First leg of KMP expressway opens after 7-year delay
After a delay of nearly seven years, the first leg of Kundli-Manesar-Palwal (KMP) expressway – Palwal (NH-2) to Manesar (NH-8) – was opened to traffic on Tuesday. This will work as a bypass for vehicles coming from Jaipur side towards Faridabad or Agra and similarly for those heading towards Jaipur and Mumbai from Agra or Kolkata. This is likely to reduce traffic on Delhi roads since at present the vehicles coming from all NHs use the national capital as transit. For the first two months, users don’t need to pay for using this 52 km access-control expressway stretch. However, later cars will need to pay Rs 1.3 per km while heavy vehicles have to pay Rs 4.5 per km as toll charge. Four toll plazas have been built to ensure that commuters pay for the stretch they travel rather than paying for the entire corridor. “Once we complete the WPE and the Eastern Peripheral Expressway (EPE), traffic on Delhi roads will reduce by half and there will be less air pollution,” highway minister Nitin Gadkari said after inaugurating the project. Later in the day, addressing industry leaders at a CII summit, he said there is a proposal to develop logistic hubs along the two expressways so that big godowns can shift out of Delhi. Haryana government officials said though the remaining Palwal and Manesar stretch would be completed in the next one year, the already completed stretch can work as a bypass for Delhi. “We have very good highway network – a mix of NH and state highways – that commuters can use to travel between NH-2 ( Delhi-Agra) and NH-1 (Delhi-Panipat). They will end up travelling only 10 km extra, but can avoid Delhi’s traffic congestion,” said an official. He added they will publicise this alternate route for commuters to save their time and also for benefit of Delhi, which has become one of the most polluted cities across the globe. The Haryana government has already earmarked 1 km on both sides of KMP as controlled area for future development and a series of “theme cities” have been planned. Now these projects will revive and help push economic activities, sources said. On Tuesday, Gadkari also promised major relief to lakhs of residents of Palwal by announcing to build an elevated corridor on NH-2 covering all the four intersections within the city. Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal made this demand. The minister also promised to undertake construction of a bridge across the Yamuna on Hasanpur road connecting Greater Noida.
NHAI starts work on first phase of pod transport
Personal Rapid Transit (PRT), the proposed pod taxi service between Sirhaul and Rajiv Chowk in Gurgaon, could soon become a reality, after NHAI presented a feasibility report of the project and invited expressions of interest (EOI) from international agencies, including the favourite Metrino of Poland, to start work on it. Highway administrator A K Sharma said the agency to carry out the 25-year build-operate-transfer (BOT) project, will be selected by May 2. According to the plan, the first phase will be 24 km long and will cost Rs 882 crore. The project envisages small, fully automatic, driverless pods moving on a suspended network 5-10m above ground. There will be 14 stations on the Sirhaul-Rajesh Pilot Chowk route along NH-8, the first phase.They include Udyog Vihar, Cyber City, Atlas Chowk, Jharsa, Signature Towers, Iffco Chowk, Rajiv Chowk and Subhash Chowk. The report proposed three routes – Dhaula Kuan-Manesar, via Cyber City, Mahipalpur, Rajiv Chowk and IMT Chowk (37 km); Udyog Vihar-Sheetla Mata Road, via Palam Vihar (22 km); and Udyog Vihar-Rajesh Pilot Chowk via Cyber City, Atlas Chowk, Rajiv Chowk and Tau Devi Lal stadium (24 km). Sharma said the PRT will pass through several areas of the old city and not just the Dhaula Kuan-Manesar stretch.
