- - by Shankar AVSB on 08 Jan 2011

Big India Farms is a 100% subsidiary of 7Avenues Enterprises Ltd, which also has ventures in Retail (7to9 Retail) and  Financial Services (MarketStar Capital), with investors worldwide. (web: www.bigindiafarms.com). Big India Farms is a leading player in organized farming in India, and aims to play a key role in food production and food supply chain of India, both of which are highly fragmented today.

Over the last 5 years, Big India Farms has developed strong capabilities in farm management, including farming, alternative energy and farm related non-crop products. We manage farms end to end, from land sourcing, documentation, possession to long term development. Currently, we have access to over 1500 acres of farm land and we are still in the early stages. Over the next 5 years, we aim to have over 10,000 acres of farm land under management, producing food for millions of Indians. Learn more here: Investment Opportunities in India

- by Shankar AVSB on 15 June 2010

For India investors wordlwide, we now have a new investment advisory service: MarketStar Capital

MarketStar is an investment services company, offering India Investment Advisory Service to investors worldwide, to gain from the strong economic growth of India (8-10% GDP growth rate over next 5 years) through our ground-level presence in Indian capital markets, our stock market participation and experience of running businesses in India.  We believe this service can benefit any investor worldwide who wants to invest in India, both retail and institutional investors, who may already have their stock brokers in place and they just need quality inputs for their India investment portfolio. MarketStar is also an investor in the Indian capital market and trades under its own account. Learn more here: MarketStar Capital

- by Shankar AVSB on 11 Jan 2010

Here's something new for the New Year. We have packaged our in-house expertise for Indian company formation and related accounting and legal services, to offer them from this new website: IndiaCompanyFormation.com

We have planned this internally for the last few months, and have now activated this revenue stream. Our package and pricing is among the best in market. So if someone in your network is looking to start/operate a company in India, they can surely benefit from this new service. For any questions, please email at: info[@]indiacompanyformation.com

- by Sandeep Saxena on 05 November 2009

- by Shankar AVSB on 20 September 2009

Here's something that can be useful to all of us. The latest site in MyOrbit portfolio has gone live: IndiaInsuranceMart.com

This is an Insurance marketplace where insurance buyers can get quotes from various insurance sellers. Till now, there was no such website to provide this service to Indian people. Based on feedback so far, the site offers a very useful service. Many buyers of insurance products today want reliable services that be purchased online, or using phone plus email. We are currently registering insurance sellers (agents/ brokers/ companies) for the sell side, and expect to have 50+ insurance sellers in the near future, which will enable competitive offers to insurance buyers coming to the site.

Overall, this site fits well in the consumer-business model of our main venture 7to9 Retail, because we will be able to connect with thousands of new customers in India and abroad, who can also benefit from other services.

So now you can come to this site for your insurance requirements, and I am confident that the insurance agents registered with this site will compete well to give you attractive proposals. And if you have insurance agents/brokers in your network, please ask them to register for free. Its a win-win.

- by Shankar AVSB on 28 August 2009

Our new portfolio company MarketStar is registered and its website will appear shortly here: www.MarketStarCapital.com

MarketStar will trade in public-listed securities, across industry sectors, and you can buy shares in MarketStar. This company will enable you to invest in the Indian capital markets through a company that actively manages and trades a portfolio of top performing stocks that are listed in the NSE and/or BSE.

We believe that MarketStar will be a valuable investment option for:

(a) investors, including NRIs, who do not have the time and resources to actively manage their public-equity investment portfolio

(b) investors worldwide who want to participate in the Indian capital market through a reliable, and conservative, investment team

It is exciting for us because 7Avenues will now be able to offer both private equity investment through 7Avenues, and public-listed investment opportunities through MarketStar. And unlike the investments in 7Avenues, which have 5 year timeframe, the investments in MarketStar can be much shorter, even under 12 months. This is possible because the assets of MarketStar will be very liquid, and we can buy back shares of investors who want to exit at the ongoing share price of the company.

More details will be available through the Information Memorandum once the company and its website are live.

- by Shankar AVSB on 8th July 2009

It's July 2009, and we enter the second half of this calendar year, we have now seen six full months of 2009, which was predicted to be a difficult a very difficult year economically and financially worldwide and I think we are seeing that happening. 

However, depending on where you are in the world, things are less or more difficult to a different extent.  For example, the job loss situation is looking grim in Europe and America, where we have new unemployment numbers coming out, which talk about the unemployment situation that not encouraging at all, and at the same time we have economies like China and India, which are showing lesser impact of the global economic slowdown. 

There are of course various impacts depending on the industry. For example, export-oriented industries like the IT services, or jewelry and diamond exports -- they are definitely suffering and the sales are weak and the order pipeline looks weaker.

However the industries which are domestic, like energy, two-wheelers, print media, telecom or retail industry, which serve customers within India- they are doing fine and are looking to give a better earnings performance in the near term. And the core sectors like Energy, Power, and Infrastructure like bridges, highways and airports, are expected to see benefits in terms of both government support as well as foreign investor interest. 

On the whole we will see that sectors focusing on the Indian domestic market will continue to do well because of the growing size of the internal economy of India, and retail is one such domestic business that will improve as consumers spending picks up.

And 7Avenues, through our 7to9 Retail business, is well poised to capture new opportunities because we are among the only organized retailers in India today who are adding new stores when most others are closing stores, and that's because we have grown cautiously in the past and we didn't add many stores when other retailers were adding 50 stores or 100 stores every quarter. So our conservative approach to business expansion has turned out to be a big help in the current situation.

We will continue to grow and the market has opportunities and consumers are there to justify the growth and we are looking at improvement in sales and profit margins.  And similarly, the domestic business of farming and food supply chain (Big India Farms) is also expected to grow quarter on quarter.

And MyOrbit, which is a fully online business, with customers across the world, has seen less impact because even in this weak economy people are spending money online, and business owners want to improve their Internet business presence because it is low cost compared to operating an offline business. Therefore, we are seeing that the online ventures are getting an extra benefit because of their low-cost operation, and any kind of sales and marketing efforts. 

Thus, overall, we have good mix of ventures, and we hope to come out of this weak economy, whenever it clears, say in 6-12 months, in a better shape than most companies. Thanks for your time and interest in 7Avenues.

- by Sandeep Saxena on 17th May 2009

This is about our venture company 7to9 Retail, which is a retail business, where over 80% of our employees face the customers to help them buy suitable products, and these front-end employees are also the guardians of our in-store inventory, business assets and brand. However, many of them have not gone through good schooling system or a social system that inculcates work ethics. This is not unique to us -- almost every retail or B2C business in India faces this constraint.

Therefore, as a solution, we have been doing external trainings which are now being expanded to cover all staff levels. Since we have a decent team size now, which will only increase as we add new stores and new line of businesses within existing stores, we want to train our staff with good knowledge of retail business and customer interaction. For this purpose, we will be starting our own retail business training process and content for different staff levels, with the help of training experts in our network.

Also, instead of using external locations/facilities for training, we will use our own Big India Farms land, which can compete with any top location with its forest and river resources, and thus we will have a low cost but effective in-house training academy.