Regional players have hit Hindustan Unilever (HUL) where it hurts the most.

From India to Bharat

Business Standard

For four decades, Fiat was the only well-known car brand in India other than Ambassador. What&rsquo;s more, while Ambassador was for the officialdom and families, Fiat was the car of the yuppie, forward-looking folks.

Fiat's third coming

Not very long ago, when joint families were still the norm, elders would insist we have a spoonful of curd with sugar before we step out of the house. The auspicious ritual of combining sugar with a little bit of sour was meant to prepare you for experiences, both sweet and bitter, through the day. Or when your grandmother&rsquo;s home made sweets and confectionary was the centre piece of every family celebration. As families become nuclear and grandchildren&rsquo;s easy access to grandmother&rsquo;s goodies become rare, the winds of cultural change bring opportunities for brands to seize! Cadbury, chose to compete with life, instead of playing within the confines its category and was positioned in place of traditional sweets, with the tagline of &ldquo;kuch meetha ho jaye&rdquo;. For nuclear families, it meant that while Dadima&rsquo;s pedas would be missed; the celebration would no longer be incomplete.

Mining life for brand opportunities

Arvind Rao recalls the time in early-2002 when OnMobile, the company that he had founded with friend Mouli Raman two years before, almost shut shop. The two had met when Rao worked for a private equity fund and was negotiating for a venture with Raman at Infosys Technologies. They clicked and decided to float a business together. But now things looked bad.

Global Roaming

Downsizing. Right-sizing. Up-sizing. Human capital planning swings between these three points, without ever finding a balance at any point of time. It is amongst the most challenging and demanding business problems of our times. In his book, Talent on Demand, Peter Cappelli, professor of management, Wharton School, argues for using the principles of supply chain management, suggesting that the fundamentals of just-in-time manufacturing can be applied to talent management.

The just-in-time talent solution

When you step in to any of the eight Le Meridien hotels in India, indeed any in the world, you should be able to smell almost as soon as you step into the lobby &mdash; emerging through a portal, an art work usually, at the hotel entrance &mdash; a peculiar scent of old books and parchment in a library.

Starwoods Hotel: Tweaked to please

Sometime in October, General Motors India will roll out the Chevrolet Cruze. It will be positioned between the upper end of the executive segment and the entry level of the premium segment. The range (petrol or diesel, automatic or manual transmission) will be priced between Rs 13.50 lakh and Rs 18.50 lakh.

General Motors India: Cruzing along

Godrej Consumer Products is in talks with Sara Lee to acquire its 51 per cent equity stake in Godrej Sara Lee. The joint-venture company owns brands like Good Knight, Jet and Hit and manufactures, markets and distributes Sara Lee&rsquo;s international brands like Ambipur, Kiwi and Brylcream in the country.

Godrej Sara Lee: Parting ways

The Rs 172,000-crore private education market in India is estimated to be growing at 11 per cent a year &mdash; this segment represents 51 per cent of this market. Thus, the market for school uniforms is huge and growing at a fast pace. At present, uniforms are almost 40 per cent of the Rs 32,000-crore kidswear market, with growth of 15 per cent over last year.

KIT: School uniform retail in India

THE DISNEY WAR
Author: James Stewart
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THE WAL-MART WAY
Author: Don Soderquist
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INDIA&rsquo;S GLOBAL POWERHOUSES
Author: Nirmalya Kumar
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HOW TOYOTA BECAME #1
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THE ASCENT OF MONEY
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HOUSE OF CARDS: HOW WALL STREET&rsquo;S GAMBLERS BROKE CAPITALISM
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THE RETURN OF DEPRESSION ECONOMICS
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BUYOLOGY
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HOW THE MIGHTY FALL
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The top 10 business bestsellers

&nbsp;

    Commander, Compass, Liberty and Wrangler are sub-brands of which vehicle brand?
    &nbsp;
    Which company founded in the 1830s is associated with its trademarked Blue Box and Blue Book?&nbsp;
    &nbsp;
    Which retailing company ran the following ad line in the 1980s: &ldquo;The biggest name in little computers&rdquo;?&nbsp;
    &nbsp;
    What was the first clamshell cell phone called?&nbsp;
    &nbsp;
    Who was the first Indian to receive royalty from the sale of

The Strategist Quiz (# 108)

&nbsp;

    What is common to Infosys Technologies and Technopak Advisors?
    Both the companies had tie-ups with Kurt Salmon Associates and later separated&nbsp;
    &nbsp;
    Whose mascots are Chouw and Mouw?
    Videocon Industries&nbsp;
    &nbsp;
    Which newspaper was the first to publish a correct story about the sinking of the Titanic in 1912?
    The New York Times&nbsp;
    &nbsp;
    Which is the only company that is allowed to use the Red Cross logo and why?
   

Answers to last week&#39s quiz (#107)

No less aggressively than he had built Satyam, Ramalinga Raju built an emergency healthcare provider called EMRI, starting in his home state of Andhra Pradesh.

The 108 business plan

It&rsquo;s going from 20 per cent to 25 per cent!&rdquo; &ldquo;It&rsquo;s coming down to four per cent.

A case of sour grapes?

W hen I was younger, I often saw my mother diligently consume tulsi (basil) leaves every morning. She always spoke of the goodness of the plant, a medicinal herb that not only had the potential to cure diseases but was also revered for religious reasons in most Hindu homes.

Magic herb in a pot

If you aren&rsquo;t entirely pleased with the results of your current exercise regimen, there is help at hand. For immediate access to tips, go online. We were, initially, sceptical of &ldquo;health management portals&rdquo; too. However, having explored further, we found some treasure troves. For one, you could check out Healthizen.

Fighting fit

If the Octavia can be termed a well-planned and executed revolution, the first generation Superb was a calculated risk. The Skoda brand had gone through a resurrection of sorts, but was the company ready to take on the Mondeos and Vectras which filled up the fleet sales in Europe? Well, the car was so well received that it was compared to far more expensive stuff &mdash; machines that wear three pointed stars and leaping cats! As for fleet sales, the last- gen Superb managed well and sold over 1,30,000 odd units.

Business end

Swap engines, twiddle with the gearbox, soften or harden the suspension &mdash; the things you can do with an existing car is virtually limitless. Or, if you&rsquo;re Skoda, you could take the Fabia, stretch out the rear, slap on some butch extensions on the wheel arches, play around with the interiors and add the suffix &lsquo;Scout&rsquo; to the name.

Scouting around

A friend in school once told me that the most active thing he&rsquo;d ever seen me do was sneeze. I might have spent Games periods hiding in a luggage storage area and reading, but that apart, it was a downright calumnious thing to say, and I held it against him for a couple of decades.

Party smart

Toyota is coming to terms with the &ldquo;largest car maker of the world&rdquo; title in a very global manner. The penchant for aggressive expansion is now curbed in favour of consolidation and a renewed focus on quality &mdash; when it comes to cars as well as sales and service. Things will be different when it comes to India though.

Moving along swiftly

Laid up with flu &mdash; but not swine flu &mdash;this week, my attention was caught by the plight of a child, who, luckily, had not come in contact with any virus, unless you can call a set of battling parents that! The child in question was at the centre of a custody battle between a mother who wanted to raise him in Australia and a startlingly regressive father, who wanted the court to intervene because he was worried not about the influence of parental separation but the evil influence of

Deconstructing Indianness

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