Business

Bangalore has recorded the highest number of residential unit launches in the first quarter of this calendar year. In fact, close to a third of the overall housing project launches among the top eight cities has happened in Bangalore. According to real estate consultants Cushman and Wakefield, close to 40 per cent of the total new unit launches in the city were in Southeast Bangalore, targeting individuals working primarily in the IT/ITeS sector. Infrastructure initiatives have resulted in...

The bullying tactics employed by the US in ensuring that it rules the patents regime and therefore the world, is backfiring badly on itself. US companies, in fact, are losing the race even in the US where foreign companies have forged ahead in registering patents. A recent study conducted by infojustice.org has found that many if not most firms in IP-intensive industries are foreign-owned. This runs contrary to popular belief and the belief of policymakers. The conclusion of the researchers is...

You would have had an inkling about this — office rentals in the city's Central Business District (CBD) are not just high, the rates have made pushed the district to the fifth spot for largest rental growth in Asia. Office rentals in CBD have grown by 8 per cent in the last one year, and annually cost USD 35 per sq ft to a company seeking office space. The only areas with a higher growth rate are Indonesian capital Jakarta's CBD with 46 per cent, New Delhi's Connaught Place 25 per cent, Chennai...

Indian smartphone users are way smarter than their American counterparts. And they are heavier users of social networking sites too. In spite of having less than 50% of users that the US has (245 million), Indian smartphone consumers use their gadgets more than US citizens. Fifty-six per cent of Indian smartphone users go online multiple times a day (more than thrice) compared to 53% in the US. In fact, 94% of Indians connect to the Internet at least once a day compared to 88 per cent of...

There is something sinister about the proverbial tip of an iceberg. For one, its deceptive appearance makes you ignore the obvious. And then, you obviously miss the peril that lurks underneath. So when the Delhi High Court in early-January imposed a cost of Rs 2 lakh on realty major DLF Limited while dismissing its plea against an order by market regulator, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) to probe an allegation, it was seen as only an instance of a Delhi-based businessman being...

About 3,000 people might descend on the City Civil Court on Saturday in response to the summons for a hearing in a case filed by builders Larsen and Toubro (L&T) against the apartment owners of South City. The builders and the apartment owners of the gated South City mini-township on Bannerghatta Road have been locked in legal wrangles for years now. The case in question is one of the many disputes that have dogged the swanky enclave that include exclusivity of property, deposit monies, delays...

It’s bad news for Karnataka. Growth is slowing down, and inter-state comparisons of socio-economic development indicate that human development indices are stagnating in Karnataka. The Economic Survey for 2011-12 has revealed that the state fared the worst in terms of growth in 2009-10 with a paltry 3.88%, compared with an all-India average of 7.96%. In contrast, the growth in Uttarakhand was almost three times that of Karnataka — at 11.61%. The slowdown in the state becomes more obvious when one...

Gayatri Kumar is disenchanted and annoyed. This homemaker from Rajajinagar had fallen for ‘extra talk time’ and ‘free roaming incoming’ sops that Tata Docomo had thrown her way last July. The solemn promises that the mobile service provider made went unkept. Her bills kept soaring despite her limited usage; and to make matters worse, whenever she stepped out of town, the network would die on her. Ganesh Shankar is equally upset, only that in his case the service provider is BSNL. When the IT...

The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA) apparently believes in different strokes for different folks. The regulator has been adopting different yardsticks for penalising different insurance companies for the same purported offence. Earlier this year, the public sector United India Insurance Company was fined Rs 5 lakh under the provisions of section 64 of the Insurance Act, 1938, for opening 35 new branches across the country without its prior permission. The IRDA, however...

Can a potential Rs 17,500 crore penalty for gross violation of the Insurance Act be whittled down to Rs 20 lakh? Surely not, one may say. But this, in fact, is exactly what the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA) has done for Reliance General Insurance Co, an Anil Ambani group company. Simply put, this is the violation. Reliance sold 3.5 lakh health insurance policies without informing IRDA - which is illegal. So when IRDA found this out, in an order dated 23 July 2009, it...