Rock and roll

ICE PEOPLE

Quick, who's composed the current chart buster "Dus bahane karke..." in the Abhishek Bachchan starrer Dus? It's the same guys who gave you Jhankaar Beats. Meet Shekhar Ravjiani, 29, and Vishal Dadlani, 31, the music director duo who's lent a peppiness to Hindi film music.

As Vishal-Shekhar, they've churned out hits for Musafir, Waisa Bhi Hota Hai "" part II and Shaadi Ka Ladoo. Salaam Namaste under the Yash Raj banner is their next big film though they are also working with Ramesh Sippy, Sujoy Ghosh, Sanjay Gupta and Milan Luthria.

It's ironical that the song from Dus should be such a hit. For, the two had first met in 1999 for Mukul Anand's Dus. But the project was shelved when Anand died. "Between 1999 and 2003, we were setting up our studio, writing songs (Dadlani who doubles up as a lyricists sometimes wrote "Allah ke bande..."), throwing tantrums and composing a few numbers," says Ravjiani.

In 2003, Sujoy Ghosh approached them for Jhankaar Beats armed with 500 tapes of R D Burman's music. "He wanted us to study Pancham da's music and create something similar," recalls Ravijiani.

Jhankaar Beats won them their first Filmfare (R D Burman) Award for music. Today, their songs from Musafir and Dus are among the most downloaded ringhtones.

What's their dream as music composers? "Our songs should be re-mixed just like Pancham da's, long after we are gone. But do pay us the royalties please," they request.

Racing ahead

Moninder Jain, 33, is a fitness freak. Not even his hectic work schedule as country manager of Logitech Electronic India Pvt Ltd, the 100 per cent subsidiary of the Swiss peripherals company, Logitech International SA, interferes with his daily exercise routine at Bandra's Gold Gymn in Mumbai.

He likes running up to 10 km a day though "pollution is forcing people to use the treadmill more than the parks," he says.

Jain joined Logitech last August and his attempt has been to re-position the mice company as a PC and living and entertainment peripherals solution provider. In the last six months he has flooded the Indian market with a new range of Logitech products "" cordless keyboards, web cameras, PC gaming peripherals (joysticks, wheels) and THX certified speakers. "India is rocking and we want a serious presence here," he observes.

To enter the telecom space, Jain also introduced the mobile Bluetooth headsets.

Clearly, the MBA from the Faculty of Management Studies in Delhi is eyeing market leadership in different product categories and he's banking on his 10 years of experience in the IT industry to achieve that.

Jain was the country product head at Samsung India's IT Value & Lifestyle Business. He also spent three years at Xerox India.

Logitech's manufacturing plant in China is massive. It has no plans to set up a facility in India "which is a big retail market for us," he says. So, console gaming accessories for people using Playstation and X Box are in the pipeline. Jain is also busy fulfilling his childhood dream of collecting the entire set of books on Tintin and Asterix.