The Timex Group, one of the world&rsquo;s largest watch makers, set up operations in India in 1992. Over the years the market has evolved and a number of players, both national and international, have rolled out aggressively. Timex India is now catching up and looks ready to provide some strong competition.

Q&A: Kapil Kapoor & VD Wadhwa, Timex

Business Standard

Kishore Biyani is betting big on private labels in food. So after noodles, breakfast cereals and soup, it&rsquo;s the turn of rice, snacks, spices and edible oil.

Future's growing appetite for food

From hiring musicians to beefing up distribution, firms are doing everything to push their brands in rural India.

Cement makers pull out all the stops for Bharat

How Lifestyle International Managing Director Kabir Lumba is putting the retail chain back on track Some time towards the end of February last year, credit rating agency Crisil had downgraded Lifestyle International, a part of the $3.2-billion Dubai-based Landmark group, a notch.

A thrifty lifestyle

In an industry-academia collaboration in North-East, Assam-based Numaligarh Refinery Limited (NRL) today entered into a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Gauhati University for management education (MBA) for its executives.

NRL, Gauhati varsity ink MoU for MBA programme

Most termed it Ratan Tata&rsquo;s vanity play when he acquired the marquee brand in the UK.

Jaguar goes for the kill

Research In Motion (RIM), makers of BlackBerry phones, may be facing one of its worst crisis the world over, but Indian consumers don&rsquo;t seem to be too bothered about the security concerns being voiced by the government.

Pricing, retail push save BlackBerry the blushes

Never mind the globe-trotting rou&eacute; whom Dos Equis beer describes as &ldquo;the most interesting man in the world.&rdquo; On Madison Avenue, at least, that sobriquet belongs these days to Joel Ewanick.

A whirlwind moves into GM's marketing office

    CW Post founded the Postum Cereal company. The Post brand.

Answers to last week&#39s quiz (#161)

    This brand was launched on August 15 and has been associated with cricket and Bollywood stars like Shah Rukh Khan, Aishwarya Rai, Sachin Tendulkar, Saif Ali Khan, Amitabh Bachchan and Virender Sehwag. Name it.

The Strategist Quiz (#162)

Dry cell batteries are of three types &mdash; zinc, alkaline and rechargeable.

KIT: The Indian dry cell market

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The top 10 business bestsellers

New products haven&rsquo;t tasted much success.

Marico's strike rate falters

In-product placements and co-branding in films or television serials have just entered a new pitch, with animation films joining the game.

Animation films join the co-branding rush

In an ironic move, Kellogg &mdash; the $13-billion cereal maker &mdash; has stepped into the hot breakfast segment with its Heart To Heart Oats. With a portfolio of cornflakes and its many variants, Kellogg has been known the world over for its cold breakfasts &mdash; a recipe for disaster in India. Indians, with their proclivity for piping hot breakfast, found that cornflakes turn soggy the moment warm milk was added. Kellogg had entered India in 1994 with the promise of changing the breakfast habits of Indians.

Kellogg: Kellogg's hot breakfast

PepsiCo has launched Pepsi Max, its zero-calorie, no-sugar cola, in India. The brand was first introduced in the UK and Italy in 1993 and has since been rolled out in over 40 countries. Globally, it competes with Coke Zero, Coca-Cola&rsquo;s no-sugar variant, which is five time the size of Pepsi Max. Coke Zero is yet to enter India but that shouldn&rsquo;t take long, thanks to Pepsi Max&rsquo;s arrival. Why a zero-calorie variant when PepsiCo already has Diet Pepsi, and why now? After all, the diet cola category in India is merely one per cent of the total sparkling beverages sales of 650 million cases a year.

PepsiCo: Can Pepsi Max its fizz?

Children are increasingly influencing their parent&rsquo;s buying decisions.

When kids shop

Microsoft failed to create a buzz around the tablet PC. Apple, with the iPad, has resurrected this form factor. And around 10 million users are expected to buy tablet PCs this year.

The return of tablet PC

Serving under-served routes in India is paying rich dividends for Tony Fernandes&rsquo; AirAsia. Can the largest low-cost carrier in South-East Asia stay ahead of rivals? Tiruchirappalli or Trichy lies somewhere in the middle of the highway that connects Chennai with Kanyakumari, the southernmost tip of the country. It is a hub for industrial engineering, houses a number of institutions of higher education &mdash; some of them over a hundred years old &mdash; and is famous for its temples. It is an ancient city and the fourth-largest urban centre of Tamil Nadu. Still, it is an unlikely place for an aggressive international budget airline to start its Indian operations. But that&rsquo;s precisely what AirAsia, the largest low-cost carrier in South-East Asia, has done. It found that people from Trichy travelled first to Chennai and then took a connecting flight to destinations like Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok. It was expensive, and it wasted a lot of their time.

Destination India

Learning begins at home. But, while Indian IT companies were busy providing software solutions for the rest of the world, they could not see beyond the traditional route when it came to hiring wannabe techies.

Going online: IT majors take tech route to hiring

A lesson or two from Bollywood could not only be entertaining for our future managers but could also be a shaping tool for the bright minds. And, Indian B-schools are all set to cash in on the idea.

Page 638 - News