Just two and half decades ago, Premier was one of the largest companies in India .The same firm is all set to launch the Rio &mdash; a Rs 5-7 lakh mini SUV for the city. The car, loosely based on the erstwhile Daihatsu Terios, will be assembled in India from Chinese kits. Decent looks and diesel power should find some takers, especially with that price tag.

Blame it on Rio!

Business Standard

The newest and hottest brands hitting the shelves today are from motown.

Auto-manic

With the festive season upon us, leading cosmetics brands have announced some of their new range of products. From &ldquo;eco-friendly&rdquo; creams and lotions to special limited-edition ranges of cosmetics to anti-ageing creams with diamond extracts, the options in the world of cosmetics are almost limitless. What&rsquo;s more, brands like Estee Lauder are also customising part of their range with a special machine that can engrave the name of your loved ones on the products.

It&#39;s skin season

Among world champions, Capablanca, Smyslov and Karpov had similar styles and thought processes. They were intuitive players, with nearly flawless judgment in simple positions. Except in completely irrational situations, they found the best moves quickly, without much calculation. All had very high-order technical skills.

CHESS #608

Some people make lemonade. Me, I prefer to whine about it to anyone who&rsquo;ll listen.

When life hands you lemons...

Private equity fund Pi Capital is often described as &ldquo;the investment club of the wealthy&rdquo;.

Life and times of a Pi

Roman Polanski is one of my favourite directors; I&rsquo;ve never met a movie of his that I&rsquo;ve found less than interesting, and at least four of them &mdash; Repulsion, Macbeth, Rosemary&rsquo;s Baby and The Fearless Vampire Killers &mdash; are among my all-time favourites. This isn&rsquo;t a film column, but I heartily recommend them to anyone reading it.

Art and the man

The prodigal son who returns but may not stay, the troubled, dying salesman on the road with his young son, negotiating with the censor to write a love story in Iran, depressurising in Ladakh: a to-read list for today.

Escape routes

Above the pulp-line &mdash; but the exact boundaries are impossible to draw &mdash; lies the world of erotica, of sexual writing with literary pretensions or genuine claims,&rdquo; writes George Steiner in Language and Silence, a collection of his essays dating from the 1950s and 1960s. &ldquo;This world is much larger than is commonly realized.&rdquo; (Below the pulp-line, of course, is plain pornography.

Pulp fiction

For Maruti Suzuki SX4, the fireworks will begin just after Diwali. That is when the &ldquo;man&rdquo; among cars, as the SX4 is called in its ad campaigns, will be back after a short break.

The 'men' will be back soon

You can now save around 15 to 20 per cent on your monthly mobile phone bill, if you belong to circles where some operators have rolled out pay-per-second tariff plans.

Your mobile bill just shrank further

Just a decade back, Yahoo! upstaged internet (primarily search) brands like Altavista, Excite and Northern Light to almost become a household name in cyberspace. And when Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang launched Yahoo! in India, he invited veteran Bollywood actor Shammi Kapoor (who shouted &lsquo;Yahoooo&rsquo; in the picture &lsquo;Junglee&rsquo;) to launch the site.

The power of you

Unless you had head in a cloud of opium smoke the last couple of days, you must know that Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. Now you may be pro the decision to bestow the honour that Mahatma Gandhi was nominated five times for but never won, to a guy who is fighting two wars (okay so he inherited those, but still I don&rsquo;t see anyone taking their fingers of the trigger, do you?). You may be anti the decision. You may be, like, wthhh (what the hell happened here)? Or perhaps you just don&rsquo;t give a monkey&rsquo;s derriere about the whole darned tootin affair.

Branding & the Nobel prize

Walk into any multi-brand electrical appliances store, such as Croma and Reliance Digital, and the prevailing chaos there will probably scare you away or will at least stump you for a moment or two. What that means is not only the crowds are back in shops but also every brand worth its name is trying hard to woo the buyer for its share of retail money.

Gadget guide

    Identify this university in the US that is named after its founder who used all the fortunes he amassed while in colonial service in India and was the first president of Madras.

Answers to last week's quiz (#117)

PepsiCo calls Aliva its biggest innovation after Kurkure in 1999. It is a new brand in an all new product category after a gap of ten years from the maker of aerated beverages and snack food. The product has been developed, and the brand conceived, fully in India.

Mix and match

In August, DuPont announced that it will drive its innovation engines to meet the increasing demand for food, protect people and the environment, decrease dependence on fossil fuels, and capitalise on growth in emerging markets. All four have strong resonance in India.

'Genetically modified Rice is a big opportunity'

Channel V has revamped its content with more reality shows.

Reality check

Harman International Chairman, President and CEO Dinesh Paliwal calls it a game changer &mdash; not just for his company, a leading provider of sound systems for high-end cars, but the whole industry as well. Companies like Harman have traditionally developed sound systems against orders from carmakers. This is the first time a company has come out with a system on its own and is ready to sell it to more than one buyer.

Harman International: Sound innovation

    What is the term used to describe a person working for a group or cluster of different employers, or job and a business, or whatever combination comes together best for him or her? It involves the expansion of the concept of freelancing beyond that of self-employed professionals.

The Strategist Quiz (#118)

Understanding Financial Statements
Authors: Moira Chatton and James Gill
Publisher: Crisp Learning
Price: Rs 743
ISBN: 1560524251
Secrets of Power Negotiating
Author: Roger Dawson
Publisher: Career Press
Price: Rs 895
ISBN: 1564144984
Taming Global Financial Flows
Author: Kavaljit Singh
Publisher: Palgrave
Price: Rs 247
ISBN: 1856497844
No Money Marketing
Author: Jessie Paul
Publisher: Tata McGraw-Hill
Price: Rs 399
ISBN: 9780070152700
The Professional
Author: Subroto Bagchi
Publisher: Penguin
Price: Rs 399
ISBN: 9780670082957
Free
Author: Chris Anderson
Publisher: Random House
Price: Rs 502
ISBN: 9781905211487
Getting Things Done
Author: David Allen
Publisher: Penguin
Price: Rs 562
ISBN: 0142000280
The Three Trillion Dollar War
Author: Joseph Stiglitz
Publisher: Penguin
Price: Rs 299
ISBN: 9780141039442
Superfreakonomics
Authors: Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner
Publisher: Penguin
Price: Rs 399
ISBN: 9780713999914
The Disney

The top 10 business bestsellers

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