NAFIS, Shabbir Husain

Source Business Standard: 

• Indian real estate market is expected grow from the current level of $14 billion to $102 billion in the next 10 years, according to Shyam Prasad Reddy, managing director and chief executive officer of Indu Projects Limited.

• Reddy said that reforms initiated by the government, favourable demographics, increasing purchasing power, emergence of customer friendly banks and housing finance companies would fuel the growth rate of the real estate sector in the country.

• Reddy said that the shortage of 19.4 million housing units, including 6.7 million units in urban India, and mushrooming of retail projects would provide a huge opportunity for domestic as well as global infrastructure players in the country.

• He, however, pointed out that Indian real estate industry was ailed by lack of transparency and credibility, an acute shortage of data and academic research and a lack of uniform laws and regulatory systems.

• Emphasised the need for more clarity and professionalism, particularly in the light of foreign funds and investors eyeing the Indian real estate market.

http://www.gotapi.com/ a very good web app for a one-stop reference to loads of APIs.

Are 1 billion USD investments in Indian real estate on it’s way? Seems so, based on the news by Economic Times.

I reckon real estate investments in India is outgrowing the investment happening in the IT sector.

Boom period for builders, investors and real estate agents.

So if you have a more than 3 million INR to invest in real-estate, you fill find yourself with a host of options to choose from. Something similar to what the automobile sector is these days, if you have a million bucks (INR) to spend on a car, you will have loads of options very unlike what it is used to be 10-15+ years ago.

And for those who don’t have that kind of a money to invest in a property, things aren’t going to get any cheaper in the near future either. So better grab one today, or settle for something more expensive, small or remote tomorrow.

Source here:

One of Australia’s biggest banks, the Commonwealth Bank, has used the latest version of Apple’s music player—the slimline Nano—to compare global currencies and purchasing power in 26 countries.

Along the lines of the Big Mac index launched 20 years ago by The Economist magazine, the survey prices the 2GB Nano in U.S. dollars and found Brazilians pay the most for an iPod, shelling out $327.71, well above second-placed India at $222.27.

Canada was the cheapest place to buy a Nano at $144.20, while Australia ranked 19th at $172.36, cheaper than Germany ($192.46), France ($205.80), South Korea ($176.17) and China where the machine is manufactured. The U.S. was fourth cheapest at $149.

Prices of iPod globally (sorted in descending order of price):

1. Brazil $327.71
2. India $222.27
3. Sweden $213.03
4. Denmark $208.25
5. Belgium $205.81
6. France $205.80
7. Finland $205.80
8. Ireland $205.79
9. UK $195.04
10. Austria $192.86
11. Netherlands $192.86
12. Spain $192.86
13. Italy $192.86
14. Germany $192.46
15. China $179.84
16. South Korea $176.17
17. Switzerland $175.59
18. New Zealand $172.53
19. Australia $172.36
20. Taiwan $164.88
21. Singapore $161.25
22. Mexico $154.46
23. U.S. $149.00
24. Japan $147.63
25. Hong Kong $147.35
26. Canada $144.20

Why is China ranked 15th? If iPods are made out China, shouldn’t they be priced lowest in China. If this is an Apple pricing policy, then I reckon it would really pay off being an iPod dealer or retailer in China. Don’t you think so! One would assume that things in Hong Kong will be very reasonably priced due to its proximity with China, but that is not true either for quite a few items. In fact same is the case in Japan for global electronic models. To many it is a shock to find out electronics (other than Cameras I believe) is expensive in Japan.

I believe digital cameras too are comparatively more expensive in India. Nice to know Hong Kong is the second best place to buy an iPod from . So plan your trip accordingly guys, visit Hong Kong (unless Canada is closer ) and take a trip to the Peak.

Wonder what the price of an iPod would be in places like the Gulf. Dubai and Kuwait have always been famous for reasonably priced electronics, in fact many more things in that matter.

