The changing face of IT parks

After Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore reached a saturation point, satellite cities such as Pune have became attractive destinations. The need to drive down costs is pushing companies to choose centres like Gurgaon, Noida, Mysore and Kolkata for software and BPO operations.

In 1999-2000, 75-80 sqft was allocated per person. This increased to 95-110 sqft per person in 2004. The space includes employee amenities and facilities such as a cafeteria, gymnasium, nursing and training rooms.

ITeS companies have been consuming the bulk of office space in recent years. Landlords and private investors are changing building specifications and transaction terms to include larger and more efficient floor plates and improve service standards. The upcoming IT parks built by government agencies also conform to this trend. Take the case of the Rajarhat project in West Bengal that will have retail stores and entertainment facilities and a 5,00,000 sqft open-air landscaped podium, ATMs, gyms and even a multiplex. Touted to be the largest IT park in Kolkata, Rajarhat spans an area of 1.3 million sqft and can accommodate 20,000 executives. It will have a modern fire detection system, 24-hour monitoring via CCTV, 100 percent power backup, professional property maintenance and parking space for about 2,000 cars. The first phase of the IT park will be ready in April 2005 and the project will be completed by mid-2006.

The need for plug-and-play facilities for administrative purposes near government offices and airports drive the demand for built-up spaces. Multinationals may have long-term plans but they generally prefer to occupy IT parks on a leased basis. This is the reason why more than 80 percent of the occupants in Indias IT parks happen to be MNCs.

Source:expresscomputeronline

Standalone Hotels - The Joys Of Going Solo

Ever since liberalisation India has found itself more and more integrated into the global market. The Indian hospitality industry has been no exception to this new age economics and the country has seen an enormous number of global hospitality brands making its presence felt. Especially over the recent past, with occupancy and ARRs zooming, these properties are doing business as never before. But there is another segment of Indian hospitality, which, without the expertise and international expertise that these brands provide, are carving a niche in the market. Standalone hotels today are thriving as much as any chain. This segment has learnt to record the pulse of the market and mould its strategies as per the market demand in a world where only brands and labels sell. While not enjoying the benefits of a wide support system, they are comfortable with their personally cultivated repeat and local customers. But in a liberalised marketplace, these standalones are increasingly coming in for competition from the chains.

Says Dhananjaya Singh, general manager, the Bristol, Gurgaon, a standalone property, Bristol till the recent past was amongst the very few five-star hotels in Gurgaon and therefore enjoyed a good chunk of the market share. Now, with a few branded hotels having commenced operations and still many more in the pipeline, the going will get tough. But we plan to counter this onslaught with a consistent focus on guest delivery and satisfaction underlined with competitive pricing.

Pros And Cons

A standalone property has a considerable number of advantages. For starters, it has the benefit of flexibility wherein decision making can be immediate in a changing scenario. Also, in single units overheads are relatively low. According to Navneet Nagpal, resident manager, The Grand, New Delhi, You are free to promote the product and are not restricted by the international brand that tends to typecast the hotel. A standalone also has immense agility and very quick turnaround both in terms of strategy and practices, because of centralised decision-making. It can take major decisions alone, without the go-ahead or approval of anybody else. Therefore, it can take a stand on the kind of rate it wants to offer guests, unlike chain hotels which have long procedures of getting approvals.

The standalone property also saves on the royalty fee. Besides, there is direct involvement and decision-making in the daily operation and thereby less expenses involved. Freedom in experimenting with the operating procedures by altering according to the demanding market situation is another major advantage.

On the other hand, the disadvantages include lack of group support in human resources and cross selling, not being part of a wider network which can make selling much more gettable and at better rates, enhancing gradations both in terms of product and technical know-how and brain- drain.

Global Gurgaon

The new takes over the old way of life in what was once a sleepy little town in the Bajra belt, writes Nirupama Dutt, as she travels from the national highway to the memory bylanes

An old joke of Gurgaon says that tents all set up and mats spread on the ground lured a Jat to a congregation. Like the others, he took off his shoes and went in. Bored with the mystical musings, he soon came out and found his shoes gone. Nodding his head knowingly, he said, I know it all, this was no mela but a pilan to rob me of my shoes.

Seeing their sleepy old Gurgaon town, the original inhabitants of the place seems to be nodding like the Jat in the joke and saying that this big-bang development in their home town is part of the pilan (thats how plan is pronounced in the Mewati dialect) to rob them of their identity.

Hip, hot and happening. That is the profile of Gurgaon today. Skyscrapers and new age shopping malls make up the skyline of the city. After a hard days work, young executives go dancing and drinking all night at the discotheques. It is the outsourcing destination of the country. Name the group and it is here — from GE to Convergys, from Vertex to American Express. Other multinationals like Coke, Pepsi, Nestle, Hitachi and Gillette too are here in full force. Thousands of professionals have bought homes in the new colonies with fancy names like Beverly Hills, Malibu Towne, Laburnum, Mayfield Gardens, Rose Wood, Princeton and even Nirvana.

If a place has got a complete makeover in a very short time, it is here. In fact, the old is no longer in a position to fight the new, which has taken over as the finest address south of Delhi. Ask Ankur Sultania, a young executive in the American Express, what it is to live here and he says, Gurgaon is the place to be in. So much is happening here. Last night my wife and I danced at the Odyssey till three in the morning and then we drove straight down to my parents home to fetch our son to celebrate his first birthday in our South City flat. In contrast, a Gurgaon-born and bred businessman dealing in export of garments says, Development cannot be stopped but with this one-point development pattern followed in our country, the original inhabitants of Gurgaon are feeling that they have lost their identity completely.

source: tribuneindia.com

Building on a dream

When Kushal Pal Singh came on board his father-in-law’s real estate company in the early 1970s, it was on a downward slope.

