Shreyas Shipping is the Indian flagged vessel owning unit of Transworld Group, running a fleet of 13 ships, the largest along the Indian coast.

Reportedly, Shreyas Shipping, which is based in Mumbai, has a market share of over 90 percent in the export-import (EXIM) transhipment business and more than 52 percent in the domestic container business.

Over the years, DP World has made a number of acquisitions in the container feeder segment. Shreyas Shipping will be DP World’s third acquisition in two years.

Last month, DP World has completed the acquisition of a 51 percent stake in TIS Container Terminal in the Port of Yuzhny in Ukraine.

According to DP World, the acquisition of TIS Container Terminal will help the company expand its operations as well as strengthen TIS Container Terminal as one of the key market-leading purpose-built terminals in Ukraine by leveraging DP World’s global network of ports, economic zones, warehousing, and inland logistics solutions.

The acquisition marks DP World’s second major partnership with TIS shareholders, the first being with P&O Maritime Ukraine.

Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem, Group Chairman and CEO of DP World told the media, “Today ushers in a new and promising era, as we expand our global portfolio in Ukraine. We are excited about this important milestone and this acquisition supports our long-lasting commitment to enabling global trade.”

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Ian Kerr

March 20, 2017: India is on the move towards digitisation in trade. Our attendance at this year’s GTR India Trade and Treasury Conference in Mumbai certainly confirmed that. With delegates from more than 120 companies and the key banks in the region all energetically networking, we had an excellent opportunity to establish new contacts, strengthen existing relationships and take the pulse of the Indian market.

From our perspective, India looks very positive, advancing towards the national government’s target of increasing digitisation in all spheres of life, whether through a massive rollout of internet access, electronic payments and digital ID systems, or more importantly for us, through increasing readiness to convert to electronic presentation in trade documentation.

A strong sense of the upbeat approach to digitisation came in a panel I moderated looking at ‘Trade digitisation and its application for India: successfully implementing fintech into your company model’. This involved a discussion between Rugved Dhumale, Deputy Treasurer, Petrochemicals at Reliance Industries, and Rakesh Patwari Head of Business Development, Global Trade and Receivables Finance at HSBC India.

The pair reflected on the first digital transaction between Reliance and a customer in Italy, supported by HSBC and which was completed using the Bolero platform. Since it was also the first document exchange of its kind in India, they also discussed the potential benefits and challenges of wider trade digitisation for the country as a whole.

Rugved explained that the transaction had been two years in the planning, but it was the first step in the growing acceptance of digital trade documentation. Although there were various technologies available, the advent of Bolero meant the time for digitisation had arrived, given its ability to accommodate complexity and the differing nature of each transaction for the benefit of all of the counterparties.

Rakesh said digitisation was part of a ‘generational shift’ in international trade and part of HSBC India’s role as a facilitator. “Our purpose is to make the process simpler and smoother, and this (Bolero) brings visibility to every single stakeholder,” he explained.

Having the backing of such huge and respected Indian companies and institutions such as Reliance Industries and HSBC India is very significant step to help to increase digitisation in trade documentation. At Bolero, we already have important Indian banks as members of our community and after speaking to many of the corporate representatives at the event, it became clear that our digital innovation is now resonating very well among the country’s exporters.

There clearly is a groundswell of interest, encouraged by the recent report from Maersk and the Confederation of Indian Industry. Entitled ‘Stimulating India’s EXIM by reducing costs of trade’, this report showed how Indian exports could be boosted by between five and eight per cent if greater priority were given to infrastructure improvements, digitisation and the reduction of regulatory burdens and delays. It demonstrated that inefficiencies can account for anything between 38 and 47 per cent of the total logistics cost. A reduction of 10 per cent in these costs could yield more than $5 billion cost savings each year, a figure that should catch the eye of Indian regulators as well as the country’s corporates.

Although India is not currently as advanced as China in trade digitisation, the potential is huge, given that export growth projections for the country are considerably more than seven per cent for 2017-2018. In China, where Bolero already has many important customers, the realisation that exports will be required to sustain stellar growth rates has prompted the government to push the pace with a series of steps, including the establishment of export credit facilities.

