The XLRI School of Business and Human Resources has received a good response for its pre-placement offers (PPOs) and pre-placement interviews (PPIs) for the 2008-2010 batch. Organisations that have provided placement offers to the students include FMCG major Hindustan Unilever and general management companies like TAS, Aditya Birla group, L&amp;T and WNS.

XLRI receives good response for pre-placement offers

Business Standard

The Ministry of Human Resource Development&rsquo;s plans of allowing foreign education providers to enter India have found support from the Vice Chancellor of Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) who says if foreign universities offer the same facilities and atmosphere to students here, the brain drain will be curbed. In a chat with KIRTIKA SUNEJA, Professor V N Rajasekharan Pillai spoke about the challenges in higher education especially distance learning.

'Create flexibility to accommodate fast learners'

The International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad (IIIT-H), is incubating three product-based ideas &ndash; Dristicare, a tool to analyse fundus images of retina for diabetics, a music feature analysis, and Sethus, a text-to-speech and speech-to-text product for English and 23 Indian languages, said its director Rajeev Sangal.

IIIT-H working on three product-based ideas

On August 1, Manoj Yadav, a watchman at a housing society in Mumbai&rsquo;s Santacruz, bought three packs of Cadbury Dairy Milk Shots for Rs 2 each. That&rsquo;s Yadav&rsquo;s way of celebrating payday &ndash; something he intends to repeat next month, too.

Sweet taste of success

Women want their skin to lie about their age. The image managers of Santoor, which has become the largest selling soap brand in South India, has made that the main selling point of their promotion campaign over the years.

Santoor on a roll

Saregama (popularly known as HMV) has stepped up its digital drive with a vengeance. In a move to increase the digital content to 60-65 per cent of its revenues (from 40 per cent now) in the next five years, the top music recording company is launching a website, tying up with telcos like Vodafone, Idea and Airtel for use of its music library and with cellphone manufacturers like Nokia for in-built sound tracks and albums.

Saregama sings a new tune

The most successful ads are at times the ones that communicate in a culturally specific way. Take the Idea Cellular commercial. The one about how the caste war in a village is stopped by replacing everyone&rsquo;s caste-based names with their mobile numbers. The sign-off line, mouthed by a chamcha to village headman Abhishek Bachchan, is &ldquo;What an idea, Sirji.

Vive la difference!

Mumbai-based S P Jain Institute of Management and Research (SPJIMR) is planning to set up a campus in Canada. The institute, which has two international campuses in Dubai and Singapore, is pursuing due diligence regarding the new project.

S P Jain plans to set up campus in Canada

Overseas education specialists have their hands full this academic year. Apart from providing students with tips on getting suitable accommodation opportunities and ways of arranging foreign exchange and getting insurance cover, they are also busy looking for updates about the spread and control of the swine flu virus in India and abroad, encouraging students fly to their respective destinations peacefully.

Students going overseas wary of swine flu, racial attacks

International education is the third largest source of overseas earnings for Australia, generating around $12 billion in 2008 and supporting more than 125,000 jobs. Over 93,000 Indian students are currently pursuing higher education in Australia.

Australia's loss is UK and Canada's gain

For Sunil Lulla, being the director of Real Global Broadcasting, the company that launched the Hindi general entertainment channel (GEC) REAL in March this year, couldn&rsquo;t be easy. One, the channel was launched at the peak of the economic downturn.

&#39;TV is a hits and misses business&#39;

What does it take to survive in a tough market.

Perfecting Perfetti

    In the mid-1990s, this company spent $1 billion on a four-year test of its electric car model. It leased 800 of these cars to consumers for three years and at the end of it, all vehicles were returned to the company and destroyed. Name the company and the model.

Answers to last week's quiz (#109)

    The Rolling Stones, Abba, Simply Red, Beyonce, Harley Davidson and Tina Turner are some of its customers&hellip; soon it will add the late Michael Jackson to its list of customers. Identify the company.

The Strategist Quiz (#110)

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The top 10 business bestsellers

The current size of the event management industry in India is about Rs 800 crore.

KIT: The Indian event management industry

Shakti Bhog, the Rs 1,600-crore company and a leading wheat flour brand, could not keep its hands off the domestic ready-to-eat market which is growing at 20 per cent, according to Ernst &amp; Young. It is actually not a total stranger to this category as it has exported similar products under its own brand name to over 40 countries in the last six months, while its atta, rice and besan have found their way onto shelves abroad in the last four years.

Shakti Bhog: Quick and healthy

Mobile retail is not an easy business. Customers drive hard bargains and consequently the profit margins are thin as a wafer. In this scenario, Planet M, bought two years ago by Videocon from the Times Group, wants to create a USP: It is ready to negotiate on the add-ons, though not on the phone. Its latest TVC depicts how customers ask shopkeepers &lsquo;kitna&rsquo; (how much does it cost?) just before they begin to bargain.

Planet M: Bargain add-ons

It's eyeing significant growth focusing on fewer product categories - without targeting the mass market.

Why Sony's like no other

Two days after a student at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA) tested positive for H1N1, the management institute has got its act together to handle the situation.

IIMA pulls up socks after swine-flu case

In 2008, any question about job offers drew grim looks from B-school students and professors. This year, the smiles are back.

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