Hero Cycles Buys Firefox Bikes; Eyes Premium Bike Market

Hero Cycles on Thursday (17 September) said it has bought Delhi-based Firefox Bikes for an undisclosed sum in an all-cash deal to expand its presence in the country's premium cycle market. Hero Cycles, which calls itself the world's largest bicycle maker by volume, said in a statement that the deal includes Firefox Bikes' brands, accessories and spares along with exclusive distribution rights. However, Firefox Bikes will be a distinct brand and continue as a separate business entity post-acquisition, Hero Cycles, part of the Hero Motors group of companies, said. The acquisition will see transfer of key technology, and rich global experience garnered by Hero Cycles over the last 60 years to Firefox Bikes which is often credited for creating the premium range in the Indian cycling market. Firefox, which has an established presence pan-India through a network of 160 outlets, has been growing at a 3-year CAGR of 35 per cent in revenue. Speaking about the acquisition Pankaj Munjal, Chairman and MD, Hero Cycles said, “This acquisition is one of the most significant developments in the history of Hero Cycles. We are extremely proud to have Firefox Bikes, which is one of the most recognised brands in the premium cycle segment, as part of the Hero Cycles family. It is a delightful moment for us looking at the immense possibilities that lie in front of both these brands which have distinct branding identities. We are confident that our customers and even dealers would appreciate the infusion of Hero’s hard-earned trust, credibility and world-class manufacturing prowess into a young and vibrant brand such as Firefox.” “Post the acquisition, Firefox will continue to remain a young and dynamic brand with an international appeal. We at Hero Cycles have invested in Firefox only to help it realise its true potential and further its growth potential in the market. Through this acquisition, Hero Cycles will further expand its presence in all major categories of bicycles in India through its various brands such as Hero Cycles, UT, Firefox and UT Edge. The aim is to provide our customers with world-class products at every price range as per their fast evolving tastes and requirements,” added Munjal. Shiv Inder Singh, founder and managing director at Firefox Bikes, said, “We at Firefox were fortunate to have entered the cycling market at a time when Indian consumer had just started to expect more from their cycles. It was enriching and an exciting role to play where we not just created the premium cycle segment in India, but also introduced the next generation of performance and recreational cycles to the Indian consumer. We are very happy today that our effort into creating this segment has been recognised by market leader Hero Cycles and have now decided to take our young and an extremely vibrant brand to the next level.” “This acquisition will help Firefox to penetrate further into the Indian market. This deal will also help Firefox to expand its marketing visibility and acquire an aggressive approach in reaching out to our prospective customers. Hero has committed in investing in expanding and upgrading our product range which will hit the markets soon. The acquisition will also translate into uplifting the customer experience at our stores through training of our existing distributor network by Hero Cycles” added Singh. As part of the deal, Singh will continue to lead Firefox Bikes post the acquisition as the Chief Executive Officer. Hero Cycles also announced its decision to setup a ‘Hero Innovation Centre’ in India aiming to build world’s most hi-tech R&D centre for engineering, innovation and designing of next generation of world-class cycles for India and for international markets. This innovation will cater to technology and designing requirements of both Hero Cycles and Firefox Bikes.  The financial transaction from Hero Cycles was led by company’s Chief Finance Officer Rohit Maheshwari. BMR Advisors and BMR Legal acted as the transaction partners and legal advisors respectively for Hero Cycles for this deal. While, consulting firm Deloitte represented Firefox Bikes as their transaction partners. Bicycle manufacturers are increasingly betting on India's young and affluent urbanites to help establish a leisure riding culture.  The premium cycle segment in India, which started with humble origins in early 2000s, has been growing at 25 per cent CAGR over the past many years in India. This segment has today emerged as one of the fastest growing segments in the market by clocking more than 2 lakh units a year. India is the world's largest motorcycle market after China, but the roads are packed with cheaper models. 