Nonetheless, in India, there is now a real desire to embrace digitisation, led by companies with the vision and enthusiasm such as Reliance. There was no doubt that there is an upbeat mood in this fast-developing economy and trade digitisation should be very much at the centre of this remarkable country’s rapid emergence as one of the world’s great exporting economies.

Ian Kerr is the CEO of Bolero International

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Suparna Goswami Bhattacharya

March 28, 2016: For a long time Nitesh Gupta, who resides in India’s startup capital Bengaluru, was in fix as to what to do with the big ancestral house that he owned in one of the hotspots in the city. Though he converted the house into a commercial centre, one of his IIM-B (a renowned business school in India) professors suggested doing something for the thriving startup ecosystem. This led him to convert the house into a co-working space. Thus, Starttopia was born.

“The discussion with the professor made me realise that startups struggle to find a place from where they can work. Since they have a shoestring budget, finding an affordable office place is a nightmare. Hence, I decided to open a co-working space, which can seat 500-600 people,” says Gupta, founder, Starttopia.

Co-working as a concept is catching up in India. Places like Bengaluru, Goa, Mumbai and Gurgaon have seen several co-working spaces coming up in the past three years. With new startups being launched every day, there is a crunch of space and finances. Co-working spaces take care of these factors.

Co-working is a style of working in which basically entrepreneurs operating different ventures share the same office space. Earlier, it was considered adequate if you just had a physical presence and no online presence whatsoever but now, it’s the other way around. Having an online image and presence is considered much more important than having a physical presence.

Starttopia boasts of 20,000 square feet of space, one of largest in the country. Situated at BTM Layout, one of the central points of the city, it will provide startups with free wifi connectivity and a small cafe. “I am open to all industry verticals. I am also trying to tie-up with someone who knows the legal framework to register or shut a company. I understand that shutting a startup is a big pain point in India,” remarks Gupta. The monthly rental at Starttopia starts from Rs 7,000.

Gurbani Kaur Saluja, senior community manager, 91Springboard, a co-working space based in Delhi, says, “We started three years ago when the concept was still very nascent. But it has been a wonderful journey.”

According to her, the main reason startups are drawn to 91Springboard is their strong networking and events community. “50% of our space is meant for co-working and the rest for events.” 91Springboard is present in Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Navi Mumbai. They are associated with 600 startups.

“We host mentoring sessions where people working in startups spend time with mentors. The event also helps startups connect with venture capitalists. The plus point is that our events are free and open to all startups irrespective of whether they are registered with us or not,” says Saluja. 91Springboard offers multiple packages. For interns and students they have a package of Rs 2,999 per month which offers access to cafeteria seating, high speed internet and printing, and access to conference room. For a package of Rs 7,499, one can access 24/7 office space, all hubs across the country, coffee and tea, and conference rooms.

In fact, not only startups, co-working space is also attracting established companies who have a small team in India or are looking to start their operations soon.

“The company I work for plans to start operations in India soon. For now, we do not have a huge staff. Hence, we thought it is better to rent a co-working space. You have many startups working here and it is always good to share ideas. Also, working from home sometimes can get difficult, especially if you have family staying with you all the time,” says Sandeep Deb Varman who works out of Socials in Bengaluru. Socials is a cafe which doubles up as a co-working hub. He pays a rent of Rs 5,000 per month, which is completely redeemable for food and drinks.

In Mumbai, there is The Playce, which is about 4,000 square feet and seats around 80. It has meeting rooms, cabins and open workstations. “It started with a personal need. When we were looking for a place in Mumbai for our office, we found none. So I thought of doing something for the startups. The joy of seeing them ideate and then give shape to their dreams is immense,” says Gargi Shah, founder, The Playce. Shah feels startups should do proper research and then take up a co-working space. “We give preference to startups over established businesses. That is how a pure co-working space should work,” she says. The Playce charges Rs 6,500 per month for a desk, locker and wifi. For a cabin, which can seat five people, the cost is Rs 25,000 per month.

Many more entrepreneurs are looking to open co-working spaces. AWFIS, the country’s largest co-working company, recently launched centres in Bengaluru. Its offer: Rs 300 per person per day.

“There is a lot of scope in this space. What is important is the location and the amenities should be helpful for startups. For instance, there is no dearth of mentors but what is important is to have the right person to guide the startups,” says Gupta.

