by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Large Enterprise
Mumbai, (IANS) Tata Housing Development Company’s subsidiary Tata Value Homes on Monday announced raising $25 million from British development finance institution CDC to strengthen affordable housing projects in India.
“Investment from CDC will help us further our commitment towards delivering quality living spaces to low and middle income groups in the country,” said Tata Housing chief executive Brotin Banerjee in a statement.
The British government-owned CDC was founded in 1948 with the mission to build businesses across Africa and South Asia and to create jobs and make a lasting difference in the lives of people from the poorest places.
“We’ve made this investment because affordable housing in India is highly a developmental sector because it creates a high number of construction jobs per dollar invested, and will increase access to housing for India’s emerging middle class,” said Srini Nagarajan from CDC in the statement.
According to the statement, Tata Value Homes delivered 3,000 homes across various projects in the country last year.
Established in 1984, Tata Housing Development Company Public limited is a subsidiary of Tata Sons Limited.
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Corporate Governance, News
Mumbai:(IANS) A three-day BRICS Friendship Cities Conclave with the theme ‘Urban Development & Future of Cities in BRICS Countries’, will open here on April 14, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said on Friday.
The conclave is jointly organised by think tank Mumbai First, and the state government, with support from BRICS countries like Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
With urbanisation posing a mega-challenge for cities globally, cities in developing countries face a common set of challenges and the conference will provide a platform for 75 governors, city leaders, urban planners, ministers and experts from BRICS nations to deliberate and learnt from each other’s experiences.
“With increasing urbanisation, this will be a great platform to debate and exchange solutions and ideas from cities around the world,” Fadnavis said.
The topics for discussions will include strengthening urban governance, making BRICS cities inclusive, making cities safe and secure, urban transport, fixing the nerve centre of cities to shift to transit-oriented development, city infrastructure financing, building sustainable cities to improve delivery of urban services, making sustainable and affordable housing a reality and maximizing value through efficient land-use and urban planning, he added.
Fadnavis said the conclave will put into reality the vision and dream outlined by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the BRICS Summit in Brazil in 2014, focusing on importance of engagement between states, cities, local bodies and ‘people to people’.
At the BRICS Summit in Russia in 2015, Modi specifically emphases the importance of close cooperation between the member-nations, and included a forum of state-local government governments from among the BRICS countries, and coopeation among cities in urbanisation.
India has taken over the BRICS presidency for one year from February 2016 and the upcoming conclave is the first major activity, with Mumbai being the commercial capital of India and best example of development, connectivity, infrastructure, and varied cultures.
To mark the conclave, a special book ‘Making of Vibrant BRICS Cities’ will be released which has contribution on urban challenges from 35 experts around the world.
Union Urban Development Minister Venkaiah Naidu, Maharashtra Governor C.V. Rao, Fadnavis and other dignitaries shall be present at the inauguration on April 14, and Rao will release a special stamp cover on the occasion.
The BRICS countries, along with some of the other developing countries like Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey account for 50 percent of the world’s urban population and are expected to attract substantive capital investment for the infrastructure worth trillions of dollars which will be built.
Mumbai First was created in 1995 with the initiative of Bombay Chamber of Commerce & Industry with the participation of Tatas, Godrej, Mahindras, Hindustan Lever, Asian Paints, SBI, ICICI, HDFC and others.
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Halal Industries, Halal Medicine
Mumbai, (IINA) – Cut The Crap (CTC), a Mumbai-based full-service creative agency, has undertaken a unique branding exercise for India’s first halal cosmetics brand, iba, Best Media Info reported.
The agency has been instrumental in creating and conceptualizing the entire brand identity, right from naming of the brand onwards, to packaging, design integration and communication for a category that has very low awareness in India.
Ecotrail Personal Care, a start-up by sisters Mauli and Grishma Teli, is the only company in India that makes halal cosmetics.
“The brief for the agency was to create a brand that would be progressive and non-preachy. Halal had to become consumers’ choice,” said Jagdish Acharya, founder-director, Cut the Crap.