Source Times of India:

• In the single largest FDI in the country’s booming real estate sector, Morgan Stanley has invested $152 million (Rs 675 crore) in a city-based firm, Oberoi Construction.
• The world’s largest private equity realty fund, which manages $100 billion (one-seventh of India’s GDP), will in return get a 10% stake in the three-decade-old unlisted company which has a land bank of 15 million sq/ft, most of it in western suburbs of the city. The deal has valued Oberoi at Rs 6,750 crore.
• Anand B Madduri, an ED at Morgan Stanley, said the three drivers that attracted the fund were the property developer’s execution of projects, entrepreneurial vision of promoter and delivering housing and commercial establishments to a community.
• Oberoi said the money can be leveraged to raise around Rs 2,500 crore of debt for speedy execution of projects that will give him a cash flow of $1b in 3-4 years.
• The scramble for buying assets was evident recently when three prominent real estate companies-Hirandani Constructions, Rahejas and Unitech raised close to $2.3 bilion from the London market.
• Last year, US’s Farallon Investments along with LN Mittal had invested close to Rs 1,429 crore in four real estate companies of IndianBulls, a financial services firm which diversified into property development.
• Ten Indian real estate companies have raised money by selling shares to the public, which eagerly lapped up the issues.
• Industry sources say around 150 foreign PE have lined up nearly $10 billion to invest in real estate in the next two years as government relaxes norms to ramp up the country’s inadequate infrastructure. Indian and multinational institutions such as J P Morgan, Falcon, 3i, Blackstone, Carlyle, Kotak Real Estate, IL&FS, ICICI and HDFC are some of them who are waiting to storm the sector.
• ICICI Realty fund is learnt to be raising $1 billion and Kotak Mahindra $500 million.

Seems like more investment is on its way. This will lead to price hikes and beyond reach to even think of buying a house for a normal person. Are these price hikes justified? Is this organic growth or hyped? Is it in any way benefiting the common man of India?

Great website – http://web.archive.org/collections/web.html
 

Type in any domain names and see what it looked like years ago. This is how Google looked.

Linux Kernel in a Nutshell is available for free download here.

Source FinanceAsia:

1. DSP Merrill Lynch poaches Nipun Sahni from GE Commercial Finance, to spearhead real estate principal investments for the firm in India.
2. Sahni’s will be responsible for the firm’s real estate principal investments in the country, based in Mumbai.
3. Hemendra Kothari, chairman, DSP Merrill Lynch, says, “We look forward to capitalising on the many opportunities within the rapidly emerging real estate sector in the country.”
4. India’s real estate market has attracted interest from a host of global players including Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and others.
5. With the Indian economy forecast to grow at 9% this year, real estate in the country is still considered undervalued.

Lots of constructions and development on its way from a reat estate perspective. Prices are only going to move up.

The speed with which IT systems can evolve and adapt, with the ever changing requirements (both from business and IT) and scenarios is increasingly becoming a key competitive differentiator for small to big firms alike. The “Time-To-Market’ factor is critical in building and sustaining a competitive edge over your rivals and in winning the faith and good will of your customers. Building configurable systems help address this issue.

Qualities of a good configuration system:

• Configure as much as possible:
  Making the system configurable saves a lot of developer and testing effort. A code change could introduce a bug, but the chances of the same are much less if the change is a configuration change. It should have the ability to configure the high level details and also give the flexibility of overriding the high level configuration at the lower levels or minute level of the application or infrastructure. 

• Scalable:
  The configuration system should be highly scalable. The stand alone application configuration systems should eventually evolve and grow into becoming a full fledge enterprise level configuration system or platform. This can help deploy and configure systems at an enterprise level in the least possible time and effort.

• Standard:
  The conventions used should be standardized for the ease of understanding and communication.

• Centralized v/s Distributed:
  Parameters which are very application specific and ones which do not depend on other application or services should be (localized) within applications. However, parameters which are shared across various systems should be maintained at a central location. A single change in the central location will configure all dependent systems at the same time. Do not localize shared parameters; it is most likely to become a bottle neck if a change is needed in them.