Oil PSUs get a free hand, can choose companies for crude buy
n a bid to improve operational efficiency, the government today gave freedom to public sector oil firms to have their own independent crude import policy based on their commercial requirements. State-owned firms like Indian Oil Corporation( IOC) have traditionally been allowed to source crude only from national companies of oil-producing nations. On May 21, 2001, the government permitted state refiners to buy oil from top 10 foreign firms. It was long felt that the list of companies from whom the PSUs can buy crude on term contracts needs to be expanded to include global giants like Italy’s Eni and Russian companies. The Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at his meeting today gave its approval to replace the existing policy by vesting the oil PSUs with the power to evolve their own policies, Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said at a news briefing. “This will provide a more efficient, flexible and dynamic policy for crude procurement, eventually benefiting consumers,” he added, but did not elaborate. Oil PSUs “shall be empowered to evolve their own policies for import of crude oil, consistent with CVC guidelines and get them approved by the respective boards,” an official statement issued after the Cabinet meeting said. This will increase operational and commercial flexibility of oil companies and enable them to adopt the most effective procurement practices for import of crude oil, it explained. The existing policy for import of crude oil was approved by the Cabinet in 1979. In 2001, the Cabinet cleared amendments to permit state refiners to buy crude oil from top 10 foreign firms. “While the current policy has ensured that collective energy needs of oil PSUs are consistently met over the years, the policy needs to evolve with the changing times,” the statement said. “With the changing geo-political environment, the crude oil import policy needs to be modified to bring it in tune with current needs.” The current policy for purchase of crude oil from the spot or current market has “certain limitations and restrictions” that limit the potential sources and methods of procurement, it said without elaborating. Till now, refiners were allowed to buy crude oil from 10 MNCs — Exxon (which has merged with Mobil), Shell, BP, Elf (merged with Total Fina), texaco (merged with Chevron), South Korea’s SK, Chevron, USX of USA, Spain’s Repsol and Nippon Mitsubishi of Japan. In 2014, it was proposed to include suppliers from South Korea, Spain and Japan as well as Eni, Valero Energy, Russia’s Lukoil, Conoco Phillips, Occidental and Marathon on the list. But now, they can buy as per their own plan without any restrictions.
Mango lager? India’s thirst for craft beer grows
India’s version of craft brewing is seeing scores of thirsty tipplers sample everything from coconut stout to mango lager, as tastes mature in a country that has traditionally only downed strong liquor “to get a kick”. Bangalore has more than 25 thriving brewpubs — a pub with a small brewery on the premises — while India’s other cosmopolitan cities boasting vast young populations and expanding middle classes are also catching on. “They are becoming more sophisticated in their tastes. We have young customers, middle-aged and some in their 80s with their walking sticks,” said Meenakshi Raju, co-owner of the Biere Club. Raju and her brother decided to open a brewpub years ago after travelling in Europe and the United States where successful microbreweries “were mushrooming all over the place”. But it took another five years of working with India’s notoriously multi-layered bureaucracy before laws were drafted and passed in Karnataka state, of which international IT hub Bangalore is the capital, and its first brewpub opened in 2011. “It was difficult mainly because it was a brand new concept that nobody knew about or understood,” Raju said. Enjoying a lager with friends before watching a recent World Twenty20 cricket match, local engineering student Abhay Sarnaik said the craft beer was a welcome change. “We are bored of drinking bottled beer. There’s nothing wrong with Kingfisher but you can’t drink it all the time,” the 21-year-old said of the longtime local favourite, which has more than 50 percent of the country’s $3 billion annual beer market. Indians down 425 million cases of beer alone annually and have traditionally opted for strong beer, which normally has an alcohol content of more than eight percent. It is also the world’s biggest whiskey drinking nation. “We are a big alcohol drinking country, but it’s never been about having a refreshing beverage with friends or over a meal, it’s always been about getting a high,” market expert Ankur Bisen said. “We drank strong beer to get a kick.” But as income levels rise in India, along with overseas travel, drinkers are becoming more discerning, said Bisen, senior vice-president of retail and consumer products at consultancy Technopak in New Delhi. Bisen said although craft beer sales were miniscule nationally, they were growing in major cities including financial capital Mumbai, and Gurgaon, a satellite city outside Delhi that is home to numerous global companies, as well as craftbrew capital Bangalore. But the hurdles facing microbrewers wanting to expand are enormous in a country whose 29 states slap a mind-boggling array of regulations and taxes on booze and its trade. “It’s like having 29 different countries within India,” Bisen said of trying to do business nationally. “It’s also like a golden egg for some governments,” he said of revenues from tariffs on alcohol, which include the national government’s whopping 150 percent on imported spirits. Other states in deeply religious India take a wildly different view. Prohibition has existed in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home of Gujarat for decades, while impoverished Bihar is rolling it out from this month. Southern Kerala, which draws tourists to its tea plantations, backwaters and sweeping coastlines, has banned alcohol sales in most hotels in a bid to combat a damaging local drinking problem. Mainly the poor get around such bans by brewing their own dirt-cheap and sometimes poisonous moonshine, which kills hundreds each year. In Bangalore, Gaurav Sikka, managing director of Arbor Brewing Company, said challenges to doing business include navigating complicated customs and other regulatory clearances for the imported hops and malt. Sikka set up his pub in 2012 in partnership with a brewer of the same name in the US city of Michigan where he used to study and work. “It’s about creating a community of people who know their brewer personally, and come together at the pub to relax and appreciate their beer.” As crowds gathered midweek at Arbor to eat dinner and sample its eight beers, which include a Belgian-style tripel, Sikka said he was mulling expansion, with the IT hub of Hyderabad reportedly also planning to allow microbrewers. “I think we are only just testing the market, the industry is still in its infancy,” he told AFP. “Every Kingfisher drinker is not a craft beer drinker, but there is a segment that would like to upgrade.” “The potential is absolutely massive.”
