After Mukesh and Anil Ambani, DLF’s Kushal Pal Singh became India’s third rupee trillionaire with a net wealth of Rs.101,250 crore. The market cap of India’s largest real estate company DLF now stands at Rs.1,14,744 crore.

The promoter holding in DLF stands at 88.24% and has appreciated in value by over Rs 22,000 crore since listing. Prior to listing, Singh’s stake was worth about Rs 79,000 crore.

In dollar terms, Mukesh Ambani’s net worth is $39.9 billion, while Anil Ambani is second at $26 billion. KP Singh is worth $25.1 billion followed by Bharti’s Sunil Mittal with over $22 billion and Wipro’s Azim Premji at $14.6 billion.

The top 5 billionaires in India are worth Rs. 515,000 crore and represents 11% of of total investor wealth in Indian equity market of Rs. 45,00,000 crore.

With the offloading of 5% stake in Reliance Tower Infrastructure Ltd by Reliance Communications to 7 financial investors valuing the tower business of the company at astonishing Rs.27000 crore, the analysis has now shifted as to how the tower business would contribute in the growth of telecom companies.

India has 120,000 tower sites, having 136,000 BTS (Base Transmitting Station) of different telecom companies. Bharti Airtel has the largest tower portfolio with 39281 tower sites and 1.26 occupants per tower. Reliance Communications (R-Com) has 13000 towers. All other operators’ towers have lower occupancy ratios and face challenges in facing competition from larger players.

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Tata Group’s retail arm Infiniti Retail is enhancing its partnership with Australian supermarket chain Woolworths, to enter food & grocery retailing by opening supermarkets and hypermarkets.

Tata through its group company Trent already has a hypermarket chain Star India Bazaar to tap the price-conscious customer. Trent also owns the Westside lifestyle stores and Landmark stores.

Woolworths run a chain of consumer durable stores with Tata named Croma in which it provide technical support and global sourcing facilities. Currently Croma has 3 stores which it wants to expand to 40 stores by 2007 and 100 by 2010. Croma also opened its first consumer durable and electronic retail store at Mumbai airport’s domestic terminal.

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Leading telecom players, Bharti Airtel and Reliance Communications are considering providing satellite-based broadband internet services coupled with their DTH platform, due to be launched soon.

The concept has been popular in North America as it is not economically feasible to play cables in scantly populated areas. It is considered beneficial to rural areas where there is dearth of telephone line and cables.

This move may also prompt Dish TV to enter this space as it would gain from its JV with Shyam Communication which offers broadband satellite communications solutions.

A combined DTH and satellite broadband is economical as compares to standalone satellite internet services as the latter requires a satellite dish for two-way (upload and download) data communications.

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Walmart’s warehouse division, Sam’s Club, named after its founder Sam Walton is planning to setup its members-only warehouse club in India, reports Financial Express.

The club accounts for 12% of Wal-Mart’s sales and have stores mainly in Northern and Southern America. The goods can be purchased only by members who are mostly small shop owners and retailers. 

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One of the first foreign retail companies to explore the option of an Indian entry, UK-based Tesco has now shelved plans of entering into India unless FDI is allowed in retail sector.

Under current regulation, 51% foreign investment is allowed in single-brand retail while foreign multiple-brand retailers can also do cash-and-carry or franchise or licence operations. The government is also hardening its stand due to political opposition forcing tough times for foreign retailers.

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A lot has been said and written about the growth of organised retail market in India and how big corporates, either solely or though foreign partners, would change the landscape of the country’s retail scenario with huge investments and nationwide presence.

But the startling observation is the absence of own websites of these retail companies. Whatever information one gets is only though newspaper reports, magazines and blogs. There is nothing official from the company platform in terms of their plans, network, products, offers and investment pattern.

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Close on the heels of top Indian corporates, the Aditya Birla Group is considering to venture into development of non-metro airports in the country.

The Airports Authority of India (AAI) has identified 35 non-metro airports for modernisation though private participation. The development would consist of only the civilian aspects of the project.

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In the era of upcoming malls and discount stores with new offers every other day, that claims to fill your basket for less, you should be handy with a protective gear and prefarably, have a bodyguard accompanying you.

With the recent incident of attack on Reliance Fresh stores in Ranchi, followed by protest in Indore, things are looking murkier for chains like Big Bazaar, Subhiksha, Reliance Retail and the planned entrant Bharti-Walmart. As owing to their better management practices and economies of scale, they are able to sell cheap to consumers, who are surely not complaining.

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