Sachin And Binny Bansal Of Flipkart Invest In Plabro Networks

Sol Primero, Outbox Ventures and angel investor Sangram Singh are others who along with Bansals invest $350,000 in the platformPrivately-held Plabro Networks, a commercial networking platform for real estate agents, raised $350,000 from ecommerce giant Flipkart co-founders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal and early stage investment firms Sol Primero, Outbox Ventures and angel investor Sangram Singh. This is the first round of funding for the Gurgaon-based startup, which allows real estate brokers, property agents and dealers to share information related to their business on the platform thereby enabling consumers to crack deals efficiently and quickly. The funds raised will help Plabro expand its operations across diverse cities in the country. Currently, it is present in the National Capital Region. The newest real estate start-up in the country operates through a mobile application called Plabro that acts as a connectivity platform between real estate intermediaries and end users. Plabro Networks is also planning to add data analytics as a key feature on the application to arm the agents with insights into the property market. Plabro Networks’ Co-founder Pankaj Garg said, “These funds will give a fillip to our plan to grow geographically and strengthen our infrastructure.” The investment by Flipkart founders definitely signals the growing faith in the country’s startup community. Both Sachin and Binny Bansal, co-founders of India’s largest e-commerce platform Flipkart.com, graduated from IIT-Delhi in computer science and engineering. Of late, they have been funding a host of startups n their personal capacity. Sol Primero, incorporated in 2014, is an early stage investment firm that focuses on high growth and emerging businesses, while Outbox Ventures is a Delhi based investment firm specializing in seed funding. Sangram Singh, on the other hand, is the founder of Ultra Drugs Pvt Ltd, a $10 million, fast growing pharma and technology setup. He is an angel investor who believes that it’s the teams we build that win.

In Conversation With Ridham Desai, MD & Head - India Research, Morgan Stanley

BlaBlaCar Raises $200 Mn In Fourth Round Funding

BlaBlaCar, the world’s largest long-distance ridesharing community, that entered the Indian market in January 2015, raised $200 million from Insight Venture Partners, Lead Edge Capital and Vostok New Ventures, in a series D investment round. BlaBlaCar is an inter-city ride sharing service that operates in as many as 19 countries. It has raised more than $110 million in the last three rounds and its existing investors include Index Venture partners, Accel Partners and Lead Edge Capital. Raised to meet the demand of accelerated growth in established markets and take-off in new markets, the round makes BlaBlaCar one of Europe’s most well-funded startups, with over $300 million in funding to date, as per a statement released by the company. With over 20 million registered members, BlaBlaCar has brought ridesharing to the mainstream, creating an affordable way to travel between cities that is entirely based on wasted car capacity – i.e. empty seats. The service connects people looking to travel long distances with car owners already going the same way, so both can save money by sharing the cost of their journey. This model has made BlaBlaCar a leader of the global sharing economy, and is helping to make road travel more efficient and affordable. “With this additional investment, we’ll be able to accelerate our growth in new and established markets, continuing to build the largest people-powered transport community in the world,” said Nicolas Brusson, BlaBlaCar’s co-founder and COO in a statement. “This financing is a significant step closer to transforming mobility on a global scale,” he added. BlaBlaCar was founded in 2006 by Frédéric Mazzella, CEO, Francis Nappez, CTO, and Nicolas Brusson, COO. Currently, BlaBlaCar operates in Benelux, Croatia, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Italy, Mexico, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Spain, Turkey, Ukraine and the United Kingdom.

Avon Facility Management Joins Hands with Helpr to Provide On-demand Household Services

Avon Facility Management Services (A Division of Quess Corp Limited) has inked an exclusive nationwide partnership with Helpr, a technology platform that provides hassle free, on-demand household services at the click of a button. The app is available on Google Play and App Store starting Wednesday (16 September). Using the Helpr app, consumers can avail cleaning services, plumbing services, electrical repairs, air conditioner maintenance, carpentry and pest control services from the convenience of their phone and at the time of the consumer’s choosing. Avon as the exclusive partner will ensure availability of well trained and most importantly background verified service personnel, something critical that is often overlooked by on-demand service providers. Helpr has launched its services in Bangalore and plans to expand to 22 cities in the next 12 months. Avon with its pan India presence and experience in facility management is well equipped to support Helpr in its journey through quick scalability. It was co-founded by Rajesh Sankarappan, Vignesh Rengasamy and Vijayramkumar Veeraraghavan who are from Coimbatore and alumni of PSG College of Technology.  According to Vivek Arora, Chief Operating Officer, Avon Facility Management Services, “This partnership with Helpr will serve as a platform to create happy households while we continue to work with happy corporates. Avon comes with an experience of 26 years in the facility management space and we are proud of having consistently delivered quality services with the help of our well trained, diligent and trusted associates.” Helpr has features like easy scheduling and live tracking, which enables the customer to track the delivery of services.The app’s proprietary algorithm maps the best and top rated service provider for any selected service. Helpr also provides dedicated Android Apps to service providers to intelligently manage the communication between the customer and the service provider. “Helpr not only eases the booking process, the app also provides instant estimates, transparent pricing and easy payment options.” says Vijayramkumar Veeraraghavan, the CEO of Helpr. “Our exclusive partnership with a reputed service provider like Avon, helps in solving the problem of supply hence we are able to own the entire user lifecycle and provide the most premium experience at competitive prices.”   

