    An engineer from Siemens India was challenged by his wife to repair an imported electrical appliance manufactured by Braun of Germany. Instead of doing so he designed a new one and founded his own brand. Name the person and the brand.

The Strategist Quiz (#237)

Business Standard

    No Free Hunch is the official Kaggle blog. Kaggle is an innovative solution company for statistical/analytics outsourcing, that harnesses the power of crowd sourcing.

Answers to last week's quiz (#236)

Most experts say women are under-represented in corner offices across the world. How well does India score? Our panel of experts, who are stereotype-busters in their own right, share their experiences.

Is the glass ceiling a myth or a reality?

Anxiety is possibly the single largest inhibitor of growth both for an individual and for a corporation, says Thomas J DeLong, Philip J Stomberg Professor of Management Practice, Harvard Business School. He says the best way to deal with workplace anxiety is to accept failure and treat it as an unavoidable aspect of being creative and successful. In this interview to Saumya Prakash, DeLong shares some insights on the role of HR professionals in managing anxiety and conflict in an organisation as well as in dealing with redundancy.

The only way to deal with conflict is to listen to one another and empathise: Thomas J DeLong

Del Monte has found an unusual spokesperson in Chhota Bheem, an animated character from the eponymous series on Pogo.

A recipe for success

When technology bellwethers take to TV promotion, you know they are targetting more than just the online crowd. Microsoft and Google have been flashing TV ads in India, where each company is trying to humanise its technology products and services.

Tech firms score with offline ads

Finally, some respite for Indian motorists tackling heavy city traffic and potholed roads every day. Dutch navigation company TomTom, which announced its entry into India last September, is moving forward to make its products available to the retail customer. To begin with it will offer three portable navigation devices under its Via range &mdash; the Via 100, the Via 120, and the Via 125 &mdash; that are loaded with local maps. The devices are priced between Rs 15,000 and Rs 19,000. TomTom is in talks with various automakers in India and soon the products will be available at Reliance Autozones and Reliance Digital, besides independent car accessory dealers and car dealers.

TomTom: More control, less stress

Unlike clothes, brands don&rsquo;t come with care instructions. There are no labels for brand managers that say &ldquo;Manage with care. Do not treat customers coldly. Use warmth inside out. Do not behave like machines. Use kid gloves instead of iron hands to handle criticism. Do not ever wash your hands off even your worst customers.&rdquo; Sometimes though, you wish they did come with an instruction label. Maybe then we&rsquo;d realise that our jobs are not remotely over as we soon as the consumer buys our brand. That&rsquo;s only the beginning.

The fabric of relationships

Micromax has fallen back on crowdsourcing to revamp the company&rsquo;s logo. The Delhi-based mobile handset maker has organised a nationwide creative hunt in the digital space in association with Talenthouse India, a joint venture between Reliance Entertainment, the flagship media and entertainment arm of India&rsquo;s Reliance Group, and the California-based, Talenthouse. Says Pratik Seal, country head, marketing, Micromax India, &ldquo;The design that reflects the brand&rsquo;s personality &mdash; that is, young, innovative, audacious, outgoing, dynamic, fluid and energetic with an international appeal &mdash; will surely be on the top.

Micromax: Of the people, by the people

The top 10 business bestsellers

Indian Institute of Management, Tiruchirappalli, has concluded its first summer placement for the batch of 2011&ndash;13. The average stipend offered for the internship period was Rs 53,000, excluding travel, accommodation and other benefits, and the highest domestic offer was Rs 1.20 lakh for eight weeks placement.

IIM-Tiruchy student gets Rs 1.20 lakh summer placement offer

Facebook, the world&rsquo;s largest social networking site, has just launched a new initiative under which advertisements will appear in the form of &lsquo;stories&rsquo; or posts about a product in its news feed labelled as &lsquo;featured&rsquo;. Marketers can only pay for these adverts to appear in a user&rsquo;s feed if the user has already &lsquo;liked&rsquo; the page. And the advertiser does not have the option to add its own additional message once the post is live.

Indian brands warming up to Facebook ads in news feeds

Come February, and the cloud over the issue of conducting a single entrance examination for admissions to engineering institutes may finally be cleared. Directors of Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), National Institutes of Technology (NITs) and Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIITs) that Business Standard spoke to said that by the end of February 2012, there may be a consensus on whether to hold a single entrance examination in 2013 and thereon.

Single engineering entrance examination likely from 2013

The lure of finance sector has lost its dominance with undergraduate engineers who are recruited for their analytical skills while it continues to be favourite with the management graduates. With the glooming economic atmosphere, undergraduates prefer to hold on to their core engineering stable jobs.

Student's corner

Sonata, the mass-market watch brand contributing to roughly half of Titan watch division&rsquo;s turnover, has launched a watch priced at Rs 225. Targeted at the &lsquo;bottom of the pyramid&rsquo;, it is touted as the cheapest branded watch in the country. Designed with cost-effective polyurethane material, the watch has a youthful appeal and comes loaded with features like a stop watch, light, alarm, day-date among others.

Sonata takes on small boys

Maharaja, the kitchen appliances brand, has always been known as a low-priced mass market player.

Maharaja's premium play

AFTER decades of listening to a talking tuna, consumers are talking back.

New ads bring back old memories

After doing away with the Joint Management Entrance Test (JMET) last year and embracing the Common Admission Test (CAT), the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are now planning a slew of measures to make their management programmes more attractive and sought after.

IIT B-schools to have single online portal for MBA applications

The optimistic attitude of the youth towards all problems in life is beautifully captured in 7Up&rsquo;s new campaign. The campaign is part of the brand&rsquo;s repositioning exercise that includes a new tagline &lsquo;Dil bole I feel up&rsquo;, a brand new logo and packaging. The new logo retains the same colour scheme as the earlier one; however, the font is different, and aims to be more youthful, progressive and confident, says PepsiCo India.

PepsiCo India: Upping the optimism quotient

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The organised food kiosk market in India at present is about Rs 800 crore and is expected to double to Rs 1,600 crore by 2015. This growth is already visible with more and more brands and entrepreneurs opting for this model in the face of rising rentals and land costs.

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