Aabhas Sharma learns the nuances of marketing all things luxurious from Ashish Chordia, the man who brought Ferrari, Ducati and Fendi to India.

Merchant of uber luxury

Business Standard

What has shocked me most about the brouhaha over Joseph Lelyveld&rsquo;s Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India is that the words &ldquo;bisexuality&rdquo; and &ldquo;racism&rdquo; have been given equal weight and seem to be equally offensive to most people in the ensuing public discussion. I have yet to hear of protests from progressive individuals or interest groups like the LGBT about this implicit and unfair prejudice.

Stray or Great

Despite what the title of his latest exhibition claims, Thota Vaikuntam&rsquo;s subject of choice remains images from Telangana.

Familiar figures

An estranged colleague of Julian Assange tells the story of WikiLeaks and its founder. J Jagannath finds the book less revelatory than the website.

Drip from the top

For three weeks I phoned and waited in vain for LG to come and set up our new washing machine. Fed up at last, I did what I should have done first: folded up my sleeves, took out the screwdriver and cracked open the Owner&rsquo;s Manual.

Adjust legs as shown

Photography has always been a popular hobby, but digital cameras have given it a new lease of life. Students, executives, housewives &mdash; everyone these days has ambitions of being a photographer, and are ready to spend tens of thousands on cameras and equipment. Mostly, it is to satisfy a latent creativity, but some don&rsquo;t mind selling once in a while to earn an extra buck.

All eyes on the lens

A hand-carved diamond crucifix drew all eyes at Basel&rsquo;s famed jewellery fair.

Diamond cross

All too often dealers have moaned the diminishing magnitude of good quality and historically provenanced art, pointing out that acquisitions in important collections place them out of reach of the market. While this is a valid enough reason for an increase in the valuations of artists who are now considered masters, art-lovers reasonably expect to see some of these collected works come back into the market on secondary sales. Often, though, such sales are privately handled &mdash; because the seller does not want to draw attention for reasons of tax, or embarrassment (selling art, after all, is equivalent to peddling the family silver), which is why sellers have tended to use the argument that collections are sacrosanct to increase the value of those artists&rsquo; works that are in the market.

A one-off sale

J Jagannath speaks to Bob Last, producer of Oscar-nominated The Illusionist.

The traditionalist

BBC Entertainment&rsquo;s series on Sherlock Holmes shows the legendary detective in a contemporary avatar.

Modern day Sherlock

Warren Buffett, glided in and out of dining halls and conversations &mdash; real and imagined for three whole days. Anyone looking for the smartest investing tip or hoping he would give corporate India&rsquo;s philanthropic bones a good shake missed the imprint of his visit. His abiding message is something meatier than that. It is about being, quite simply, a happier person. The rest, it seems according to Buffett philosophy, will follow.

In search of happiness

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The top 10 business bestsellers

Boutique healthcare centres generally refer to luxury hospitals/clinics that specialise in a few select elective medical or surgical procedures, cater to quality conscious affluent customers, and offer a unique experience and personalised care.

KIT: Boutique healthcare centres

    In the late 1880s, the founder of this 120-year-old brand set out to fulfill a lifelong ambition of building his factory with the help of his seven sons and two daughters.

The Strategist Quiz (#195)

Shoppers Stop is following the tagline of its brand campaign &mdash; &lsquo;Start Something New&rsquo; &mdash; quite ardently. One of the biggest change in the operating strategy of the Raheja-owned retail chain is the shift in its trading model, says Managing Director Govind Shrikhande.

Key shifts for Shoppers Stop

    This company has been a rumoured takeover target 21 times and its name in Hawaiian means &lsquo;intelligent&rsquo;. Name it.

Answers to last week&#39;s quiz (#194)

A few days ago, the front pages of quite a few newspapers carried advertisements by Tupperware, a leading kitchenware brand. Nothing unusual, except that Tupperware is a direct selling company that has traditionally been avoiding advertising campaigns.

Direct selling firms go off the beaten track

Eighteen-year-old Mohammad Arman from Kolkata, who works in a footwear factory, would have been the most unlikely candidate for mobile gaming during the early 2000s. But Indians like him are fast catching up with the world of gizmos and apps.

All in the game

When Titan Industries adopted &lsquo;Be More&rsquo; as its brand philosophy in 2008, it was not simply reflecting the aspiration of the new age consumers &mdash; who wish to make most of their lives &mdash; it was perhaps quietly stating an impending shift in its overall corporate strategy. By then, Titan Industries was actively exploring new opportunities to become a lifestyle company and not just a successful watch maker.

On the fast track

Abhinav Bharghav caught the nail-biting quarter finals between India and Australia on his 3G-powered mobile TV.

Users stick to 2G data plans in 3G regime

&ldquo;Like everything else in India, marketing too is part logic, part gut,&rdquo; says Dheeraj Sinha, regional planning director, Bates 141, in his book, Consumer India: Inside the Indian Mind and Wallet. In his book, Sinha puts Indian consumers into three segments: partition generation, transition generation and no-strings generation, and gives an account of what marketers and advertisers need to keep in mind to draw the attention of each of these consumer segments. Taking off from his book and drawing upon facts, fiction and personal experience, he unravels the interconnections between the mind and the wallet of the Indian consumer over a free-flowing tele-conversation with Arunima Mishra.

Q&A: Dheeraj Sinha, Regional Planning Director, Bates 141

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