How many of you remember the movie Bullitt? Especially that famous chase scene, where Steve McQueen chases a bad guy in a Dodge Charger down the streets of San Francisco? Steve, being the hero, is in something equally quick and brutish &mdash; the Ford Mustang GT390. Eventually, the bad guy meets his demise when his car goes belly up into a petrol bunk and lights up in flames. That one scene defined the way the Mustang was always perceived &mdash; a hero car for the masses.

Stang operation

Business Standard

I wish to buy a second-hand car with features like air-conditioning, power steering, power windows and with enough rear seat space. I plan to use the car for at least three to four years and have a budget of Rs 2.5-3 lakh. I am not interested in buying a Maruti Suzuki Alto, though. So kindly advise and suggest the best option for me. I&rsquo;m particularly taken in by the Chevrolet Spark and I generally like Chevy cars.

Second or first?

The jury is out on whether Hindustan Unilever can match the success of Tata Tea&rsquo;s Jaago Re campaign with &lsquo;Stay Sharp&rsquo;.

Lipton's jigsaw puzzle

Last week, it became the third telecom brand in the world to cross the 100-million subscriber mark. That took 15 years, but Airtel now wants to add another 100 million in just three years.

Airtel's next call

Bausch &amp; Lomb has adopted a three-step strategy to increase market size.

Clear vision?

The advertisement expenditure (adex) of the digital media, which includes internet and mobile mediums, has increased by 74 per cent to Rs 680 crore in 2008-09, shows a survey by Group M.

Digital media's ad spend rises 74 per cent

The World No Tobacco Day is upon us (May 31st). The Cancer Patients Aid Association (CPAA), in association with WHO and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, has organized a competition to create new pictorial health warnings for cigarette packs. The winning entries may find their way on to cigarette packs in India.

Pictorial health warnings can go up in smoke

The move ensures more than just &lsquo;five-star&rsquo; treatment; provides Wi-Fi access, Internet Protocol phone, plasma screens, gaming consoles...to residents.

Hotels go hi-tech to woo travellers

Smartphones are for those who demand everything from productivity to voice services, without compromising on the looks of the handset. There&rsquo;s an overwhelming variety of handsets in the market which only makes the decision even more daunting for smartphone lovers. Here are 2009&rsquo;s most deserving business phones.

No compromise phone

As a student of IIT Madras, Ram Prakash and his batchmate K S Sreeram were the only graduates who did not take part in campus recruitment. Driven by their dream to start their own venture, they almost scandalised their families when they launched a company Tachyon in 2000, right after college with a paltry investment of Rs 4 lakh. &ldquo;Even this amount was part borrowed from family, who were really anxious about our lack of work experience since the year we launched was really not the best time for a new technology venture,&rdquo; says Ram Prakash , the co-founder and CEO, Tachyon Technologies.

The making of a freewheeling success story

&ldquo;The politicians are untouchables, they can do whatever they want and people like me...the aam janta, we feel helpless,&rdquo; blogs Anurag Kashyap. Hot on the election trail, the filmmaker writes on news website IBNlive.com, branching out from his regular blogs on a cinema portal. &ldquo;Some of these MPs also have attendance less than 20 per cent (in Parliament). Imagine if you were in college and had 20 per cent attendance, would they let you sit the exams?&rdquo; he questions. Reader&rsquo;s comments have poured in in the last month, in support, while some have been indignant, mocking him for calling himself an &lsquo;aam aadmi&rsquo;.

Lights, camera, blog !

How Hero Honda sharpened its marketing skills.

Full throttle

Wrigley's new advertisement hopes to leverage actress Deepika Padukone's mass appeal to drive awareness about the benefits of its chewing gum.

A star in Orbit

Recent campaigns urging the country's youth to vote have had little influence, finds an IMRB survey.

Impassive Indians

It&rsquo;s a leading global manufacturer of servers and personal computers (PCs) with annual revenues of around $120 billion. However, on the back of falling PC sales, Hewlett-Packard &mdash; which gets revenues of over $3 billion from India &mdash; now plans to sharpen its focus on making mobiles, and not PCs, the centre of computing. The HP-EDS combine (HP acquired EDS last May for $13.9 billion) has almost 35,000 employees in India and can offer a suite of solutions ranging from hardware, middleware and outsourcing to its clients, which makes it a formidable player in the commercial and enterprise computing segments. In an interview with Leslie D&rsquo;Monte, Hewlett-Packard India Managing Director Neelam Dhawan explains the way forward in a changing landscape and not-so-encouraging economy as she comes close to completing a year in office after she left Microsoft.

&#39;Mobile is surely the way to go&#39;

Some time last month, Hindi entertainment television channel Star Plus aired 15 films in a week. Of these, at least eight were shown without a break for commercials. Result? Star Plus regained its leadership position and toppled Colors, the Viacom 18 channel, from the number one position. Because of &ldquo;break-free&rdquo; cinema, the channel garnered additional 24 gross rating points (GRPs).

Star Plus: Go &#39;break-free&#39;, get GRPs

On 13 May, the Singh family of DLF sold 168 million shares at around Rs 230 apiece in the market for Rs 3,860 crore. This has brought the stake of the promoters down to 78.6 per cent but averted a mini-crisis that had cropped up.

DLF: The DLF-DAL conundrum

On May 7, Jet Airways introduced Jet Konnect, an all-economy service which will fly on short routes. Sector experts expect Jet to introduce more than 50 such weekly flights, priced almost at par with low-cost carriers. In reaction, Kingfisher, Jet&rsquo;s arch rival, has also shifted around 25 weekly flights to its low-cost arm, Kingfisher Red. Industry sources say the reason why Jet has come out with a new low-cost service even though it has a low-cost subsidiary, JetLite (earlier Air Sahara), could be the legal battle between Jet and Sahara over the payment of dues.

Jet Airways: Will Jet connect?

The current size of the watch market (non-jewellery) in India is estimated at Rs 5,300 crore.

KIT: The Indian watch market

BILLIONS OF ENTREPRENEURS
Author: Tarun Khanna
Publisher: Penguin India
Price: Rs 595
ISBN: 0670081485.
EVERY BUSINESS IS A GROWTH BUSINESS
Authors: Noel M Tichy and Ram Charan
Publisher: Random House
Price: Rs 545
ISBN: 0812933052.
A RANDOM WALK DOWN WALL STREET
Author: Burton G Malkiel
Publisher: W W Norton &amp; Co
Price: Rs 1,659
ISBN: 0393062457.
GROWING GREAT EMPLOYEES
Author: Erica Anderson
Publisher: Penguin
Price: Rs 539
ISBN: 1591841909.
BUSINESS COMMUNICATION
Authors: Randolph H Hudson and Bernard J Selzler
Publisher: Jaico Publishing House
Price: Rs 275
ISBN: 8179924688.
ZIGLAR ON SELLING
Author: Zig Ziglar
Publisher: Jaico Publishing House
Price: Rs 250
ISBN: 8179925870.
MADE TO STICK
Authors: Chip Heath and Dan Heath
Publisher: Random House
Price: Rs 320
ISBN: 9780099505693
SNOWBALL
Author: Alice Schroeder
Publisher: Penguin
Price: Rs 995
ISBN: 9780747598367.
WHAT WOULD GOOGLE DO?
Author: Jeff Jarvis
Publisher:

The top 10 business bestsellers

    Name the fictional couple who appeared in ads run by the insurance industry in the US to block the government&rsquo;s health care plan.

The Strategist Quiz (#099)

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

Page 1166 - Supplements