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Anil Bhaskaran

June 11, 2015: India, it is claimed, is on the threshold of creating a hundred ‘smart cities’. It is pertinent, therefore, at this point of time, to take look at the question – what, after all, is a ‘smart city’.

The notion of an ideal city is rather a romantic one. Some of the cities, we find, can endure passage of time more than some others. Those which defy the passage of time and uphold their serenity and humaneness are the ones that are often reckoned as the most beautiful. There are two important factors that contribute to this phenomenon. Indeed, the inhabitants and their culture come first. A close second is the way the city is planned and maintained. This naturally leads one to an important question: What is the ideal design for a city.

Before trying to answer this question, we need to analyse the basic characteristics of a city.

Let us first look at the birth and growth pattern of a city. A city is like a living body. It is born, lives for a certain period of time and dies. Like a group of cells coming together to form a human body, a group of people come together to form a city. A city, like in the case of a human body, must grow to its limit, attain maturity, cease to grow and eventually perish. In the context of such an axiomatic truth, let us now determine how the physical form of a city should be.

Anil Bhaskaran

A city which is conceptually radial (need not be radial in pattern) presents an interesting option. The city centre, its hub (nucleus), will consist of the public amenities like the city hall, shopping malls and entertainment centres, public parks, interspersed with open spaces. The first ring (belt) around that would consist of the various centres of administration. Educational institutions and training centres will comprise the next ring. The ring outside of that will consist of residential buildings. This will be followed by the ring that consists of manufacturing centres. The last ring will comprise vast farmlands. The rings between the city centre and the last ring will be interspersed with small scale commercial establishments and basic public amenities creating a mixed development pattern within them.

A city should also have many other smaller but important features such as city squares, landscaped plazas and other forms of community interactive places. A hierarchy within these spaces starting from one’s own private front yard and back yard to the huge community spaces, such as a maidan(ground), creates a pattern of spaces that relate to functionality and scale. The creation of hierarchy among streets, with a focus on their size, associated with such spaces, is also equally important.

A city should be ideally walkable or at least cycle-able in all directions. This results in minimum expenditure of energy in commuting between places. Ideally, one should be able to walk from the outermost ring to the city centre within 20 minutes. A low rise city with high density clearly has advantages over other forms of a city, say, high rise city with high density. The first type is easy to build, with low technology and locally available materials, and, therefore, will cost less.

Traditionally, cities were planned and built based on the principles mentioned above. Cities such as Rome, Paris, Florence, which we admire for their amazing qualities, are all good examples of how well the city planners of the past had understood these fundamental principles and applied them prudently in the creation of those cities. When we compare them with present-day cities such as New York, Tokyo or Mumbai, we see that the contrast is striking. Fundamentally, it is the unlimited growth, the bane of many present-day cities that destroys their order beyond repair. In a human body, unlimited growth is considered cancerous. The city is no exception to this rule of common sense.

It is generally reckoned that a building can perform the functions that it is designed for, only for a period of about 15 years. After that period, its efficiency keeps declining, eventually making it redundant. Similarly, a city can function to the peak of its efficiency only for a limited period of time after which it should be allowed to die its natural death. Adding newer and newer parts to an old city, like transplanting new organs in the body of an old living organism, and prolonging its life distorts its fundamental body mechanism.

All major cities in India, such as Mumbai and Bengaluru, are witnessing desperate measures being taken by authorities to reduce traffic congestion. A number of flyovers are being built. Streets are being widened, sacrificing big trees adjoining the walkway. The landscaped walkways and medians are getting thinner and thinner. Metros and elevated traffic systems, to ferry people from the suburb to the city, are being planned. These are measures that are supposed to address the problem. What we are forgetting is that these problems need not arise at all in the first place. Instead of trying to solve the problem, our efforts should be directed to making sure the problems are not created in the first place.

Firstly, a city must be designed for living of a reasonably forecast number of people. As and when the limit is attained, newer cities should be designed and built. This should be a continuous process. This is quite similar to the situation of a living being, on achieving maturity, allowing the newer generation to come into existence through the method of reproduction.

