This year&rsquo;s edition of Jahan-e-Khusrau will feature a Toronto-based singer who once lost her voice. Festival director Muzaffar Ali saw the light in her.

Setting the tone

Business Standard

Take a right off National Highway 6A on the outskirts of Raipur city and you will be greeted by wide roads and vast open spaces. There aren&rsquo;t many signs of development, hardly any people and everything looks eerily similar. Go a little further and you will see frantic activity where the Capitol Complex is coming up. This is Naya Raipur, Chhattisgarh's up and coming planned city, and only the fourth in India, after Ahmedabad, Bhubaneswar and Chandigarh.

City in the jungle

Watching Gulzar&rsquo;s 1972 film Koshish on DVD the other day was a reminder that that even when solemnity is the dominant tone of a movie, a light interlude can be effective and revealing. Koshish is the story of two speech-and-hearing-impaired people (apparently it isn&rsquo;t politically correct to say &ldquo;deaf and dumb&rdquo; these days, though no one told the subtitle-writers this) who meet, get married and face the many challenges of their shared condition. Needless to say, this makes for a sombre film with many emotional scenes, underlined by an insistent background score.

A touch of lightness

The angels don't know my address, is what Teja Singh used to say, when asked the secret of his longevity. The tall, thin, ramrod-straight former armyman died late last year at the age of 102. The memory of his unfailing good humour, warmth and curiosity burns strong in his family members &mdash; his 38-year-old granddaughter breaks into laughter again and again as she describes her grandfather.

Full of life

Computer scientists have made many seminal breakthroughs while solving games. When it's a game of complete information, brute force can be applied. Draughts is solved. Chess and backgammon programs outplay the best humans. Go is the last frontier. The Asian territorial game's 19x19 matrix leads to too many legal positions for brute force. Thus far, grey cells beat silicon.

CHESS (#668)

The travel retail business caters to the traveling consumer and includes retail at airports, highways, railway stations, metro stations and ports.

KIT: Travel retail in India

    Name the Indian businessman and nationalist who was the first to enunciate the &ldquo;drain theory&rdquo; in the 1860s. He argued that the basic cause of India&rsquo;s poverty was drain of wealth &mdash; excess exports over imports.

The Strategist Quiz (#190)

    Which experience during the 26/11 attack in Mumbai has been made into a case study at Harvard Business School? Also name the management concept being related to it.

Answers to last week&#39s quiz (#189)

Dunkin&rsquo; Donuts will go after the mass end of the market even as arch rival Starbucks is expected to target the premium end.

Battle of the brews

Can Bajaj Auto stay away from scooters? Chairman Rahul Bajaj doesn&rsquo;t think so.

Scoot and shoot

The Economist magazine&rsquo;s occasional publication, strategy+business, Issue 61 (Winter 2010) carries an article entitled &ldquo;The Good, the Bad and the Trustworthy&rdquo;, that quotes the 2010 &ldquo;Trust Barometer&rdquo; survey by the PR firm Edelman. This study found that people believe that trust, transparency, and honest business practices influence corporate reputation more than the quality of products and services or financial performance.

Television Homeshopping & the consumer: Where's the rule book?

Smartphones and tablet PCs stole the show at the biggest trade fair for the mobile industry.

A congress of gizmos

Every year the Mobile World Congress (MWC) attracts executives representing telecom operators, device manufacturers, platform service providers and content owners from across the world. Over the years the event, without doubt, has become a curtain-raiser to trends and gizmos that are expected to dominate the tech world. In that respect, the world&rsquo;s largest exhibition for the mobile industry this year, too, was no different.

Deciphering the digital signage

Fabbers, or personal manufacturing machines, are expected to change the way we live. Appearances can be deceptive. These devices resemble microwave ovens but are, in fact, 3D printers that have been around for over a decade, churning out mostly prototypes. These, now, have started capturing the imagination of the world with their market-ready products and unlimited potential.

Print to eat, play or work

When some of India&rsquo;s big retail chains banded together recently to substitute Reckitt Benckiser&rsquo;s products with private labels to protest the latter&rsquo;s decision to cut sales margins on its products, they were doing something many global retailers have done with great success.

Home truths

Fear is a great disconnector. It is rampant in modern organisations. We have grown so accustomed to fear that we hardly notice it, be it fear provoked by an announcement, say, your company is implementing new HR rules to check employee performance, or a rumour that it is going to slash jobs. Not managed correctly, fear can hold your employees back more than any other single force.

The fear factor

Ram Charan is the go-to adviser for CEOs, corporate directors and entrepreneurs the world over. Known for his insights and practical wisdom, the acclaimed advisor, speaker and author has counselled some the world&rsquo;s most successful business leaders. For over 35 years he has worked behind the scenes at companies such as GE, Bank of America, 3M, DuPont, KLM, Novartis, EMC, Verizon and so on.

Q&A: Ram Charan, Business advisor and author

With consumer focus on &lsquo;value&rsquo; rather than &lsquo;cheap&rsquo;, there has never been a bigger opportunity for private label brands in India. Here Nirmalya Kumar, director of Centre for Marketing, and co-director of the Aditya Birla India Centre at London Business School, and co-author of the book Private Label Strategy, tells Alokananda Chakraborty what Indian retailers could do to leverage private labels and effectively challenge manufacturer brands.

Q&A: Nirmalya Kumar

For kids, Kellogg&rsquo;s Chocos has been the easiest way to sneak chocolate into a healthy breakfast of cereal and milk. The cereal giant has now decided to nourish the offering by re-launching Chocos in a whole-grain avatar. &ldquo;In the new Kellogg&rsquo;s Chocos, we have made significant investment in both the taste as well as the nutritional quotient of the product,&rdquo; says Vikram Bahl, director (marketing), Kellogg India.

Kellogg: Food for thought

As the country gears up to host its first Formula 1 Grand Prix on October 30, 2011, the official watch maker for the event, Hublot, has launched a limited edition (200 units) of the F1 King Power India watch.

Hublot: Show-off time

MANAGERS WHO MAKE A DIFFERENCE
Author: TV Rao
Publisher: Random House India
Price: Rs 299
ISBN: 9788184001372.
ICC CRICKET WORLD CUP - 2011 OFFICIAL GUIDE
Publisher: Living Media India
Price: Rs 200 
ISBN: 9786077636229.
INDIA: 150 YEARS IN PHOTOGRAPHS
Author: S Prasannarajan 
Publisher: Roli 
Price: Rs 3,500
ISBN: 9788174368119.
THE ART OF CHOOSING
Author: Sheena Iyengar 
Publisher: Little, Brown
Price: Rs 499 
ISBN: 9781408702949.
THE BIG SHORT
Author: Michael Lewis

The top 10 business bestsellers

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