Airtel&rsquo;s new ad attempts to block its consumers&rsquo; mind space in a market cluttered with aggressive plans.

No man is an island

Business Standard

Last week, German domestic appliances maker Miele entered the Indian market with a range of 65 high-end products targeted at the premium segment. This is the company&rsquo;s single biggest venture outside the German market. The offerings, which are priced between Rs 23,000 and Rs 20 lakh, are targeted primarily at the 400,000 most affluent people in the country. Miele has opened its first &ldquo;product experience centre&rdquo; in Delhi.

Miele: Doing a BMW in appliances

THE CURRENT SIZE of the computer peripherals market is estimated between Rs1,500 and Rs 2,000 crore. It is growing at about 20 per cent a year.

KIT: The Indian market for computer peripherals

Within the first three months of its launch in 2007, the Maruti Suzuki SX4 had overtaken the then Honda City to become the market leader in its segment. Two years hence, the situation is rather different. Today, the Honda City has recovered lost volumes. And Maruti Suzuki&rsquo;s very own Swift Dzire is the leader in the segment. And all of this has been at the cost of the SX4, once the darling of its segment.

Maruti Suzuki: SX4 redux

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BUSINESS STRIPPED

The top 10 business bestsellers

    Which company or brand publishes a bi-annual magazine titled Innovation? This company is looked upon as one of the most innovative in its business.

The Strategist Quiz (#121)

    Desire, Calgaro, Diya, Kashmi, Maya and Lucera are some of the brands of this company. It has 25 film stars who are its brand ambassadors. Name it.

Answers to last week&#39s quiz (#120)

Indians are &lsquo;new&rsquo; brand enjoyers who look for variety and give importance to experience, according to the latest &lsquo;Eye on Asia Study&rsquo; released by Grey Group Asia Pacific, a leading marketing communication company.

Indians are new brand enjoyers

Keeping up the pace at which companies converged on the campus on the first day of summer placements at the premier Indian Institute of Ahmedabad (IIM-A), the second day saw companies like Procter &amp; Gamble, Hindustan Unilever, Coca-Cola, Nokia, Tata Administrative Service (TAS) and the Aditya Birla Group.

IIM-A summer hiring keeps  brisk pace on second day

Borrowing the pace of Day Zero, the second day (Day 0.5) of the summer placement process at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) saw companies from the fields of marketing, general management, consulting and finance offer internships to students.

Marketing, finance, firms visit IIM-A on Day 0.5

The 1.5x2.2 meter area where Ravindra Salunkhe sells vegetables and fruits at the upmarket Cuffe Parade in South Mumbai may look like just another case of an unauthorised hawker occupying prime space.

Serving up a 'Super Ace'

Mirza International, the maker of Red Tape shoes, leather accessories and readymade garments, has started an online store &ndash; an industry first. People can place their orders online and the delivery will be made by courier. What the company saves in retailer margins, it can spend on the courier. If the online customer is not happy with the footwear, he can courier it back free of cost.

Red Tape eases online access

Nickelodeon, a children&rsquo;s channel and a part of the Viacom18 group, will go blank for 30 minutes this Saturday. Nick&rsquo;s popular cartoon characters like SpongeBob SquarePants, Ninja Hattori and Dora will instead come to schools and playgrounds advocating young viewers to spend time outdoors.

Nickelodeon to kick off Play-a-thon

Indian home in celebrating this year&rsquo;s festival of lights. While families gathered to pray to the Goddess of wealth, manufacturers and retailers alike breathed a sigh of relief, after the tumultuous last few months. Kishore Biyani&rsquo;s claims of a &ldquo;bumper season&rdquo; with electronics and consumer durables flying off the shelves, further added to the buoyancy of the economic environment. Consumer durables companies like Samsung and Godrej Appliances spoke of 40 per cent and 30 per cent expected growth over the same period last year. Some business dailies reported that retailers were witnessing a 45 per cent increase in footfalls and 30 per cent increase in sales! And finally, as results from the second quarter rolled in, one after the other, there was ringing in of hope and optimism that the festivities will end the dry spell retailers have been facing since the end of last year.

Renaissance after recession!

Conventional wisdom suggests that life insurance is always sold and not bought in India. There is no customer who will walk into a store and pick up a life insurance box off the shelf. Insurers have to go to homes and sell it. Max New York Life feels it can reverse the trend.

Bhupesh Bhandari: When the ads aren&#39;t good enough

The Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta (IIM-C), which started its summer placements process today, saw offers trickling in from the world&rsquo;s leading finance and consulting firms on day one.

I-banks, consulting, PE firms vie for IIM-C students

Have you ever felt the salesperson at your neighborhood multi-brand electronics storeroom is endorsing only a few of the brands displayed? Or noticed how some salespersons only smart-sell brands which give them better commission? Due to such practices, information technology &amp; consumer electronic majors in India may be losing up to Rs 84 lakh per store annually, indicates a new study commissioned by Grass Roots Group, a performance improvement solutions provider.

India fares poorly in sales staff survey

Pay-per-second billing has become the norm in mobile telephony today. However, this was stimulated by the launch of Tata DoCoMo &mdash; the nth entrant in a crowded category. Idea challenged the leaders &mdash; Airtel and Vodafone &mdash; with a very distinct brand advertising to stand out and get noticed in a cluttered market. DoCoMo used a pricing innovation to enter and make an impact. Though the jury is still out on whether it has worked and on what volume the brand has gathered, there is no doubt the brand has been noticed and the fact that competitors have followed &mdash; imitated &mdash; it is perhaps recognition that it has done things right. This will be a feature of brands and marketing in future.

Madhukar Sabnavis: Challenging time for challengers

After the return of leading finance and consulting firms on the recruitment scene, the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIM-C) on its second day of summer placements saw general management and marketing firms giving its students a lot to cheer about.

Marketing firms give IIM-C a cause to cheer on Day 2

Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode (IIM-K), the first of the IIMs to conclude summer placements this year, saw a little over Rs 1 lakh as the highest stipend offered.

Rs 1 lakh highest offer at IIM-K summer placements

Continuing their association with the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A), the institute's alumni picked up students for the ongoing summer placements through their companies. The alumni's firms that returned to the campus included Edelweiss Capital and Feedback Ventures.

Page 683 - News