From being Delhi’s leading property developer — in the post-Partition real estate boom, Delhi Land and Finance (DLF) had developed areas such as Greater Kailash, Hauz Khas and South Extension — the company had hit a brick wall: under the Delhi Development Act, 1957, land development became the prerogative of the Delhi Development Authority.

Restricted to projects that had been approved earlier or were already underway, DLF was sliding.

Then came Gurgaon. Almost single-handedly, Singh converted a sleepy, rural settlement of Ahirs and Jats into DLF City, which is probably Asia’s largest private township — and, in the process, built DLF into the country’s leading real estate firm.

At last count, the group had developed 20 million sq ft of residential space, 3 million sq ft commercial space and 1 million sq ft retail space in the Harayana district; it’s working on a million sq ft of workspace each in Chandigarh and Kolkata; is considering extending to Mumbai, Hyderabad, Pune and Bangalore; and has been declared a Superbrand.

At present, company sources value the DLF Group’s assets at between Rs 15,000 and Rs 20,000 crore — and Singh, who is also group chairman, owns 98 per cent of all this.

“I couldn’t do it again,” says the 73-year-old Singh. “Back then I was hungry for work and had a debacle behind me to egg me on.” The “debacle” was automotive battery manufacturing company Willard India; after it failed, Singh joined DLF’s real estate business. The rest, as they say, is history.

Source: business-standard.com/

Moving to the next level

The report also has a word of caution for a recent trend in mall development in India, citing the case of Gurgaon, where “clustering” of a large number of mall development is happening in a relatively small geographical area.

Terming it as a “disturbing trend,” the report says that over 20 new malls are due to become operational by 2007 which will seriously squeeze the limited catchment population making the viability of these malls questionable.

The report also suggests that to overcome the constraints of scarce availability of land conducive for development of retailing infrastructure, developers may partner with government authorities for creating quality retail space. The Kolkata-based Bengal Ambuja Housing Development Ltd has set a benchmark in this regard with its City Centre project in Salt Lake.

Smaller cities also hold a lot of promise for speciality malls as they are likely to emerge as one-stop destinations in their chosen product categories. Recently, cigarettes-to-hotels major ITC created a stir in the market when it launched its first large format shopping mall called ‘Choupal Sagar’ at Sehore in Madhya Pradesh. Located in a soya cultivation belt, the mall hawks everything from soaps and shampoos to readymade apparel, consumer durables, two-wheelers and even tractors. Vikram Shriram-controlled DSCL has 10 such stores concentrated mostly in north India.

Says Aeren’s Gold Souk vice-chairman Amit Gupta, “There is little doubt that the future lies with speciality malls. The market is gradually shifting from general to specific. Gold jewellery is so much an im-pulse buy these days. It is not that people visit the jewellers only when there is a marriage at home.”

Source:financialexpress

The next time you linger in a no-parking zone in Gurgaon, your car is likely to be towed away with driver, you are likely to be challaned for no less than Rs 400 and the traffic authority doing the honours — District Red Cross Society, Gurgaon.

The Gurgaon traffic police do not have provision for spot fining of vehicles so the DRCS has been given charge. Gurgaon traffic police can only issue a court challan for an offence but the Deputy Commissioner has made some arrangement with DRCS to collect fines for wrong parking in the city, said senior SP Alok Kumar Roy.

Source: Indian Express

Sometimes, seemingly simple events leave a deep impression on ones mind. One Wednesday, three weeks ago, a set of such events unfolded. The incidents did not reveal to me, anything that I had not known; but evidence of what Id intellectually only scanned, hit me right between the eyes that Wednesday.

So let me tell you about these events that have been the subject of such intense cogitation on my part.

Three weeks ago, inappropriately early on a Wednesday morning, my sister called me. She lives in Gurgaon. She filled up most of the 45 minute call, with rants and complaints about the sad state of life in Gurgaon. Rampant construction of office buildings, traffic gone amuck and endless commutes were on her mind. Office space was at a premium and land was four times as expensive (some exaggeration, here) as a few years ago and worst of all, the new hires these days were making outrageous demands. Too many jobs and not enough qualified people and every day a new company, seemed to sprout up to hire away office workers.

Worst of all, it seems the US returned guppies — Gurgaon-yuppies, for those not in the know, were kicking the cost of living and prices through the veritable roof. So, these were the problems in Gurgaon, a little village outside Delhi, till recently. All in ones stride till you consider what happened, later that afternoon.

At about 1:30 pm that same day, I was supposed to pick up an old friend of mine for a quick lunch catch-up session. So, I drove up to his office in North First Street, San Jose. North First Street in San Jose is one of those mini-hubs of technology nirvana in Silicon Valley, much like Page Mill Road, in Palo Alto. The street and its immediate environs house the Whos Who of global technology companies. So, it struck me as odd, that when I walked into this office-space complex of about 14 large office buildings — everything was eerily quiet. Countable few cars in the parking lot, no crowds of people milling between the offices, large signs of rent/lease lying around somewhat disinterestedly and that silence, again.

Source:

IN a bid to target the young and upwardly mobile flocking to Gurgaon, Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA) is coming up with a dedicated go-karting track in the heart of the city.

This will be Gurgaons second go-karting track, the first is located at 32nd Milestones Resort on NH 8. Our track is located in Sector 29, next to HUDAs Gymkhana Club. Following a bidding procedure, the 2.3 acre site will be leased out for two years, said HUDAs Administrator Prem Verma.

The project, officials say, is HUDAs way of testing new waters. HUDA is learnt to be actively considering a proposal for a Formula 1 racing track in a 10 acre area. Well first see the response that this go-karting track generates. A Formula 1 track may well be a reality if response is good, said Verma.

Source: Indian Express