For India’s very first halal cosmetics, CTC came up with the name iba. Iba in Arabic means sense and pride. That’s because halal makes sense as the right choice for scientific reasons. And there is pride in switching to a brand that stands for values like beauty without cruelty.
The logo motif of iba is a ‘flowering water droplet’. Water and cleaning are the fundamental beauty-care tenets of halal. The flowering droplet connotes beauty that blooms through cleansing.
While in India, halal popularly and immediately refers to meat, halal cosmetics are a global phenomenon and a rapidly evolving market worldwide. These products are certified by the halal board and do not contain pig-fat and other animal derived ingredients, harsh chemicals and alcohol. They are 100 per cent animal-cruelty free.
“iba Halal Care range is a new offering in personal care and cosmetics that addresses unmet needs of consumers. Jagdish and his team at CTC worked closely with research and client team to ensure that. I believe we have begun well,” added Chandan Nath, brand mentor and founder, ideas2brands.
CTC is currently working on creating the yang part of the brand – its male counterpart. This will anchor the men’s range of products, Halal deodorants and more.
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News
Yakub Memon funeral prayer
Mumbai(IANS): Not willing to take any chances, police here on Thursday issued a gag order to the media barring it from photographing and videographing the funeral procession and the last rites of hanged convict Yakub Memon.
The 13-hour gag order was issued by Deputy Commissioner of Police (Operations) Sanjay Barkund from 11 a.m. till midnight of Thursday.
Following this, all TV channels voluntarily dissuaded from telecasting the funeral procession and the last rites.
Yakub Memon funeral
Certain TV channels even flashed a notice, saying they would not telecast the funeral as Memon was a traitor and they would not make him a “hero” by publicizing his last rites.
The police order restraining the media said reports were received of “every likelihood of breach of peace and disturbance of public tranquillity and also there is a grave danger to human life, health and safety and injury to public property on that account”.
The March 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts convict was executed at 6.35 a.m. in Nagpur on Thursday. His body was handed over to his family and flown to Mumbai by an air ambulance for the funeral rites.
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate
The Union Minister of State for Minority Affairs Mr. Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi with the Maharashtra Chief Minister Mr. Devendra Fadnavis in Mumbai to discuss various issues
Mumbai: In a significant step towards minorities’ welfare, the Centre has plans to develop three city municipal corporations from Maharashtra as models of minority empowerment, official sources said here Wednesday.
The Maharashtra government will identify the three cities for the purpose, based on their population and demographic data and inform the Centre.
The development follows a meeting held here between Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and union Minister of State for Minority Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi during which detailed discussions were held in this regard, sources said.
The meeting was a follow-up to the recent interactions with state minister for minority affairs Eknath Khadse and other officials concerning welfare of the minorities.
Naqvi emphasised that the priority for the Centre is “growth and development” with the mood of the nation in a positive direction, but certain fundamentalist and Taliban mindsets were the enemies of development.
Reiterating that the Centre was committed to the all-round development of all the people and not any particular section, Naqvi said the enemies of development could be vanquished if tackled unitedly.
Referring to the oncoming budget session of Parliament starting Feb 23, Naqvi said it “promises to be very important from the point of view of the nation’s progress”, besides key bills to boost the reforms process.
Since it is imperative to get these important bills passed, the government will reach out to the opposition parties to get their cooperation through co-ordination and consultation process.
In this context, an all-party meeting would be held in New Delhi Feb 22 and the Centre is hopeful of securing the cooperation of the opposition parties and their constructive role in making the parliament session fruitful.
Naqvi is understood to have said that the Bharatiya Janata Party was “not connected” with the ongoing political developments in Bihar, but claimed that the so-called Janata Parivar does not enjoy the support of the people of that state.
The BJP continues to closely monitor the developments and is gearing up to secure the peoples’ mandate whenever assembly elections are announced to provide a stable government in Bihar.
