Tag Archives: Chennai

Demand Slow Down Strikes Office Space Market

With companies, particularly in the IT and BPO industry, holding back their expansion plans due to slowdown fears, the commercial real estate market posted a lackluster show in the 2nd quarter of 2008.
The June quarter saw office space demand lagging far behind the supply levels of 18.07 million sq. ft. across major cities, as companies turned cautious.
According to Cushman & Wakefield, the demand in the quarter was at 9.74 million sq ft, dominated by absorption (where companies move-in or begin fit-outs) of 6.36 million sq ft, and only 3.38 million sq ft in fresh pre-commitments. “There are certain micro-markets like Noida (NCR), and Rajiv Gandhi Salai (Chennai), which recorded excess supply for this quarter thus increasing the overall vacancy rates,” it said.

The 2nd quarter witnessed stable rental values across micro-markets in the major cities with some central business district (CBD) and off-CBD locations witnessing rental hikes of 3-5 % over the previous quarter. Some peripheral locations in NCR (National Capital Region) and Chennai, however, saw a correction in rentals largely because of excessive supply as well as deferred development plans of various proposed projects.

Indo-Rama Plans To Set Up 200 Retail Stores

Indo Rama Retail Holdings Pvt. Ltd, the retail venture of the promoters of Indo Rama Synthetics (India) Ltd will be setting up 200 stores across the country over the next three years.
Announcing the launch of the company’s store in Chennai, Mr Ashok Srivastava, chief operating officer, Indo-Rama Retail Holdings said, “Any company spends close to Rs 400 per employee on stationery and other office materials. With IT, education, financial, media sectors booming we are confident there will be a huge demand for our products.”
The company will be setting up close to 50 stores in tier-2 and tier-3 cities by the end of 2008. He pointed out, “Our investments per store would vary depending on the real estate value. We will be investing around Rs 15 lakh to Rs 40 lakh per store”. We are targeting cities such as Madurai, Coimbatore, Trichy and Salem in Tamilnadu. Further he said that the company is also eyeing entering SEZ’s in these cities. To a query on funding, he said that the funding would be through internal accruals.
The market for office products in India is estimated to be around $10 billion growing at 15% year on year. Office1 Superstore is targeting to capture 5% of market share in the organized sector.
The company clocked revenues worth Rs 5 crore last year and is confident of achieving Rs 1 crore business from each store that they set up.

JNB Will Open 50 Hotels Across The Country By 2015

US-based real estate management, investment and development consortium, JNB Investments LLC, has forayed into the Indian hospitality market, with plans to set up 50 hotels in the country by 2015. The company will invest about Rs 2000 Crore in the development, which will be collected through internal accruals and other sources of funding.

JNB will develop properties in the five, four and three star segments. The first few properties will come up in Kochi, Bengaluru and New Delhi. The venture capitalist company is a strategic partner in the joint venture between Interstate Hotels & Resorts and JHM Hotels, for development in the Indian market. The joint venture called JHM Interstate Hotels India, will manage the group’s Indian development initiatives.

Talkint exclusively to Hospitality Biz, T J Barring, President, JNB Investment Company states, “We are aggressively considering hotel development in the tier two cities of India”. JNB is also considering expansion of its hospitality business at potential locations in Mumbai, Goa, Chennai, Amritsar, Calicut, Visakhapatnam and Jalandhar.

HC Order To DLF

After staying the construction of a shopping mall by the DLF in Chennai, the Madras High Court has ordered the real estate foremost to take away all temporary structures from the site. The First Bench, comprising Chief Justice A K Ganguly and Justice F M Ibrahim Kallifulah, gave the order on 11th July on a petition filed by an industrialist Rajiv Ray, seeking to restrain the DLF from constructing the mall at Ethiraj Salai in the city. The petitioner had submitted before the court that if the DLF was permitted to proceed with the mall’s construction, it would cause great adversity to the residents, who had been already facing lot of problems because of obstruction in the area.

Real Estate Moves Towards Green Building Concept

As new government policies drive progress towards addressing climate change and other key environmental issues, the real estate markets around Asia and the world will change its look quickly and adopt green building concept, both in developing new buildings and improving existing ones, .

