    In the recently concluded Rio +20 Earth summit, more than 50 countries and 86 corporations, including Walmart and Unilever, signed a declaration supporting a measure of wealth that goes beyond GDP by including the value of natural assets such as soils, watersheds and fisheries.

The Strategist Quiz (#261)

Business Standard

You place an order with an online retailer who promises you will get all your grocery delivered to your home at a time convenient for you, for a nominal fee. You wait at home at the scheduled hour, and then you wait a little longer. Indeed, you kick your heels for hours but the delivery boy doesn&rsquo;t show up.

Managing customer expectations

From belt-clipped pedometers to GPS-enabled tracking solutions on devices in our pockets, or even shoes, we are already living in the era of wearable technology. Wireless technologies, such as Bluetooth, Near Field Communications (NFC) and ad-hoc WiFi are a few examples of how we sport a personal grid within which our shoes can talk to our heart monitors and our smartphones can push Twitter updates to wristwatches or wristbands. However, many wearable technology ideas die a silent death in labs, mostly because their creators cannot figure out their commercial viability. Here&rsquo;s a preview of some products that should get the geek in you excited.

Digital fashion: Wear the tech

While the Indian quick service restaurant (QSR) industry might be growing rapidly, many players are still shutting shops due to lack of sustainability. In such a scenario, a working paper on the QSR industry by the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) has suggested that players should focus on the values sought by consumers.

QSRs need to choose value to sustain business, suggests IIM-A study

Conglomerates have been an enigma for the better part of their half a century of existence. It is challenging to build a successful conglomerate and exceptionally difficult to run one. In recent times of financial crisis, conglomerates world over once again find themselves under intense scrutiny. Popular opinion tends to simplify the issue around conglomerates by attributing a &lsquo;conglomerate discount&rsquo; and prophesying their universal dismantling.

The logic of conglomerates

Multiple brands by hotel chains are pass&eacute; &ndash; every big hotel chain has them to cater to the varying budgets of travellers. But India&rsquo;s biggest hotel chain operator, ITC, has extended the concept further to create multiple sub-brands. Example: Fortune Park, its brand which caters to the mid-market to upscale segment of customers.

ITC bets big on Fortune

From a channel that largely depended on re-runs of its old shows, SAB TV has come a long way by moving up to the fifth spot among general entertainment channels.

For SAB, laughter is the best medicine

Just one sentence in the IKEA website sums it all up: &ldquo;We design the price tag first and then develop the product to suit that price&rdquo;. The $30 billion (over Rs 165,000 crore) furniture powerhouse with 330 stores worldwide obviously doesn&rsquo;t like to mince words: it&rsquo;s an out and out price warrior in all the 41 countries (India will be the 42nd) it operates in.

What IKEA brings to the table

A Bollywood actress was recently spotted pleading with her manager for a day off. It turned out that the celebrity manager had already committed dates to the advertiser, and couldn't go back on his word. The leave was declined, and the star had little choice but to fall in line.

From stars to big brands

For some strange reason, wrestlers and wrestling have been a leitmotif of my life. I was once engaged to a wrestling fan. This was in the days before WWF and cable TV. We used to go to the NSCI stadium in Mumbai to watch Dara Singh and his brother Randhawa take on a host of Indian and international rivals.

Wrestlers I've known

India&rsquo;s diplomats defend their turf from encroachment by academics.

The failure of the Indian intellectual

Chennai is becoming a hotspot for small SUVs. Less than 50 km from each other are Renault and Ford, two players who are about to change the dynamics of the premium C segment. The first one is already here, and has the opportunity to make the most of it till Ford unleashes the EcoSport. But Renault is on a firm footing with the Duster, at least as far as the product goes.

Done and Duster

What could be worse than a pub that&rsquo;s out of beer, or a microbrewery that&rsquo;s run out of brew? That is more or less the case when a friend and I drop in at Toit in Indira Nagar, one of Bangalore&rsquo;s three microbreweries, to determine which can claim to be the best. Toit is split over three storeys topped by a giant tiled roof but still manages to be cozy and welcoming.

Ale is well

I have just got my first job and plan to buy a low-cost, economical car. I am confused between the Maruti Suzuki Alto with a company fitted CNG kit and the Hyundai Eon Era+ petrol. If I buy the Hyundai, I will convert it into a CNG vehicle in two months&rsquo; time. My budget is Rs 3 to Rs 4 lakh.

To CNG or not

When scientologists marry, the words conveyed in the church&rsquo;s wedding service typically contain plenty of warnings. For one, couples are expected to uphold their commitments even when romance and good fortune wane: &ldquo;Know that life is stark and often somewhat grim, and tiredness and fret and pain and sickness do beget a state of mind where spring romance is far away and dead.

Thou shall not part

It had been a windfall, the likes of which he had never seen before. G Daranna Gowda used to be an operator of wheel loaders (a heavy equipment vehicle made by companies such as JCB that are used to scoop material) with KMMI Steel in Hospet, Karnataka. But with 5,000-6,000 trucks trundling down the highway outside his house, ferrying iron ore from mines in and around Bellary, Hospet and Sandur to ports, railway stations and steel plants, Gowda decided to open a small dhaba. And that&rsquo;s when he hit the jackpot. His income soared from Rs 1,800 a month to Rs 2,000-2,500 a day, half of which he was able to keep as profit. Encouraged, the tea-shop owner bought a lorry for Rs 10 lakh, paying Rs 1.2 lakh and borrowing the rest from a finance company.

Boom town goes bust

My mother has a halo of elegant grey curls, and a nose so aquiline that we&rsquo;d be able to play LPs with it if we could only get her to hold her head just so. She walks into shops and speaks her need into the air, as if it will magically coalesce into the person required without all the bother of making eye contact and having a conversation. She likes nice crockery, though she tends to lock it up on the grounds that it&rsquo;s too nice to actually use. And she has been genetically bred to issue orders she expects people to follow without question.

Dirty rotten Bastilles

With more than 140 medals, athletics is the discipline with the largest chunk of medals &mdash; over one-sixth &mdash; at the 2012 London Olympics.

Medal hopes?

Last month, the man whose voice had directed the chilling attacks on Mumbai in 2008 was finally brought to India.

60 Hours that shook India

A four-year investigation by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation has recently resulted in the arrest of a Rudy Kurniawan in California on multiple charges of what may be the largest fine-wine fraud case in history.

Whining about wine

Sunil Janah, an Indian photographer who achieved international fame with his pictures of the famine that devastated Bengal in 1943 and 1944, died on June 21 at his home in California.

The image maker

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