Judge School of Business: “He knows the company culture, has strong operational skills and has been leading the delivery of recent company innovations, such as mobile payments and developing the information-technology platform.”

Mr Lu has worked at or near the top of every important division of Alibaba. After heading up an important sales team at Alibaba.com, the firm’s business-to-business marketplace, he launched Alipay, its payment-systems platform, now the world’s largest. He then went on to run Taobao, the firm’s hugely successful domestic e-commerce site. During his tenure, total sales generated by sellers on Taobao grew eightfold. Most recently, he has served as the group’s chief data officer.

Mr Lu’s operational skills will serve him well coming on the heels of a founder with a tendency toward techno-utopianism and visionary thinking. Mr Ma recently admonished managers not to make too much revenue, lest it come at the expense of “customer experience”. Nevertheless, Mr Lu’s appointment raises several big questions about Alibaba’s future.

First of all, when will he float the company? The firm has taken a number of steps of late paving the way for a public listing. Last year, the firm took its Alibaba.com division, which was listed on the Hong Kong exchange, private. It also struck a deal with Yahoo, a big investor with whom it had been squabbling bitterly, to buy back its shares. That deal gives Alibaba strong financial incentives to float the company soon.

Another big question is what exactly is Alibaba’s Big Data strategy? As the dominant firm in the world’s most important e-commerce market—one that will soon surpass even America’s in size—the company is sitting on a treasure trove of data. It has grand ambitions in analytics and related ways of harnessing that data.

Executives say the first and most promising field to apply all this is finance: it is expanding into online insurance, securitisation and micro-lending. As chief data officer, Mr Lu had his finger on the pulse of such matters. But puzzlingly the firm said that its financial services arm would be the only one of its 25 business units not to report to him directly.

The biggest open question for Mr Lu, however, is how he will deal with the giant shadow of the diminutive former boss. “Serving as Alibaba Group CEO is an extremely challenging and difficult job, especially succeeding a founder CEO like me,” observed Mr Ma in an e-mail to Alibaba employees explaining his choice of successor.

It will not be easy, but there is reason to think Mr Lu just might be up to the task. It is tradition at the Taobao division, which has an irreverent culture akin to that of Silicon Valley firms, to take on nicknames. Mr Lu’s nickname is TieMuZhen—better known in the West as Genghis Khan.

source:- http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2013/03/alibabas-new-boss?zid=291&ah=906e69ad01d2ee51960100b7fa502595

Amazon Lets You Put Fine Art in Your Shopping Cart

Amazon on Tuesday added "purveyor of fine art" to its e-commerce business creds, opening Amazon Art, a marketplace to view and purchase fine art created by contemporary and classical artists.

Will any consumers consider putting "Fragment de Nympheas," a framed oil painting by Claude Monet, in their cart for US$2.5 million (+ free shipping)? Or will Amazon Art become a place where art lovers go to view this and other masterpieces -- that is, a virtual museum?

In actuality, the Amazon Art marketplace will sell a range of works from galleries from around the globe featuring contemporary artists, with just a sprinkling of very high-profile pieces. Amazon initially is offering pieces from more than 150 galleries and dealers, showcasing 4,500 artists. There were more than 40,000 works of fine art listed at the outset, and the catalog will grow.

Galleries on the Amazon Art roster are located across the U.S. and Canada, as well as in Europe, including in the UK and the Netherlands. Some of the high-profile galleries include Paddle8 in New York, Holden Luntz in Miami, McLoughlin Gallery in San Francisco, Modernbrook in San Francisco, Catherin Person Gallery in Seattle, and GallerieCiti in the Bay area. While Amazon could include individual artists in the future, it is strictly dealing with galleries and dealers for starters.

At launch the store offered works from Andy Warhol, Claude Monet, Norman Rockwell and other renowned artists.

- See more at: http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/Amazon-Lets-You-Put-Fine-Art-in-Your-Shopping-Cart-78658.html#sthash.RnNxytIB.dpuf