With Rs 6,100 crore fund, Sequoia Capital sees 2016 as great year to make new investments in startups
Sequoia Capital India strikes a discordant but optimistic note when it says 2016 will be of a “wonderful vintage” and a great year to make new investments in startups. Armed with its largest India-focussed fund of $920 million (Rs6,100 crore), raised this year, Sequoia is scouting for early- and mid-stage deals, seeking to capture territory vacated by retreating giants such as Tiger Global Management. “We are aggressively looking for opportunities to invest because we feel 2016 will separate the men from the boys,” Mohit Bhatnagar, MD at Sequoia Capital India, told ET. The venture capital firm is an investor in prominent Indian startups such as data analytics firm Mu Sigma, bill payments firm FreeCharge and quick-delivery startup Grofers. Bhatnagar declined to comment on the new fund, which two sources confirmed that it raised $920 million. Sequoia’s return to aggressive investing comes at an opportune time when domestic startups are starved for growth capital, which will potentially give the venture capital firm the dominant hand in determining valuations that are likely to be tempered and realistic. Also, with India’s startup ecosystem forced into a slowdown of sorts by wary investors after two years of unfettered growth, emerging companies, both young and mature, are reverting to the fundamentals of running a business, and those that can’t are shutting down, scaling back or being acquired which will give Sequoia a more disciplined crop of firms to pick from. Sequoia’s new fund takes its total assets under management in India to over $3 billion. Other VCs, too, have raised new corpuses since 2015 Nexus Venture Partners has raised a $450-million fund; SAIF Partners, $350 million; and Accel Partners, $305 million but Sequoia’s latest fund dwarfs them all. Along with its Global Growth Fund, Sequoia, an early backer of Google and WhatsApp, will have significant dry powder to continue backing its portfolio companies in a tough market as well as inject growth capital into startups backed by other venture capital firms. Sequoia expects increased investment activity in sectors like enterprise software, software-as-a-service, financial technology, and “traditional sectors” like education. It recently led a $75-million funding in education technology startup Byju’s. “Lots and lots of seed and series-A (fund-raising) activity has happened over the past two years. We are confident that many of these companies, including our portfolio firms, will break out from the clutter, making 2016 a wonderful vintage,” said Bhatnagar, who sits on the boards of restaurant discovery and delivery platform Zomato and news and ebooks application Dailyhunt. Industry experts said Sequoia’s mega fund will put it back at the centre of action for startups seeking to raise growth capital of $10-50 million, a space dominated by hedge funds like Tiger Global, Steadview Capital and Falcon Edge in the past two years. While VC firms like Norwest Venture Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners are also active growth-stage investors, they do not have an India-focussed fund like that of Sequoia Capital. “The gold rush is now over and startups are going back to the usual suspects (for capital) now,” said Abhishek Goyal, cofounder of data analytics company Tracxn. “The likes of Sequoia will become the primary players in the market.” For Sequoia, the slower pace of fund-raising is a blessing, as it will allow the firm enough leeway to conduct detail evaluations before striking a deal. “There was a lot of market noise (in) the past two years and it was tough for investors to spend time with companies given the competitive investment dynamics,” said Bhatnagar. “That will definitely change.”
