Before signing Mahendra Singh Dhoni as the youth ambassador for Dabur Chyawanprash to work along with its existing brand ambassador, Amitabh Bachchan, Dabur conducted some consumer checks to find out which young celebrity represented the values of inner strength and leadership.

Brand ambassadors, they are a-changin

Business Standard

Jeans and casual wear manufacturer Levi Strauss (India) is looking to launch women&rsquo;s innerwear and socks by the end of current year. The company is also eyeing the personal care segment and has plans to launch deodorants and other products to supplement its existing jeans wear range.

Levi's to launch women's innerwear

A few years ago, health and personal care consumer products company Emami Ltd conducted a study that revealed that almost 30 per cent users of skin care products were men. This egged the company on to launch Fair &amp; Handsome fairness cream for men in 2005. In the first year of its launch, Fair &amp; Handsome clocked impressive sales of more than Rs 50 crore, and opened up a new segment of male grooming products.

What men want, they are getting

Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH), the UK&rsquo;s advertising agency fondly called the black sheep of advertising, is known for its association with brands like Johnnie Walker, Levis, Mentos and Axe. It is also known for the way it has reacted to economic slowdowns. Its inception itself took place in the 1980s downturn in the UK. The market crash in Singapore happened a year after the company set up base there.

'India has a lot to teach the markets hit by recession'

When the premier Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) displayed signs of being scorched by the slowing economy with a poor placement scenario and lower salary offers, it was widely expected that the scene would not be very different for second-tier management institutes this year.

Non-IIMs witness comfortable placements, but drop in salaries

XLRI Jamshedpur has hiked its two-year post-graduate-programme (PGP) fee by around 18 per cent for the 2009 batch onwards. In an interview with PRADIPTA MUKHERJEE, the institute&rsquo;s director E Abraham, S J, said the institute this year will focus on initiating collaborations with international universities and offering more incentives to encourage research studies.

&#39;The placement scenario has been difficult this year&#39;

Israel-based Tel Aviv University&lsquo;s Leon Recanati Graduate School of Business Administration is offering the Sofaer International MBA (SIMBA) programme to Asian, Indian and Arab students to neutralise the Middle East conflict through a shared philosophy of commerce.

Tel Aviv varsity to offer MBA to Asian, Arabs

Executive education, where organisations rather than individual students generally foot the bill, has been hit hard as corporate budgets come under ever tighter scrutiny. However, while number of students being sponsored by a company for management education has seen a drop of nearly 20 per cent, placements for these executives is still better off compared to the two-year post graduate programme (PGP) students.

Executive education sees poor response, lower salary offers

The Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad&rsquo;s (IIM-A) efforts to replenish its dwindling corpus seems to finally reaping benefits. Even as IIM-A sets a target of raising Rs 250 crore by December 2011, the premier B-school has received a contribution committment of Rs 2.3 crore from its 1989 batch, making it arguably the largest single gift by any batch to any management institution.

IIM-A '89 batch pledges highest-ever alumni contribution of Rs 2.3 crore

The Nano was not the only car that made a splash across newspapers around March 23, the day of its launch. Another car company also carried huge advertisements of one of its bestsellers at the same time. It was Maruti Suzuki telling prospective customers the virtues of its small car, the Alto. Radio ads exhorting two-wheeler owners to upgrade to a Maruti Omni too were put on air.

Who'll rule the road?

Maggi's turned 25 and it is still going strong, but there are challenges ahead.

Maggi@25

A year after its launch, Virgin Mobile still hasn&rsquo;t been able to pull enough subscribers. Can it make a difference to the market?.

Virgin Mobile: Wrong call?

At GoaFest 2009, ads in many categories failed to impress the judges.

No gold rush

The top 10 business bestsellers

INDIA CURRENTLY requires an additional 1.1 million hospital beds.

KIT: Healthcare requirements

    Founded in 1906 as a small Cleveland jobber&rsquo;s shop, this company advertises itself as &ldquo;the world&rsquo;s largest publicly owned creator, manufacturer and distributor of social expression products.&rdquo; Name it.

The Strategist Quiz (#094)

    After a strike in 1950, the workers in this company were given lifetime employment. One of its managers developed ways to increase efficiency without cutting jobs, leading to &quot;pull production&quot; in 1954 and subsequently &quot;total quality control&quot;. Name the company and the manager.

Answers to last week's quiz (#093)

Excluding the models who frequent the club-house stands and after-match parties, cricket and fashion much little in common. Not for Yudhajit Dutta.

Batting for fashion

Brands as widely differing as Maggi, Volvo, Hawai chappal and Dettol, have one thing in common for all Indians from aam admi to crorepati. All these multinational brands are also local generic names for their product groups.

Kanika Datta: Global brands, local &#39;terms of trade&#39;

With the graduation ceremony over earlier this month, Indian School of Business (ISB) students are now getting ready to face the challenges of the real world. Though the placement season for the ISB has been below par this year, it, nevertheless, presented opportunities to many to test new waters.

ISBians ready to tread new path

Marks &amp; Spencer Reliance India (MSRI) has lowered the prices of its cheapest products by 20 per cent by stepping up its sourcing from Indian manufacturers, in a bid to retain customers who are moving away to competitive products.

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