The 1.5x2.2 meter area where Ravindra Salunkhe sells vegetables and fruits at the upmarket Cuffe Parade in South Mumbai may look like just another case of an unauthorised hawker occupying prime space.

Serving up a 'Super Ace'

Business Standard

Mirza International, the maker of Red Tape shoes, leather accessories and readymade garments, has started an online store &ndash; an industry first. People can place their orders online and the delivery will be made by courier. What the company saves in retailer margins, it can spend on the courier. If the online customer is not happy with the footwear, he can courier it back free of cost.

Red Tape eases online access

Nickelodeon, a children&rsquo;s channel and a part of the Viacom18 group, will go blank for 30 minutes this Saturday. Nick&rsquo;s popular cartoon characters like SpongeBob SquarePants, Ninja Hattori and Dora will instead come to schools and playgrounds advocating young viewers to spend time outdoors.

Nickelodeon to kick off Play-a-thon

Indian home in celebrating this year&rsquo;s festival of lights. While families gathered to pray to the Goddess of wealth, manufacturers and retailers alike breathed a sigh of relief, after the tumultuous last few months. Kishore Biyani&rsquo;s claims of a &ldquo;bumper season&rdquo; with electronics and consumer durables flying off the shelves, further added to the buoyancy of the economic environment. Consumer durables companies like Samsung and Godrej Appliances spoke of 40 per cent and 30 per cent expected growth over the same period last year. Some business dailies reported that retailers were witnessing a 45 per cent increase in footfalls and 30 per cent increase in sales! And finally, as results from the second quarter rolled in, one after the other, there was ringing in of hope and optimism that the festivities will end the dry spell retailers have been facing since the end of last year.

Renaissance after recession!

Fast forward to the 2050 Geneva Motor Show. One of the last exhibits in a pavilion dedicated to the &lsquo;Glorious Internal Combustion Era&rsquo; will be the Toyota iQ. The 3D standee projected next to it will read something like this: &ldquo;The Toyota iQ.

The iQ test

International sleeper hit Paranormal Activity isn&rsquo;t the only one to be made with a handycam. In India, local hits are being churned out with minuscule budgets in towns with no history of cinema.

Heroes of the hinterland

Do you know what the waiting list for a diesel Maruti Suzuki is? Anywhere between three and four months. Now for the second question.

Oil burners

When was the last time you wrote a letter? A real letter, in your own hand? Not since boarding school, in my case &mdash; although there was one, just for fun, sent to a friend last year. It took 10 days to reach Mumbai. If I become famous in my declining years, even if only by mistake, that friend will have a sample of my mind circa 2008 to offer my biographers.

Epis-too-late

An award-winning marketing scheme that trains women to ride two-wheelers helps TVS ramp up sales.

Woman power fuels Scooty

Consumers tune in to Shah Rukh&rsquo;s welcome note in a brand new campaign.

Belmonte targets the mid-premium market

While pay-per-second tariff plans seem attractive, there&rsquo;s a lot you need to know before switching over.

Making each paisa count

Publicity stunts are a way for a brand to make waves, make a splash or blow the competition out of the water.

Pull a stunt

Cricket updates: check. News: check. Bookmarks: check. Notepad: check. Web chat: check. Horoscope: check. It may sound like a potpourri but is just a description of what goes into making a personalised homepage that is being promoted passionately by the who&rsquo;s who of the web world &mdash; namely, Yahoo, Google, Rediff and MSN. These homepages, which can be defined as personal newspapers, give all the information in one single window. And even though most of these portals have been around for a while, it&rsquo;s only of late that they have upped the ante on the personalisation front.

Get your own webpage

We all have a variety of multimedia content on our computers.

Stream to TV

The company has ambitious plans for mobile telecom services in Africa.

Essar's african safari

&nbsp;

    Whose product launches have had the code names Cupcake, Donut and &Eacute;clair?
    Google&rsquo;s versions of its Android application&nbsp;
    &nbsp;
    Name the oldest legal journal published in India?
    Madras Law Journal established in 1891&nbsp;
    &nbsp;
    In which country is Tata Motors launching its Indica electric car before rolling it out in India in 2010?
    Norway&nbsp;
    &nbsp;
    What is the name given to a corporate structure in which a number

Answers to last week&#39s quiz (#122)

Indian companies must create uncontested market spaces in different sectors.

Finding blue oceans

Yahoo! in late September launched a global brand campaign &mdash; it broke in India early October &mdash; with a budget of over $100 million. This is a huge initiative from the Sunnyvale, California-headquartered internet services provider to recover the ground it has lost to rivals. It is also the first big move aimed at brand and market development from Carol Bartz after she took over as the CEO of the company from co-founder Jerry Yang early this year. India is a part of this campaign. And the person driving it is Executive Vice-president &amp; Chief Marketing Officer Elisa Steele. Before she signed up with Yahoo! in March this year, Steele led the global brand strategy and integrated marketing of NetApp. She talks to Bhupesh Bhandari on the campaign and the other marketing strategies she has planned for Yahoo!.

'People want the web to be personal'

Reebok has gotten bold. Last month, the company introduced its EasyTone footwear for women, which are meant to tone the leg and butt muscles. According to the company, its lab tests confirmed an increase in muscle activation due to the miniature balance balls underneath the shoe.

Reebok: Working out

    Name the brand whose up to 43 wood parts include mahogany from west Africa, maple from North America and pure wool from Australia, north China and California .

The Strategist Quiz (#123)

With the acquisition of the Asia, Asia-Pacific and North Africa businesses of Yardley from the UK-based Lornamead Group, Wipro Consumer Care and Lighting (WCCL), Wipro&rsquo;s FMCG arm, is ready to fast-track its business which contributes around 8 per cent to the overall revenue. It forked out $45.5 million (around Rs 210 crore) for the assets, which is a little over twice their annual revenue.

Wipro: Strengthening Yardley

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