Future Group completes all-cash buyout of Rocket Internet-backed FabFurnish
Kishore Biyani-led Future Group has completed its buyout of FabFurnish, as it looks to take on the threat posed by Swedish furniture retailing giant IKEA, which is expected to make its entry next year, and in the process, also marking the first exit of Rocket Internet in India. The all-cash transaction will see Future Group bring its entire portfolio of home furnishings and decor business under the FabFurnish brand, making it the largest home furnishings and decor business in the country. Also read: German incubator Rocket Internet likely to sell online furniture retailer FabFurnish to Future Group “Today I operate in only 20 cities (through Home Town). Now I can operate all over India,” Biyani told ET. He, however, declined to disclose the exact amount paid by Future Group to acquire the online furniture retail venture. The move, according to Biyani, will also act as bulwark against IKEA, which is scheduled to open its first store in the country in 2017, and which has identified India as one of the key growth markets globally. “We are creating the largest home furnishings company in the country. Ikea is coming in, and it will take them at least two to three years to become an Rs 1,000 crore company, and we are already there,” he said. According to Biyani, the new combined entity will look at achieving EBITDA of Rs 40 crore-Rs 50 crore in the current fiscal. The retail giant, which currently operates over 40 Home Town stores across the country, will open more during the course of the year. While the entire FabFurnish team has been retained for the time being, Future Group senior executive Mahesh Shah and chief executive of Home Town, the home furnishings business owned by Future Retail, will head the new entity. The FabFurnish team, according to Biyani, will continue to look after the online retail part of the business. The acquisition comes less than two months after ET had reported that the Berlin-based incubator and Future Group, the country’s largest brick-and-mortar retail company, had entered into negotiations, for the latter to acquire FabFurnish, an early player in online furniture retailing segment in India, but which had not been able to withstand competition from rivals, such as Pepperfry and Urban Ladder. Over the past 12 months FabFurnish had seen co-founders Vikram Chopra and Mehul Agrawal stepping down from the day-to-day running of the business, and replaced by senior directors Ashish Garg and Ankita Dabas. The company had also downsized its workforce, vacated warehouses, and shifted to a marketplace model in a bid to cut losses and arrest its shrinking market share to larger and better-funded rivals, Sequoia Capital and Steadview Capital-backed Urban Ladder and Goldman Sachs-funded Pepperfry. The buyout also marks the first exit by Rocket Internet in India, raising questions about the suitability of its business model in India. The internet-focused incubator is also believed to scouting for buyers for its online fashion retail company Jabong. This is also the first acquisition of an online retail venture by Biyani, who has shared a fractious relationship with India’s rising consumer internet companies, which have grown at a rapid pace and continue to command billions in valuations. Separately, a high-profile, exclusive partnership between Amazon and Future Group, once touted as a grand offline and online marriage that would usher in a new era of retailing in India, also hit the rocks after differences cropped up over funding of discounts.
Register with us, food regulator tells e-tailers
Pleas of e-commerce companies that they are mere technology facilitators is not something that government bodies seem willing to buy. Just like state governments that want them to take responsibility for VAT payments, India’s food regulator now wants e-commerce companies to come under its purview. The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), the body that brought Nestle India to its knees on the Maggi issue, has asked all major e-commerce companies, including Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal, to register under the Food Safety and Standards (FSS) Act 2006 if they want to continue their food business operations. This will allow its inspectors to do checks on the safety of the food items that the platform deals with or stores in its warehouses, and take action in the event of complaints. According to documents reviewed by TOI, the regulator has also asked e-commerce firms to clearly display all details related to food items on their portals. This has to include names and addresses of sellers, their license numbers, nutrition and ingredient information, food safety details, and price parameters so that the consumer is fully aware about what he or she is buying. Online food tech startups and grocery delivery players such as Zomato, Swiggy, Foodpanda India, Grofers, Big Basket and Peppertap have also been asked to comply with the FSS Act 2006 and to facilitate businesses of only licensed and registered FBOs (food business operators) under the food regulator. “The online distribution channel has been neglected in regard to food safety. It has been noted that online shops are not necessarily subjected to inspection since sampling and analysis is often complicated as the provisions in FSS Act cannot be completely fulfilled in such business operations,” FSSAI’s note sent to e-commerce companies said. FSSAI held a meeting with senior executives of the online companies in Delhi on March 18 with regard to the new guidelines being planned. Industry body Ficci is now believed to be assisting the online players with their representation to the food regulator. FSSAI plans to divide online companies into two segments where online marketplaces such as Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal are being asked to get licensed under FSSAI, while the second category is being formed to address online food delivery companies which are being advised to facilitate business of FBOs who are FSSAI registered and licensed. FSSAI chairman Ashish Bahuguna told TOI that the aim of the move is to provide uniform safety to consumers on both online and offline channels. “They already fall under the FSS Act 2006, so ideally they should follow the provisions immediately,” he said. Emails, phone calls and text messages to all of the above-mentioned companies by TOI did not elicit any response. “The task will be complex for the sellers on the marketplaces. And to make sure all the sellers are FSSAI registered and licensed is a massive and complex process,” a senior executive at one of these firms said on condition that his name not be disclosed.Over the past few months, online marketplaces have started selling various food categories on their platforms. Amazon started Amazon Now to sell daily use products. Snapdeal and Flipkart sell various packaged food products on their platforms.
