Sugar, unlike commodities like salt, tea and milk, has failed to achieve a successful transition from loose sale to a branded commodity.

Sugar takes its own sweet time to enter the branded space

Business Standard

At 7, Race Course Road, the residence of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, you can find a glittering array of cars. They are all fitted with post-modern gizmos and security gadgets, and their armour is thick as a tank&rsquo;s. There is also a small electric car which is used to carry passengers, one at a time, from the high-security gates to the house.

Charge of the green knight

    During Christmas 2009, who placed &ldquo;plastic red kettles&rdquo; that accept debit and credit cars in 120 cities in the US? The new kettles have wireless card readers attached to them; such kettles have been used to collect coin donations earlier.

Answers to last week's quiz (#130)

History is replete with the horrific consequences unleashed as a result of the cognitive mistakes of the smart set.

When intelligent people make poor decisions

    This company is driven by the ______ Spirit created by its founder on the following three key values: Creative Wisdom, Unwavering Drive and Positive Thinking. Name the company and its founder.

The Strategist Quiz (#131)

Ramesh Chauhan&rsquo;s Bisleri comes out with a new brand of natural mineral water sourced from a spring in Uttarakhand to take on Tata Tea&rsquo;s Himalayan.

Premium thirst

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The top 10 business bestsellers

To mark 10 years of its existence, Kurkure, FritoLay&rsquo;s Indian innovation in the salted snack market, is changing tracks. It came out in December with a print campaign which told readers how Kurkure is made from what can be found in any Indian kitchen, underlining that the ingredients are as wholesome as what goes into home-made food. Kurkure now on will be less about flavours and more about ingredients.

FritoLay: Snacking on ingredients

SEVERAL BENEFITS: Modern retail can have many benefits for different product categories, including greater penetration, wider product range, ability to display products attractively, direct interaction with the consumer, and the ability to run specific promotions.

KIT: Impact of modern retail on the FMCG sector

Mobile telephony service provider Aircel is taking the philanthropic path. While most brands and advertisers offered discounts this festive season, Aircel came out with a 35-second corporate social responsibility TV campaign that urged youths to donate their unused mobile handsets to old people.

Aircel: Ring in the old

A few years ago, steel companies took to branding to beat the commodity cycle. Now they are taking the brands to a larger market &mdash; rural India.

Setting SAIL for rural India

This time around, the Idea Cellular campaign champions the cause of environmental awareness.

Yet another Idea Sir ji!

Indigo&rdquo;, a joint show by Shelly Jyoti and Laura Kina held late December at the capital&rsquo;s India Habitat Centre, was an art exhibition with a difference. Hanging on the gallery walls were stretches of khadi, dyed, embroidered and block printed by the immigrant Khatri community which came over from Sindh and Balochistan around 1600 and settled in the border regions of Kutch in Gujarat.

A common thread

Himanshu Burte visits a resort at the edge of the Rann of Kutch and is pleasantly surprised Sham-e-Sarhad (Sunset at the Border) is an eco-resort at the edge of the Rann of Kutch built and run by the village community of Hodka. Located in a remote landscape of dry and unending flatness, it was built in 2005 through a partnership between the village community and a Bhuj-based NGO called Hunnarshala Foundation. The project as a whole was the result of a partnership between the village of Hodka, the district collectorate, United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Kutch Mahila Vikas Sanghatan and Hunnarshala Foundation.

Sunset at the Border

Four of the 10 top-grossing movies in 2009 were screened in 3D. Avatar, which collected $1.1 billion within 20 days of its release, may even sink Titanic in terms of revenue.

Changing Avatars

These compact camcorders allow you to shoot videos on the go and upload them on the Internet. Priyanka Joshi picks five that are easy on the pocket.

Shoot it, record it, upload it

It&rsquo;s not enough to have a good-looking car. What your vehicle also needs are snazzy accessories and the best in-car entertainment systems. Simply put, your machine should be a head turner. Going by the accessories that were on display at the recently concluded Auto Expo 2010, it was evident that the market for car accessories, thanks to enthusiastic motorists, will grow at a healthy pace.

Couture for your car

Too many world problems get too little press. Since other people seem to have taken charge of climate change and hunger and world peace, I&rsquo;m going to take this opportunity to raise my voice for acne rosacea, the plague of people-who-flush-easily everywhere. Also I have it, and everyone keeps asking me about it.

Acne what?

Rashid Rana, Pakistan&rsquo;s most successful international artist, was for long considered Indian. But Rana is fine with that.

Outside the lines

It was intended to be the movie-going experience of the decade, but James Cameron&rsquo;s eye-popping science-fiction/ fantasy Avatar has left thousands of people feeling very low, and not just in inverse proportion to rising ticket prices. Apparently, the &ldquo;3D&rdquo; in Cameron&rsquo;s opus really stands for &ldquo;depressed, despondent and dejected&rdquo; (which basically mean the same thing, but who would ever go for a &ldquo;1D&rdquo; film?).

Feelin' blue

Toyota and Honda are preparing an all-out onslaught with their entry-level offerings.

Big on small

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