Tata Motors and Ashok Leyland have been locked in a battle for leadership in the bus segment for quite some time now, with each having around 43 per cent market share.

Volvo, Merc buses speed up in India

Business Standard

Virgin Atlantic is celebrating the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton in style by holding on-board street parties for passengers flying on the day of the royal wedding. Flights departing from the UK on April 29 to the US and the Caribbean will be transformed into a traditional UK street party to ensure passengers don&rsquo;t miss out on the royal wedding fun.

Royal wedding on Virgin Atlantic

In the last four-five years, Britannia Industries Ltd (BIL) has delivered a compounded annual growth of around 20 per cent, as compared to 10-11 per cent in the previous four years. Arguably, those would be respectable figures, if its portfolio wasn&rsquo;t skewed towards one product and two brands. Biscuits contribute up to 76 per cent of the company&rsquo;s sales &mdash; BIL reported a 10.22 per cent growth in sales at Rs 3,771 crore for the year ended March 31, 2010 &mdash; and while its Tiger brand contributes the largest volume, the Good Day brand brings in the highest revenue at Rs 1,200 crore (Nielsen, January-December, 2010).

The Bigger the better

When a leading private insurance company recently commissioned a market research agency to do a survey on India&rsquo;s most famous brands, the findings didn&rsquo;t come as a surprise.

Insuring brand value

Though the first extension into talcum powder category flopped, HUL thinks the relaunch will work.

Lifebuoy seeks to be second time lucky

New York Festivals 2011 International Advertising Awards have announced the finalists in all categories where Indian agencies have secured 19 nominations.

Leo Burnett leads Indian nominations at NY Festivals

The jury is out on whether the six-month-old Vivanta by Taj has been able to differentiate itself from Indian Hotels&rsquo; other brands.

Teething troubles

Early in 2010, Piyush Gupta, the then newly-appointed chief executive officer of DBS Bank, brought together his management brass on a three-day offsite meeting to work out the future positioning of Singapore&rsquo;s largest bank.

DBS banks on Asian dynamics

Daniel Morel is the chairman and CEO of digital and direct marketing company Wunderman. A WPP entity, Wunderman&rsquo;s operations in India were split into two last year: one catering to global clients and the other focused on Indian businesses. Morel, who was in India recently, spoke to Viveat Susan Pinto and Priyanka Singh.

Q&A: Daniel Morel, Chairman and CEO, Wunderman

His father left Lwali decades ago, but M S Dhoni&rsquo;s bond with his ancestral village remains strong.

A village in Kumaon

Lose weight without having to sweat it out, half-starve, pop dubious pills or go under the surgeon&rsquo;s knife &mdash;does it sound too good to be true? But that&rsquo;s exactly what a number of weight loss and obesity centres around the country &mdash; or &ldquo;aesthetic medicine&rdquo; clinics, as they are now called &mdash; are promising. These are non-invasive, non-surgical procedures that have passed the stringent norms of the US Food and Drug Administration and the European Union CE Marking. Of course, none of these procedures has been approved in India as yet, says Rohit Kumar, consultant at the Moolchand Bariatric Clinic in New Delhi, and their efficacy is yet to be proved on Indian patients.

Cut out the flab

After two successive defeats, Chandrababu Naidu, the politician once named the South Asian of the year, is relooking his image.

Turnaround politics?

In the Chatur Lal home, the tabla meets the Turkish darbuka and Western drums.

Sound legacy

Sachin Tendulkar, the nation&rsquo;s most potent symbol of strength, breaking down and weeping at Sai Baba&rsquo;s funeral may have been an &lsquo; awww&rsquo; moment for the media, but it got me revisiting a subject I&rsquo;ve been fascinated by for some time now: the business of men crying.

Men who cry

I&rsquo;m in agony. My head hurts from the relentless clanging of metal and glass around me, from a massive hunger headache and from the icy winds blowing right through my cap. My spine feels like it&rsquo;s on the verge of collapse, from being mercilessly compressed and decompressed.

Love's labours won

During the cricket World Cup there was a nice article in another newspaper about Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai. For this tournament the shell and stands had been completely rebuilt. After the building material was finally moved off the pitch, the groundsmen began the race to perfect the playing surface.

Big game

Get the shift!

In India, Harley Davidson wants to sell to people who live up to the bike&rsquo;s image rather than anyone with a stash of cash.

High on Harley

I am planning to buy a diesel sedan in the next few months and was planning to choose between the Volkswagen Vento and Fiat Linea. But now the new Ford Fiesta and Hyundai Verna also look promising. My budget is up to Rs 10 lakh.

Heavy burner

The frown on his forehead eases a bit as the old man moves for the kill. Check and mate. &ldquo;Shatranj sharpens your mental faculties, but makes you an addict too,&rdquo; he tells anybody who cares to listen, evidently satisfied with the result of the game. This cannot be contested. After all, Padmashri Haji Kaleemullah Khan is the country&rsquo;s best known expert on mangoes.

In mango land

A couple of years ago, as his fellow psychologists debated whether narcissism was increasing, Nathan DeWall heard Rivers Cuomo singing to a familiar 19th-century melody. Cuomo, the lead singer and guitarist for the rock band Weezer, billed the song as &ldquo;Variations on a Shaker Hymn.

Music and lyrics

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