A price tag is often what comes in between most fashion lovers and their cherished brands. While we all love to sport high-end luxury products, the price for it is, more often than not, way too high.

Business with bytes, not bricks

Business Standard

Coca-Cola, the latest to add a dash of lemon to the cola war, is playing the pricing game to catch up with Pepsi&rsquo;s Nimbooz and Parle&rsquo;s LMN.

Battle over Nimbu paani

Strangely, the greatest under-10 second TV commercial in the world does not advertise a product or a service. It has no great soundtrack. No fancy trick shots or post production. In fact, it whizzes by faster than the time it actually takes. And yet it freezes you, stuns you, pulverizes you for every hundredth of every one of those less than 10 seconds.

10-sec TV commercial

A little over two years after its launch, i10 has replaced Santro as Hyundai&rsquo;s flagship brand in India.

i10 replaces Santro as Hyundai's flagship brand

While Microsoft&rsquo;s latest retails better than Vista, it still has a long way to go to completely dethrone older OSes in India.

The long wade to Win 7

After tapping the premium and popular segments, HUL has entered the lower end of the tea market with its new offering, Brooke Bond Sehatmand.

A new brew

Indian Premier League (IPL), the annual Twenty20 cricket championship aired on SET Max, will make a homecoming of sorts this year. In 2009, the second edition of IPL was played in South Africa because it coincided with the General Elections and the country&rsquo;s security apparatus was stretched. This time it&rsquo;s back to the country of its origin.

Indian Premier League: Returning home

    The first monorail train system and a single track vehicle were set up in the US in a record time of six months with the help of German engineers. The person who dreamt of it introduced a nine-step process in his company to convert all blue-sky ideas to reality.

Answers to last week's quiz (#132)

Life insurers have begun to spend big money on brand promotion. The market, after all, is crowded. At last count, there were 22 companies in the fray for a market estimated at Rs 55,355 crore. SBI Life, the 74:26 venture of State Bank of India and BNP Paribas Assurance, has been not as aggressive as its rivals so far as brand promotion is concerned. Where others rolled out campaign after campaign, SBI Life stuck to its old campaigns.

SBI Life: Catch 'em young

INDIAN INFLUENCE: The home furnishing industry is greatly influenced by traditional motifs and design, though there is some Western element in terms of styling (use of lace, minimalism etc). Such designs greatly appeal to modern customers who are increasingly adopting a modern lifestyle but are still attached to their roots.

KIT: Trends in Indian Home Furnishing Industry

    What is the term used to define physical and digital mail, documents and packages that flow across organisations to their customers and back? It encompasses people, technology and processes from document creation to production, distribution and management.

The Strategist Quiz  (#133)

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FREE
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GETTING THINGS DONE
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THREE TRILLION DOLLAR WAR
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SUPERFREAKONOMICS
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Publisher: Penguin 
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The top 10 business bestsellers

How Korean consumer durable majors LG and Samsung knocked out rivals in the fight for market share and brand recall.

Korean takeover

Value innovation can help improve efficiency across the organisation and deliver better results.

Where innovation creates value

Carrefour, the world's second largest retailer, is all set to enter India &ndash; it will launch its own cash and carry venture this year. The buzz about the French retail giant finally tying the knot with Kishore Biyani&rsquo;s Future Group is also getting louder.

Lessons from carrefour

India Inc&rsquo;s rural focus is undergoing a key shift. So far, the strategy was to only introduce smaller packs of their flagship brands at lower price points.

Nestle, Glaxo focus on rural-specific products

Even alighting at the railway station is kind of quiet. A few people get off, monkeys snatch some apples from a bemused passenger and run away, and there are no sadhus to be seen. Okay, maybe one. And he&rsquo;s wearing clothes. Outside, on the way to the hotel, it&rsquo;s the same story. Haridwar is quiet, almost sleepy, especially after Delhi.

Postcards from Haridwar

Four legs, a slat of metal or wood, bare or upholstered, a seat to sit on, and another to rest your back against &mdash; the chair might seem the very epitome of design simplicity. But, we discover, it&rsquo;s anything but. In the last century the chair has been the subject of numerous design interventions; the Museum of Modern Art in New York has over 400 &ldquo;designer&rdquo; chairs &mdash; some simple, some interesting, some impossible and many that just make you stop and think. In a conventional sense, ergonomics is, of course, key, and a good design should also spell comfort. But &ldquo;chairs should be stylish too,&rdquo; says Geetanjali Kasliwal, a Jaipur-based furniture designer. Abhilasha Ojha picks some new designs that are quirky and funky, using different materials in unusual combinations.

We rest our case

These designs are among those still acknowledged as iconic.

Classic chairs

What happened to the one-dish meal? After a week of buffet meals on a recent trip, I found myself wondering whether we&rsquo;ve lost the idea of a single, centrepiece dish, unmolested by needless accompaniments, as we pursue the ideal of variety.

One-dish meal

Like pretty much nobody else I know, I spent January 2006 through January 2009 not going to the Jaipur Literature Festival. Only expert idiots do this; the rest of you should not try it at home. This year I redeemed myself by spending the whole week there, and I&rsquo;m here to tell you that the collective intelligence and creativity on display in Jaipur is second only to my regret at having denied myself the pleasure for four years.

Feasting at the Jaipur smorgasbord

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