This transformation will be driven by various combinations of regulation, government incentives and changing market dynamics. Read More »

DLF Plans Multiplexes In Different Part Of Country

PropertyWala.com

Chandigarh: DLF, a leading real estate player in the country, plans to invest Rs 1,250 crore for the development of its multiplex business. The company has planned to add minimum 500 screens in the next four to five years across the country.
DLF’s entertainment arm DT Cinemas will set up a megaplex, which will have 12 screens with a total capacity of 2,500, as part of their upcoming project, Mall of India, at Gurgaon.
Expected to be one of the country’s biggest malls, it will cover an area of 40 lakh sq ft.
DT Cinemas announced the opening of their multiplex at DLF Infocity, IT Park, Chandigarh. Infocity covers an area of 1,90,000 sq ft and most of the space has been leased out. The mall will start operating within the next 10-12 days.
Kajal Aijaz, CEO, DT Cinemas, said that with the multiplex offering state-of-the-art facilities like Christie cinema projection system, excellent acoustics, wall-to-wall carpeting, extra legroom with comfortable slideback seating and push back armrests for the audience, they were eyeing about 66 per cent occupancy at the multiplex in the first year.
With DLF planning to set up another 120 malls in different parts of the country, DT Cinemas would be the chief attraction in most of these malls.
Apart from Ludhiana and Jalandhar, where multiplexes would be opened in a couple of years, the company is also opening multiplexes at Savitri-GK2, Shalimar Bagh, Vasant Kunj and Saket in Delhi and Star Mall, Gurgaon, this year, Aijaz said.
DT Cinemas will also set up multiplexes in Hyderabad, Chennai, Kochi, Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad, Goa and Kolkata.

Audi plans to sell 1,200 units India in 2008

Considering the boom in the luxury car segment in the country, German car maker Audi said on Friday it expects to sell 1,200 units in India by the year.

The company is also ready to start assembling its, yet to be launched, A4 variant in the country with an investment of 10 million euros. Read More »

Commercial Development of Vacant Railway Land

The Ministry of Railways have set up Rail Land Development Authority (RLDA) by an amendment to Railways Act, 1989 (Amendment No. 47 of 2005) for commercial development of vacant railway land for generating revenue. So far 115 sites, covering a total area of 1139 hectares (approx) have been entrusted to the Authority for commercial development at different places. In addition, 26 stations located in metropolitan cities and important centers have been identified for redevelopment as world class stations through Public Private Participation (PPP) by leveraging the real-estate potential of the land around and the air space above the stations.

As per current thinking Railway land is to be given to developers for commercial development through transparent bidding process on long term lease basis for development work without any budgetary resources. The work of redevelopment of identified 26 stations into World Class Stations are planned to be undertaken through PPP basis.

No funds from Railway Budget are envisaged to be invested except to the extent of meeting requirement of viability gap funding in exceptional cases of development of stations as World Class Stations.

The 26 stations identified for redevelopment as World Class Stations through PPP are : Nagpur, Pune, Carnac Bunder (Mumbai), Howrah, Lucknow, Anand Vihar (Delhi), Bijwasan (Delhi), Amritsar, Chandigarh, New Delhi, Varanasi, Chennai, Thiruvananthapuram, Secunderabad, Tirupati, Ahmedabad, Patna, Bhubaneshwar, Mathura, Bangalore, Gaya, Jaipur, Agra, Bhopal (Habibganj), Kanpur and Guwahati.

Realty Bites Tech Hubs in Bangalore, Chennai

The stock of unoccupied properties with real estate developers in the main technology hubs of Bangalore and Chennai is mounting and indications are that their problems will only get worse as software companies head towards greener pastures.

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Rakindo Enters Coimbatore Realty

Rakindo Developers Pvt Ltd setting up an integrated township project at Coimbatore with an estimated investment of six thousand crore rupees. Rakindo Developers is a joint venture company formed by RAKEEN and Trimex group. RAKEEN is a global business company where as Trimex group is chennai based mineral conglomerate. Read More »