Modi Must Focus On Economic Development, Not Elections, To Save Jobs

Will India's exports slump for the ninth straight month in August cast a shadow over Prime Minister Narendra Modi's goal of achieving over 8 per cent growth in 2015-16 fiscal year? Modi sees manufacturing and export-led growth as the best way to create jobs for the millions of young people who helped him gain power last year. Jobs are a critical issue for the Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, struggling to revive growth to a rate that will create employment for the millions who join the workforce every year. The Modi government aims to almost double goods and services exports to $900 billion in the next four years. But merchandise exports contracted to $21.26 billion, a dip of 20.66 per cent in August, widening the trade deficit and raising concerns on job creation. Lower exports and much lower imports, however, narrowed the country's trade deficit to $12.47 billion in August from a month earlier, but wider $10.66 billion a year earlier. The declining exports also indicate the difficulties the Indian economy faces as it attempts a recovery. Trade deficit, is a key parameter that indicates the health of the economy and is the difference between the value of imports and exports. Sluggish demand in key global markets such as the US and Europe has hurt exports. China's devaluation can make its goods more competitive in the global markets, hurting India's exports prospect further. Quite a few economists and media commentators are of the view that growth could ease to 7 per cent to 7.5 per cent in the current 2015-16 fiscal year ending in March, against a target of 8 per cent to 8.5 per cent, if the slump in global demand continues. Analysts say exporters could be forced to lay off workers if sales orders continued to decline over the next 3-4 months. Federation of Indian Exporters chairman S C Ralhan has said that at this rate, job losses were imminent. He also demanded an intervention by Modi in the matter. "With the export orders coming down every month, it is a natural process that the companies will look for cost cutting and the workers will be removed," Ralhan said. According to media reports exporters have been lobbying for lower borrowing costs and fiscal incentives to explore untapped markets such as Africa and Latin America. Modi met business bosses last week and assured them of government support to boost growth. "We need to target growth assuming little support from external demand," N R Bhanumurthy, an economist at National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, told Reuters. Some relief could come from Raghuram Rajan, governor of the Reserve Bank of India, who has cut policy rates by 75 basis points this year, is widely expected to reduce rates at a policy meeting on September 29 thanks to inflation at a record low. Keen to inject more momentum in the economy and encourage investment, the government and business community have urged the central bank to lower interest rates, though Rajan has stressed that he wants to see low inflation on a sustained basis. So far, to counter slack global demand, Modi has vowed to modernise overloaded roads, ports and railways in a bid to make India's exports more competitive. At present, other indicators and on-the-ground evidence suggest the economy is struggling, and there is growing impatience with Modi's government to implement more policies that can galvanise growth and create more jobs on sustained basis. 

TCS Digital Software Launches ‘Customer Intelligence & Insights’ For Retail Banks

Modular Software Solution delivers 360˚ view of customers to optimize end-user experience, reduce costs and attract new customers The Digital Software & Solutions (DS&S) group of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), the global IT services, consulting and business solutions giant, on Wednesday (16 September) launched a new TCS ‘Customer Insights & Intelligence’ (CI&I) software solution for retail banks. The recent TCS Global Trend Study, Internet of Things: Complete Reimaginative Force, finds that the most important business process improvement for financial institutions is the ability to tailor products and services around a single user point of view. As consumer preferences in banking rapidly evolve, financial institutions are racing to catch up with trends by increasing innovation investments in IoT, mobile, digital, and social technologies, which are large disruptors to the way people chose to do their banking today. The CI&I solution is pre-integrated and modular software designed specifically for the retail banking industry to accelerate the transition from a product-focused organization to a customer-centric enterprise. The solution captures and analyzes structured, unstructured, high volume, and high velocity data to create a single view of the customer and provides actionable intelligence about behaviors across channel and organisational silos.  “Most banks have an urgent key digital imperative to understand their customers more deeply to address expanding expectations and deliver a personalized end user experience across a multitude of financial offerings and banking channels,” said Seeta Hariharan, General Manager and Group Head of TCS’ DS&S group. “Because CI&I for Retail Banks can be deployed extremely quickly, financial organizations can accelerate and even leapfrog this digital initiative. For example, we are working with a client today who plans to have the solution fully operational in as little as six months, rather than the 12-18 month deployment typical of other solutions that require excessive time and money to integrate.”  CI&I for retail banks features a unified set of data models and out-of-the-box KPIs that address key business issues relevant to the banking industry. The configurable solution does not require customization and is architected to provide highly flexible delivery options and ease of integration. It is designed to deliver real time customer insights through all customer interactions across social, operational and business channels to help retail banking organizations identify and offer highly targeted, customer centric offerings, while reducing operational costs for the enterprise. 