Why don’t you apply night flying restrictions at airports: NGT
Why is night curfew not implemented for flights to and from airports across the country, the National Green Tribunal asked today as it directed aviation regulator DGCA to provide data on flights landing at the IGI Airport here at night. Taking the government to task over lack of norms on noise pollution in residential areas near airports across the country, the NGT asked “why should there not be night flying restrictions at airports.” A bench headed by NGT Chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar directed the government to file a short note on the steps taken by it to notify noise-level standards for airport noise zones. It also asked Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) to give a break-up of flights landing in the night between 10:00 PM and 7:00 AM at the IGI airport here. “What steps have you introduced to curb noise pollution in residential areas near airports so that people are not disturbed? Why should there not be night flying restrictions at airports? You give a short note on these aspects”, the bench said. The government told the bench it was adopting various aircraft noise mitigation measures like Continuous Descent Approach and mixed mode approach to bring down noise levels at airports. Continuous Descent Approach or Optimized Profile Descent is a landing method designed to reduce fuel consumption and noise compared to other conventional descents. NGT had earlier expressed displeasure over government’s failure to fix environmental norms on noise pollution and directed Environment Ministry, DGCA and Central Pollution Control Board to convene a meeting and take a clear decision on the issue. The green panel was hearing a bunch of pleas filed by the residents of South Delhi’s Vasant Kunj, Bijwasan and Indian Spinal Injuries Centre (ISIC), a super-speciality hospital located near the Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport. The pleas alleged that the noise created by aircraft at the IGI airport was affecting the health of the residents of nearby areas. The hospital has claimed that the noise created by planes were usually between the range of 75 and 94 decibels, which was “clearly beyond the stipulated standards laid down under the Noise Pollution (Regulation and Control) Rules, 2000”. The Supreme Court had last November referred the matter to NGT, saying the parties would not claim any interim order before the tribunal.
Road building pace at all-time high of 20 km a day: Nitin Gadkari
Road construction in India has accelerated to an all-time high pace of 20 kilometres per day, Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari said on Tuesday. Gadkari said that his ministry will be constructing 25 km of roads per day by the time the Narendra Modiled NDA government completes two years next month. The current pace is a third more than the previous best of 15 km per day achieved in 2012. “We’ll touch our target of 30 kilometres per day in another five-six months,” Gadkari said at industry body CII’s annual session. In the current financial year, the government has a target of constructing 10,000 km of greenfield highways, for which it has made a budgetary allocation of Rs 57,000 crore. Gadkari said that his ministry has proposed the formation of dispute resolution mechanism to the finance ministry for projects that are stuck. “We have requested the finance ministry to form a four-member dispute resolution cell for road projects for early implementation of stuck projects,” he said. About 14 road projects with an investment of over Rs 25,000 crore are stuck due to various reasons including cost escalation. Gadkari said adoption of a projectspecific approach to address the issue of stalled projects has already resolved about 85% of these projects. “The emphasis now has been on awarding the projects under the innovative hybrid annuity and toll-operate-transfer mode so that there are more opportunities for private sector investment,” Gadkari said. The minister said the government has already awarded contracts worth Rs 1.8 lakh crore. “We’ll award road construction projects worth Rs 3 lakh crore by 2017,” he said. He also urged the private sector to develop lighthouses and islands in and around waterways which will spur tourism as well.
Big boost for real estate in Gurgaon as Kundli-Manesar-Palwal Expressway opens up
The opening of Palwal-Manesar stretch of Kundli-Manesar-Palwal Expressway has come as a shot in the arm of developers in the area who are expecting unprecedented gains due to increased connectivity. The 53-km stretch of KMP Expressway was inaugurated on Tuesday by Union transport minister Nitin Gadkari and chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar. “The much awaited inauguration of KMP Expressway will give a fillip to the surface infrastructure landscape in NCR, and in particular benefit the residential real estate micro markets in closer proximity,” said Navin M Raheja, CMD, Raheja Developers Limited. He added that the logistics/warehousing industry and corresponding real estate developments are expected to benefit hugely in the immediate future. “It will ease the traffic in Delhi considerably, provide good connectivity to Gurgaon from other cities of the NCR and above all, the prospects of real estate projects will brighten due to improved accessibility”, said R K Arora, chairman, Supertech Limited. According to a senior HSIIDC official, the major advantage of the stretch will be the reduction in traffic entering Delhi and Gurgaon which will bring down road congestion as well as pollution levels. “It will bring substantial reduction in pollution levels in the entire NCR. This is one of the major infrastructure projects planned to ease traffic congestion,” said Arora. Earlier, minister Nitin Gadkari also said that pollution levels in Delhi would come down by 50% due to the eastern and western peripheral expressways. Meanwhile, chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar announced that the pending 83-km Kundli -Palwal stretch will be completed within a year.