Hindustan Unilever has entered the surface cleaning market with Cif.

Cleaning up

Business Standard

Yum! Restaurants has clearly segmented the market with KFC and Pizza Hut.

Outside the bun

It is time to say goodbye to the Onida devil and his popular quip, &ldquo;Neighbour&rsquo;s envy, owner&rsquo;s pride&rdquo;. Another long-running campaign has thus come to an end. &ldquo;The figure of the Onida devil has been so strongly associated with our brand that its popularity owes itself to those campaigns to a large extent,&rdquo; says Onida Vice-president (marketing, sales and services) Sriram Krishnamurthy.

Onida: The devil's end

Bunge India last week revamped the 75-year-old Dalda brand, which it had acquired from Hindustan Unilever in 2003. The re-branding includes a new logo design and positioning for the edible oils category. The decades-old palm tree logo on a yellow backdrop has now been replaced by a mother and child symbol which Bunge says connotes the purity and caring nature of the brand, along with a golden border which signifies premium value and a seal of protection. The font style for Dalda has been made more contemporary and the positioning changed to &ldquo;Husband&rsquo;s choice&rdquo;. Besides, it is being offerred with more vitamins to make the oil healthier.

Bunge India: Dalda vs 'dalda'

Stiff competition has made today&rsquo;s parents look at pre-school education more seriously. With household incomes on the rise, parents are going for reputed pre-schools and the demand has led to the emergence of organised chains of branded playschools across the country. Currently, thepre-school industry in India is estimated to gross about Rs 4,004 crore and is likely to grow more than 25 per cent by 2012. Some famous branded pre-school chains in the country are Kidzee, Mother&rsquo;s Pride and Eurokids. This recession-proof and fast-growing industry is attracting investments from bigger private players.

KIT: India's pre-school education market

WORDS AT WORK
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THE LEADERSHIP MOMENT
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The top 10 business bestsellers

    One of this brand&rsquo;s print ads featured a four-armed, scantily clad woman wearing gold clothing, accompanied by the headline, &ldquo;There is a Goddess.&rdquo; The company that owns the brand was accused by a group called the American Hindus Against Defamation of tarnishing the image of the Hindu god Shiva. Name the brand.

The Strategist Quiz (#114)

    With what is an Angry-Gram sent out from a virtual Angrix 3000 typewriter? Identify the brand.

Answers to last week&#39s quiz (#113)

Three years ago, Officer&rsquo;s Choice was selling just five million cases a year and its market share was around 10 per cent in the regular whisky segment.

A new high for Officer's Choice

The second largest DTH player is way behind the market leader in subscriptions.

Tata Sky tunes in to the power of plus

Denied the chance, by a beady-eyed weight-watching travel friend, to carry with me into the heights of Uttarakhand Goethe&rsquo;s The Sorrows of Young Werther, I revenged myself by purchasing, at the highest (and wettest) place on our itinerary, a copy of Bill Aitken&rsquo;s Touching upon the Himalaya: Excursions and Enquiries (Indus, 2004). Now that I am back at sweat level in Delhi and have actually read the Goethe, I realise that Young Werther would have made poor company.

Mountain lines

&quot;This is much more dangerous than painting watercolors,&rdquo; New York artist Greg Wyatt frets as the predawn convoy of safety vehicles and trucks carrying his 11-ton Two Rivers bronze statue rumbles across the Arno River.

Florence gets an American statue

This is the worst hour for Formula One. Well, the multi-continent, billion-dollar sport with real characters was always dubbed as a &ldquo;circus&rdquo;, but it was still a sport.

At your service

I&rsquo;m looking for a hatchback, which will be used in the city. My budget is Rs 5 lakh, and the car should seat a family of four comfortably.

Yank this

Laser beams that write across the night sky, high wattage music, pulsating crowds and months of preparation &mdash; you might be forgiven for thinking that a Madonna show is in the offing, but for nine days and nine nights Falguni Pathak will put the Virgin star to shame with her popularity in at least Mumbai and Gujarat.

Dandiya nights

If you are a man, circa 2009, the clothes on offer alternate wildly between come-hither hot pants to royalty inspired clothing where yardage is used with gay abandon. The trends on show at the Van Heusen India Men&rsquo;s Week (VNIMW) made another thing quite clear. Reed thinness, a female fashion malady so far, is soon to strike men as well. Almost every designer (21 labels showed at the event) put out versions of the skinny trousers. First-timer Himmat Singh Jaipur, whose show impressed both the buyers and the critics, put his models into jodhpurs and if not that, they had to suffer slim pants. Kotwara, the label by Meera and Muzaffar Ali, channeled the royal Awadh look, which meant that there was space for loose payjamas below kurtas but here too, the skinnies made a prominent appearance.

Hot off the ramp

Ever since Nato forces invaded Afghanistan in 2001, that country&rsquo;s flourishing opium trade has been in the background of global consciousness. To most casual observers, however, its existence is regarded as just another feature of the chronic dysfunctionality of the region &mdash; fundamentalism, general lawlessness, women&rsquo;s oppression, warlordism and so on.

Afghanistan's real axis of evil

The Ramgarh Bungalows in Kumaon let you play proprietor without actually investing in real estate, marvels Bharati Motwani.

Hideaway homes

I f you are very good at your game, you are allowed a few mistakes. For example, if your name is Maradona, you are allowed to use drugs, shoot journalists and even occasionally score goals with your hand.

Super Seven

Since my first article for this column nearly five years ago, the number of wine labels available in India has grown so large that it&rsquo;s now difficult to write about wines from individual countries and do justice to the subject.

The wine revolution in India

We live in a Nano-age and it is natural to lust after gadgets that are compact while still making no compromises on their basic features. Slim digital cameras or &ldquo;ultra-compact&rdquo; as they are called, can be easily slipped into a purse or a pocket so that you never miss an opportunity to take a picture. Since these put a premium on their size and style while still retaining the best of technology in the segment, they do not exactly come cheap.

Shoot at sight

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

Page 1137 - Supplements