Secondly, we need to arrest the migration of villagers to cities. We cannot achieve this by promulgating laws alone. For achieving this, we need to enhance the quality of life of the villagers. This will require changing the existing mind set and policies. When we talk about setting right all the wrong things of an entity of the scale of a city, then the corrective measures have to be on that scale too. Gandhiji’s vision for India, which underlines the importance of improving life in villages (not by trickling the economy down), is relevant even today.

That the term ‘smart cities’ refers to an urban agglomeration featured by tall towers, glazed and isolated with huge areas of landscape created around each of them, is an incorrect  notion. In such a situation, each such tower tends to stand so isolated that the people who live in one would hardly have any contact, much less any interaction with the occupants of the adjacent towers. In such an environment, it may even be hard to find pedestrians, since the occupants would be parking their vehicles in the basements and going to their respective work places or homes using the elevators. In a context like that, even the street level interaction among residents would become a rare happening. This situation of retrograde social isolation will perhaps be complete when ‘food courts’ and ‘shopping centres’ are also provided within those very ‘modern’ towers.

Studies have indicated that such isolation among the inhabitants of such isolated tower-towns has even led to an enhanced degree of estrangement among their inhabitants, leading to a spurt in incidents of psychic traumas and even suicides. Contrast this with cities where citizens routinely frequent street-side eateries and settle down for their neighbourly chat on stone benches in nooks and corners.

This takes us back to the all-important question that we started with – what is a smart Indian city? An ideal Indian city should have buildings and out-door spaces that respect the climatic conditions and peculiar local factors. This is one area where city planners, especially if they are foreigners who have no idea about Indian conditions, can go terribly wrong. India is blessed with climatic conditions that allow open planning. In that sense, a city, full of buildings that are completely sealed with glass and aluminium panels all around, can hardly be termed ‘smart’. In fact, a city like that will be its anti-thesis. A city, where every building is competing with every other building in its height, or, a city that is divided into blocks where each block is a building by itself, like in the case of a typical American city, I believe, can hardly be termed ‘smart’.

Finally, yet another important aspect of city planning would be the importance to be assigned to the architecture of the buildings that respects environmental concerns. Prudent use of material, time and energy in building and sustaining its buildings, is also of paramount importance. By merging the planning principles, and environmental and eco-friendly construction methods outlined above, we can create what I call the responsible cities.

Those cities, when created, will actually be smarter than the so called smart cities.

Anil Bhaskaran is the Managing Director of IDEA Centre Architects, Bangalore

Also Read:

Singapore draws up smart plans

Egypt betting big on a new capital

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July 22, 2014: Singapore Exchange (SGX) announced on Tuesday that, following approval from the Reserve Bank of India, its liaison office in India has commenced operations with Neena Prasad as its Chief Representative.

SGX’s office in Mumbai, India will provide information and act as a communication channel to support capital raising by Indian companies in Singapore. Such capital raising can be achieved via listing of stocks, bonds, Real Estate Investment Trusts, business trusts and/or depository receipts.

The opening of SGX’s India Office will also strengthen its partnership with the National Stock Exchange of India (NSE). The strategic partnership began in 2000 when the two exchanges collaborated to develop the international futures market. In 2007, SGX took a 5% minority investment in Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE).

Magnus Böcker, CEO of SGX, said: “The opening of our India Office re-affirms SGX’s long-standing commitment to India. We will continue to strengthen our partnership with NSE as we grow the Nifty franchise internationally. As a stakeholder in BSE, we will support the exchange by bringing efficiency with new initiatives and IPOs. At the same time, our India Office will enable us to better support Indian enterprises seeking to raise capital as India is one of the world’s fastest growing economies with significant funding needs to support its growth and development. We look forward to working with partners in India to assist companies in reaching out to the international investment community. ”

Indian issuers have raised US$60 billion in bonds listed on SGX, making India the third-largest issuer of SGX-listed bonds. These issuers cover a wide spectrum of sectors, including banking and financial services, energy and commodities, property, healthcare, utilities, telecommunications and transportation. About 80% of listed international bonds by Indian issuers are listed on SGX. Apart from this, five Indian companies are listed on SGX.

Source: SGX

http://www.sgx.com/wps/wcm/connect/sgx_en/home/higlights/news_releases/SGX-opens-Liaison-Office-in-India

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