CMI Buys Haryana Facility Of FL Smidth

CMI Limited, a BSE listed leading specialty cable manufacturing company, on Wednesday (16 September) announced the acquisition of the fully developed manufacturing facility of Danish company FL Smidth at Bawal, Haryana. Spread over 11235 sq. yards with built up area of 67000 sq. ft, the facility is located in the Industrial area of IMT, Bawal and has all the necessary clearances and facilities for Industrial production. CMI Ltd. is investing Rs 20 crore on the acquisition and setting up of the facility at Bawal. This investment is expected to significantly augment the production capacity of the company. The company intends to start production in the new facility within this financial year. Commenting on the developments Amit Jain, Managing Director, CMI Ltd. said, “This is a new phase in the history of CMI. We are very bullish on the sector and are targeting a CAGR of 40 per cent going forward for the next 3-5 years. The acquisition is a step in that direction and will help CMI enhance its Production Capacity in order to achieve the desired growth”. The clientele of CMI includes the who’s who of the industry. CMI manufactures a wide variety of specialty cables for infrastructure, Railways, Oil & Refinery industries, Engineering Companies, EPCC contractors, and the like. CMI Limited is a leading specialty cables manufacturing company. CMI Limited is listed on BSE (BSE Code: 517330) and closed the year 2014-15 with revenues of Rs. 137.28 Cr. CMI Limited, incorporated in 1967, is today a well known and reputed supplier of specialty cables to the who’s who of the industry. The focus in the organization is on latest technologies leading to new product development.  

Single-Window Clearance For Building Permission By Early Next Year: Venkaiah Naidu

The housing and urban development ministry is striving to put in place a single window clearance for layouts and building permission which has been a long pending industry demand  Come 2016 and the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development is aiming to put in place a single window, time-bound clearance system for layout approvals and building permissions. A group of ministers on the subject is already deliberating. This GoM has representations from the ministries of environment, defence, civil supplies, civil aviation and others, said housing and urban development minister M Venkaiah Naidu at an industry event organised by ASSOCHAM on Wednesday (September 16). “It is a long pending demand of the industry. I am working with six ministers and I have a group of ministers’ meeting. I have held four rounds of meetings with secretaries, ministers and others,” said Naidu inaugurating a national summit on ‘Housing for All-Catalyst for development & inclusive growth,’ organised by The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM). “The last meeting is on October 14 after that we will submit the report to Cabinet and then we will go ahead because we are getting permissions from these departments and by the beginning of the next year, I am sure you will have this in place,” Naidu said. Naidu asked the real estate sector to focus on green building technologies and adopt appropriate, cost-effective building materials, reduce dependence on conventional energy intensive construction practices. Conceding that employment generation is a major challenge, the union minister said, “If you can push the real estate sector, if you really give credit to the infrastructure sector and also to the (IT) information technology sector then Indian youth will get better employment opportunities.” The union minister also emphasised on the need for labour reforms, reforms for land and real estate sector. Besides, he also stressed upon the need for politics of speedy and inclusive development. 

Airlines Seek A Week's Time Over High Fares During Peak Season

Various airlines have sought a period of one week to decide on the government proposal to keep the “airfares moderately priced during festival and peak seasons”. Union Civil Aviation Minister, his MOS, and officials had a meeting with all airlines officials on the issue which was raised by Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself. “We conveyed the concern of the PM and most MPs to the airlines. The concern was that the prices should not be unduly hiked during festive seasons and peak seasons. We told them that we don’t want to intervene and they should take a consensus decision amongst themselves. They have sought a week’s time on this,” Minister of State for Civil Aviation Dr Mahesh Sharma told Businessworld. This was the main point of discussion at today’s meeting with the airlines officials and the Ministry. The PM recently visited UAE where a large number of people from Kerala live. They wanted to come home for the Onam celebrations, but the airlines hike the airfares during this period. Some people contacted him, resulting in the PM raising the issue.