The summer placement season has been buoyant at the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs). There were 100 offers for IIM Calcutta (IIM-C) students. Those at IIM Kozhikode saw an 80 per cent rise in stipends. All 414 students at IIM Lucknow (IIM-L) have got internships.

IIMs see buoyant summer placements

Business Standard

Rajiv Bajaj isn&rsquo;t a particularly religious man, but the two most favourite words in his lexicon these days are Rama and Krishna. These are the codewords Bajaj Auto employees use for Discover and Pulsar &mdash; the two brands that have helped turn around the fortunes of the two-wheeler giant.

Riding high on Rama & Krishna

When the general entertainment channel from the Viacom18 stable, Colors, grabbed the top slot in viewership ratings for a good 22 weeks last financial year, Star Plus reinvented itself to keep pace with the new-age Indian women.

Star Plus zooms on fiction power

Apart from the usual activities like workshops and seminars, the upcoming Tata Confluence 2010 at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) will see a key new event this year.

IIM-A to introduce new events at Confluence 2010

    An aggressive corporate acquisition of an entity called TomorrowNow has become TomorrowNever. Name the owner and the reason for its closure.

Answers to last week's quiz (#175)

    This company has gone through a rebranding exercise with its logo and tagline undergoing a change recently. The signature tune of the company was jazzed up by its chairman, who is a sitar exponent, based on Raga Kaushi Kanara. Identify the person and the company.

The Strategist Quiz (#176)

The DTH industry has grown from 1.5 million homes in 2005 to 23 million today. By 2012, the number will double, making India the world&rsquo;s largest DTH market.

KIT: The DTH industry in India

START-UP NATION
Authors: Dan Senor &amp; Saul Singer 
Publisher: Twelve
Price: Rs 695
ISBN: 9780446541466.
THE LEADER WHO HAD NO TITLE
Author: Robin Sharma 
Publisher: Jaico
Price: Rs 195
ISBN: 9788184951196.
CONNECT THE DOTS
Author: Rashmi Bansal
Publisher: Eklavya Education Foundation
Price: Rs 150
ISBN: 9788190453028.
ON THE BRINK
Author: Hank Paulson
Publisher: Business Plus
Price: Rs 599
ISBN: 9780755360543.
THE BIG SHORT
Author: Lewis Michael
Publisher: Penguin 
Price: Rs 599
ISBN: 9781846142574.
REACH FOR THE SKIES
Author: Richard Branson 
Publisher: Random House
Price: Rs 599
ISBN: 9780753519868.

THE LEADERSHIP CHALLENGE
Authors: Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner 
Publisher: Wiley
Price: Rs 379
ISBN: 9788126506491.
THE NEW AGE OF INNOVATION
Author: C K Prahalad 
Publisher: Tata McGraw-Hill
Price: Rs 750
ISBN: 9780070248618.
THE CHECKLIST MANIFESTO
Author: Atul Gawande 
Publisher: Viking
Price: Rs 399
ISBN: 9780670084401.
THE ART OF

The top 10 business bestsellers

Religare, promoted by brothers Malvinder and Shivinder Singh, wants to become a global financial services group straddling broking, investment banking, insurance, lending and so on. It might still be early days for the company, but it has come out with a campaign that projects it as one: Global financial services growing with you, everyday.

Religare: Bigger picture

US-headquartered Harvard University may offer more to Indian education institutions from its bouquet of programmes.

Harvard mulls pan-india management training

India is the diabetes capital of the world. It is estimated that 50 million Indians suffer from it. Look at it differently &mdash; diabetics make a sizeable market. Sanofi-Aventis, which sells insulin and anti-diabetes medicine worth more than Rs 200 crore in a tear, has flagged off two new initiatives to talk to patients more closely, rather than bank on doctors as the only medium.

Sanofi-Aventis: Patients to patients

Himachal Pradesh has struggled to improve rural literacy and has had to focus on primary education, but the hill state is now the fastest growing education hub. In the past two years, 10 private universities have set up their base and the government has issued Letters of Intent (LoI) to 19 others.

Tourist hotspot HP is the new education hub

HDFC Standard Life, the life insurance venture between HDFC and Standard Life of the United Kingdom, has given itself a new identity. Thus, it has shortened its name to HDFC Life. There&rsquo;s a new logo which looks like a picture frame. The house colours have changed from yellow and green to blue and red &mdash; HDFC colours.

A brand new Life

The much-hyped Rs 300-crore revamp of the largest telecom service brand in the country, Airtel, happened on Friday. But the response to the makeover has been mixed. Brand experts see a disconnect between what is on offer and the stated objective of the exercise.

Split verdict for new Airtel

Students at Delhi University's Faculty of Management Studies (FMS) have got attractive summer placements with the highest stipend witnessing a staggering 150 per cent rise compared to last year, to '2.5 lakh offered by an investment bank.

FMS students get impressive summer placement offers

Jacques Stern, Global CEO of French prepaid service voucher company Edenred, is thrilled with the growing number of red balls that is plastered on the walls of some of India&rsquo;s leading restaurants and merchandise stores. &ldquo;They are our biggest advertisement,&rdquo; Stern says, with a big smile.

'Ticket' size gets bigger in India

German luxury brand Montblanc has been known for generations as a maker of high-end writing instruments. In the past few years, it has expanded into accessories such as luxury leather goods, watches, jewellery, cufflinks and so on. It operates in over 70 countries and sells its products primarily through exclusive boutiques. Montblanc President (Western Hemisphere) Karl-Heinz Handke, who&rsquo;s been responsible for the company&rsquo;s expansion the world over, speaks to Amit Ranjan Rai about the brand&rsquo;s values and its growth.

Q&A: Karl-Heinz Handke, President (Western Hemisphere), Montblanc

People and organisations with character have a strong sense of values. Having a sense of values means being guided in your thinking and actions by an inner core of standards and abstaining from what you consider wrong. What creates and drives strong values within an organisation? The following book extract from &ldquo;Managers Who Make a Difference: Sharpening Your Management Skills&rdquo; by TV Rao discusses how a sound value system can be established within a company. It is second in the four-part series of extracts from IIM Ahmedabad Business Books.

Nurturing organisational values

When I first started working, I was in advertising. A decade later, I&rsquo;m in marketing communications.

Existential evolutions

A bevy of deodorants is challenging Axe&rsquo;s dominance in the market.

Can Axe retain its effect?

Rahul Anand of IIM Ahmedabad won the Blackberrys&nbsp;first-ever Young Guns creative young professional award, at an event held at IIM Kozhikode (IIMK). Young Guns is an initiative to pick the passionate and determined young professional and to identify him / her as a leader of tomorrow, with an ever-prepared attitude to rise above in all situations.

Page 578 - News