Raymond Apparel is slimming down in a bid to grow its business.

Tailor-made for growth

Business Standard

Why is it critical today to renew, refresh our knowledge base.

Learning begins after an MBA

DTH television service operators and television makers are banking on HD offerings to improve margins.

Future ready

How companies in the race for growth can better manage their human capital.

Measuring human capital

IIM-Raipur, IIM-Rohtak and IIM-Ranchi - the new campuses of the Indian Institute of Management - are set with big aims for the days to come.

Get, set, go...

Between now and &lsquo;then&rsquo;, with &lsquo;then&rsquo; signalling a period of 15 years ago or more, the MBA universe has changed even faster than the universe MBA graduates have sought to master. Quite simply, 15 years back, this article would have been telling you about &ldquo;the five reasons you must do an MBA.&rdquo; That, as we all know, has been answered by the thousands more who opt for the course every year. At a core level, this writer contends, the ideal MBA remains unchanged. You want to be treated &lsquo;differently&rsquo; because you believe you bring something &lsquo;more&rsquo; to the table for your employers. That, in an ideal situation translates into an employee who will look to make that extra sale, push for that innovation that saves costs/creates a competitive advantage, or simply does an existing task with fewer mistakes. In other words, a fellow, who, for all his sense of entitlement, actually does more.

Five questions you must find answer to, before that MBA

A recent study by Cartoon Network, New Generations 2011, reveals that the spending power of children in the 7-14 age group has increased dramatically.

Activating pester power

The sheer pre-selected input quality is a major contributory factor for the success of IIM alumni in the corporate sector.

Input quality matters!

Consumer is the King&rsquo; couldn&rsquo;t have been more appropriately used than to describe the tribe of consumers in present times, whether it is FMCG, financial services, brown and white goods or hospitality. A slew of promotions characterize every category today, freebies and discounts are freely dangled to woo the consumers.

Do promotions sway brand choice in car purchase

Companies expanding their footprint in other countries must first ask themselves why they are successful in their original businesses, says Harvard Business School Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor and Harvard University South Asia Initiative Director Tarun Khanna. When not spearheading courses on strategy, corporate governance and international business for MBA students and senior executives at Harvard, he serves on the boards of global companies from different sectors. Khanna also mentors startups in Asia. In conversation with Sayantani Kar, Khanna says few companies introspect on their core strengths before seeking growth in new markets. Khanna&rsquo;s experience with companies and investors in emerging markets worldwide has seeded his two books, Billions of Entrepreneurs: How China and India are Reshaping Their Futures and Yours (2008) and Winning in Emerging Markets: A Roadmap for Strategy and Execution (co-authored in 2010).

Q&A: Tarun Khanna, Professor, Harvard Business School

IIM-Ahmedabad 11th and ISB Hyderabad 13th in global MBA rankings.

On the global map

When Nihar Jain of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay, took up the job offered by a start-up company, what lured him was not the salary package, but the stock option. And Jain wasn&rsquo;t alone. A host of graduates from India&rsquo;s premier institutes have opted for start-up jobs for the same reason.

Engineering, B-school campuses lap up boom-time lollies

National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) found only one in four engineering graduates to be employable. NSDC, which aims to train 150 million people by 2020 would be instrumental in helping to meet the skill gap in engineering graduates. NSDC's partnering with engineering colleges would help impart the required skills to the engineering graduates which would increase their employability. As India progresses on its growth path, it is important that there is an increase in the investment in the education sector to meet the increasing demand for skilled labour to support the industrial development. According to the government, only 10 per cent of India's workforce is made up of highly skilled workers; the corresponding proportion is at least 50 per cent in developed countries.

Student&#8217s corner

Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) and Pharma majors are eyeing a bigger slice of the retail food supplements market that was largely dominated by companies who sold their products directly.

Nutraceuticals: Riding the healthy living wave

Ramesh Tainwala, who recently bought 48.5 per cent in lifestyle retailer Planet Retail, plans to give a new lease of life to the UK-based department store chain Debenhams in India. Planet Retail holds the master franchise for Debenhams here.

Debenhams set to wear a new look

There is nothing fast or easy about building a strong brand &mdash; persistent champions of branding will vouch for that. In their book Brand Building Advertising, authors MG Parameswaran, executive director, and CEO, Mumbai, of Draftfcb Ulka Advertising and Kinjal Medh, COO, Cogito Consulting, have put together the learnings from a series of case studies that have put some companies and products on the brand map. Here they take on questions from the strategist on the challenges before marketing today and how advertising can manage people&rsquo;s changing perceptions.

Q&A: MG Parameswaran & Kinjal Medh

VIP Industries has been at it for quite some time. To appeal to the youth &mdash; and therefore increase frequency of purchase &mdash; the Mumbai-headquartered company has been working overtime to position its brands as fashion accessories rather than utilitarian products. In line with this strategy, VIP &mdash; which claims to be Asia&rsquo;s largest and the world&rsquo;s second-largest luggage company &mdash; has launched a new television commercial (TVC) for its sub-brand Skybags with Hindi movie star and its new brand ambassador John Abraham as the protagonist.

Out of the box

BBC has produced a documentary on them; Prince Charles invited them to his wedding with Camilla Parker Bowles in London in 2005; some of them have been invited to give guest lectures at top business schools of India.

Tourism Queensland: Team spirit

The appetite for acquisition in Indian advertising and media space is becoming stronger by the day, the most recent one being Omnicom&rsquo;s Ketchum acquiring a majority stake in homespun Sampark.

Agencies come shopping

Kraft Foods is betting on the summer season to push sales of its powdered beverage brand Tang, distributed under the Cadbury umbrella. A television commercial (TVC) will bring to the fore the brand&rsquo;s new tagline, &lsquo;Aaja Rang De&rsquo;. Created by Bates India the TVC opens against the backdrop of a park with a bunch of kids sitting around, seemingly disinteresting in the goings on.

Kraft Foods: Cheer leader

Chinni Krishnan Ranganathan is best known for selling shampoo in 50-paise sachets in the seventies &mdash; almost a decade before multinational competitors such as Unilever and Procter &amp; Gamble woke up to the huge potential in India&rsquo;s bottom of the pyramid market.

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