It&rsquo;s back to school for several coaching institutes of the country. Many prep schools known to coach students for admission to business schools and the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are now making a place for themselves in the business of mainstream education.

Prep schools test new waters

Business Standard

Here is what made the Tatas integrate all mobile services and products under one common brand &mdash; Tata Docomo.

One brand fits all

Jonathan Kopp is the global director at the Omnicom-controlled Ketchum Digital, the interactive arm of public relations firm Ketchum. The latter has a majority stake in local agency Sampark. Kopp, who has worked on Barack Obama&rsquo;s presidential campaign in 2008/09, was in Mumbai recently to launch the digital operations at Ketchum Sampark. He spoke to Viveat Susan Pinto on how PR firms can leverage the power of social media. Edited Excerpts.

Q&A: Jonathan Kopp, Ketchum Digital

With Rockstar&rsquo;s box office success, Ranbir Kapoor looks like the most likely contender for the top slot after the Khans.

The next superstar

The other day I watched &mdash; for what was perhaps the fifth time &mdash; Jean Renoir&rsquo;s superb 1939 class comedy The Rules of the Game, about the romantic misadventures of a group of French socialites and their domestic staff. It&rsquo;s a film I always think I won&rsquo;t be able to re-watch in its entirety, but then I get so engrossed in its splendid cast of characters that before I know it I&rsquo;m more than halfway &mdash; it&rsquo;s one of the most accessible of classics, a warm and engaging tragi-comedy.

Joint ventures

Robotic surgery is now being pushed by several hospitals in India. Is it really beneficial, or are there pitfalls that patients need to know about?.

Robots in the OT

There&rsquo;s a certain cognitive dissonance in saying that residents of Delhi are among the luckiest in the world. But when temperatures dip and the number of cultural events multiply dizzyingly, presenting options as diverse as mushaira and qawwali, desert tunes from the dunes, jazz, ghazal, stand-up comedy, heritage walks, flamenco dance, Sufi singing, a cappella, 80-piece philharmonic orchestras, Sindhi folk music, Jamaican ska and psy-trance, an Aga Khan Foundation sponsored Apni Basti mela &mdash; and most of them free and accessible to all &mdash; then that dissonance between reality and belief vanishes.

Capital time

The London classic which follows closely on the heels of the Tal Memorial features many of the same players. Carlsen, Aronyan, Anand, Kramnik, Nakamura played in Moscow. They&rsquo;re joined by Adams (2734), Short (2698), McShane (2671) and Howell (2633).

Chess (#983)

The coming of the malls led to the first shakeup in Indian retail; many standalone stores shut down or saw their business shrink. Will foreign investment in retail aggravate the situation? Priyanka Sharma and Veenu Sandhu visit two retail hotspots in Delhi to see how old-style markets are faring.

Small shop, big challenge

Alan Cathcart rides the first KTM-Bajaj destined for India.

Duke power

It&rsquo;s the biggest thing that&rsquo;s happened to the world of Internet and PlayStation users. The Toyota GT 86, inspired by the legendary Corolla GT AE86, has been unveiled at the Tokyo Motor Show. And alongside it, another mental sports car has been let loose: the Subaru BRZ. Technically, two different cars should be written about in two different pieces, right? Right, but the GT 86 and BRZ are the same, save for the badges, some interior trim and very minor design tweaks.

Get the drift

I want to buy a car, and my budget is Rs 3.5 lakh, so is the Hyundai Eon good for me as far as looks, mileage, performance and maintenance are concerned? If you have any other suggestions, please let me know.

Going Eon and Eon

The RTI revolution has not yet lived up to its promise of making the state more transparent. Rrishi Raote on what&rsquo;s going wrong.

Open secrets

She develops missiles for a living, but Prashanth Chintala is struck by how much Tessy Thomas looks like a typical middle-class housewife.

Rocket launcher

A bad experience led to Phanindra Sama&rsquo;s good idea: why not sell intercity bus tickets online? Aabhas Sharma talks to the founder of redBus.in.

E-ticket to ride

Partap Sharma, who died this week, was a polymath: author, playwright, documentary filmmaker, anchor, actor, voice-over artist and more. His titles were many, but it is for other qualities that I would like to remember him today.

The real complete man

The barefoot artist&rsquo;s publicity factory gets a fillip with Pradeep Chandra&rsquo;s pictorial record of his personal and professional life.

A lensman's Husain

You may not like Mayawati and you may disagree with her brand of politics, but there is no way you can ignore her. And, it seems, Mayawati couldn&rsquo;t care less. In the last four years that she has been the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, she has given no interviews to the media; her media briefings are restricted to a statement, and rarely does she answer questions. People have scoffed at the Dalit parks and memorials she has built, but she has pressed on with messianic zeal. Mayawati&rsquo;s world, you see, is different. She is a Dalit leader. Every time she challenges conventional wisdom, her followers cheer wholeheartedly.

Mayawati's world

The success of India&rsquo;s first online art fair shows just how familiar Indians have become with buying art online.

Log on to art

Parents-to-be routinely turn to the search engine to vet baby names.

Google guides to naming

Corporate India learned tough lessons as the global financial markets melted down in 2008. With economic data in the country suggesting the recent recovery may be affected by headwinds from the global slowdown, now is a good time to remember the lessons from 2008
&ldquo;Get ready for the sun&rdquo;
M G Parameswaran
After almost a decade of double digit growth the Indian advertising market took a big hit in 2008-09. Reports indicate that total ad spends actually shrunk by as much as 5 per

The upside of a downturn

- Find Specials News, Features, Analysis and more at Business Standard. Full coverage of Goafest 2014

Page 1024 - Supplements