• Should take effect at run time:
  This is more to do with the application capabilities than the configuration system. On a change in any one of the configurable variables, the application should be able to pick that change without having to stop and re-start the process. This will ensure that the change can be deployed at run time without service interruptions.

• Local File v/s Database v/s Hybrid:
  A right choice has to be made in terms of where to source the configurations from. Should the variables be stored / read from a database or a configuration file? Points one needs to consider are: configuration of the application remotely, startup time of the application, database availability, and time required to make the changes.

• Secure:
  Sensitive information like database passwords etcetera must be stored in a secured fashion. One that is not accessible and readable by all.

• Easy to understand:
  It should be easy to understand and learn for people to work on it.

In a nutshell: One may not have a full fledge application or enterprise level configuration system in place from day one. But aiming for one and building the same will definitely have long term benefits. In a distributed systems environment as more and more applications communicate with one another, more shared services are used the need for integrating these seamlessly is critical. And from a stand along application perspective too a good configurable app is the way to go.

Source MIT SMR:

A company can innovate along any of 12 different dimensions with respect to its 

1. offerings, 
2. platform, 
3. solutions, 
4. customers, 
5. customer experience, 
6. value capture, 
7. processes, 
8. organization, 
9. supply chain, 
10. presence, 
11. networking, and 
12. brand.

Abrstract of the MIT SMR article is here.

Source The Hindu:

• The real estate boom of 2006 is set to gain further momentum in 2007 to get India foreign capital of over Rs. 8,000 crore with leading international investors establishing their presence, providing employment opportunities for over two lakh skilled and unskilled people.
• According to Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham), overseas real estate giants such as Royal Indian Raj International, Blackstone Group, Goldman Sachs, Emmar Properties, Pegasus Realty, Citigroup Property Investors, Lee Kim Tah Holdings, Salim group, Morgan Stanley and GE Commercial Finance are likely to bring in all capital of $8 billion with the opening up of India’s real estate sector to 100 per cent foreign direct investment (FDI).
• Morgan Stanley has already forayed into India’s booming real estate sector in March 2006 through its real estate investment arm, Morgan Stanley Real Estate, investing Rs. 300 crore (around $68 million) in Mantri Developers Pvt Ltd. of Bangalore.
• Morgan Stanley plans to invest more than $1 billion over the next four-five years in the Indian real estate sector.
• Tishman Speyer of the U.S. tied up with ICICI Bank to invest $1 billion
• Efficient regulatory framework and simpler tax regime for the sector are imperative to boost public-private participation and bring in managerial and technical expertise.
• The biggest U.S. pension fund, CalPERS, hedge fund Farallon Capital Management, US-based developer Tishman Speyer and NRI fund Trikona Capital too have drawn up plans to invest in the booming market.
• Domestic funds including Kotak Realty Fund, HDFC India Real Estate Fund, Pantaloon Retail’s Kshitij Real Estate Fund and UTI Venture Fund are also active.
• With the rules relating to investment and repatriation relaxed to a large extent, an estimated 25 million non-resident Indians (NRIs) living in 125 countries, are investing in immovable property in India.
• Strong economic growth, rising income levels, growing middle class, increasing urbanisation and improving transparency brought resurgence for the Indian real estate sector in 2006 which will continue to grow further in 2007 with easy availability of financing facilities.
• The chamber forecasts that investment in real estate will go up from $12 billion in 2005 to $90 billion by 2015.
• Greater integration with the global economy and the increase in domestic as well as foreign investments are encouraging demand for real estate. Despite ill-founded doubts of a bubble, foreign investors are lining up, it observed.

With ever increasing prices of Indian real estate, no better day than today to get hold of a property. The era is very similar to that of mid-90s. It is a builders market again. So if one is looking for a reasonably priced property, chances are it will get even more expensive tomorrow.

A very good presentation on the E-bay IT architecture. Enterprises are often confronted with these challenges as the business requirments continue to get complex and as the volume or business that the IT systems need to support grows significantly.