Business Today

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Articles in October, 2009 issue of Business Today

• Explaining the meltdown ; Gillian Tett's book takes us inside the mysterious world of derivatives and shows us how a culture of innovation, greed and hubris almost destroyed the world's financial system.
  by Rajiv Rao
• Gen next: The hidden leaders ; They are not yesterday's start-ups. They are not in the Top 10 listing by size. Taste the thunder of India Inc's entrepreneurial middle rung.
• Logging into logistics ; "With free trade warehousing zones, one European client will double its imports to $6 billion
  by Virendra Verma
• Kitchen biz to baking giant ; The turning point came when McDonald's India chose Cremica as its sole supplier of sesame buns, liquid condiments, batter and breading.
  by Manu Kaushik
• He lights up your life ; Acquiring Havells for the princely sum of Rs 10 lakh in 1971, he moved up from being a trader in electrical equipment to a manufacturer of switchgear.
  by Rishi Joshi
• Express profits ; There are people who know what they are going to do in life right in college. Virendra D. Mhaiskar is one of them.
  by Virendra Verma
• Happy to be of help ; Now is not the best time for bold moves, but don't tell that to Uday Challu. The audacity of the 47-year-old Founder-CEO of iYogi is coded into his business.
  by Saumya Bhattacharya
• Dialling success ; West Bengal's Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee had once upon a time hoped to bring in the big bucks by exhorting a lethargic bureaucracy to "Just Do It . He failed.
  by Anusha Subramanian
• Maverick on the move ; His pony-tail with the famed yellow butterfly bow may have gone, but not his chutzpah. Patanjali 'Patu' Keswani, 50, Chairman & Managing Director, Lemon Tree Hotel Company, refuses to let his age temper his radical thinking.
  by Tejeesh N.S. Behl
• Growth with special effects ; He had no clue about the high-technology world of post-production and visual effects when he got into the business together with four friends in 1995. Today, Namit Malhotra's company controls 60 per cent of the Indian market.
  by Anusha Subramanian
• The collector in cyberspace ; The RBI's recent figures show a 5% drop in the number of cheques processed in 2008-09, but a smashing 28% growth in retail electronic clearing. And the credit can probably be given to one man: Bikramjit Sen.
  by Anand Adhikari
• Bl**dy good business ; Today, Thyrocare Technologies, the company Velumani founded, is valued by outside investors at Rs 500 crore and has many private equity suitors thanks to the returns.
  by Nitya Varadarajan
• The middle kingdom ; The ones we did not profile. But they also have fire in their belly.
• Getting more direct ; Direct selling companies are embracing new channels of marketing and sales for enhanced credibility and higher growth.
  by N. Madhavan
• Trade marks to sound marks ; An increasing number of companies are seeking to register special sounds.
  by Shamni Pande
• Indic to go truly Indian ; Google's next innovation could help translate mail and documents from one Indian language to another.
  by Kushan Mitra
• Pension bonanza for poor women ; Poor women in Gujarat from ragpickers to vegetable vendors have reasons to be less worried about starvation in old age than their peers elsewhere.
  by E. Kumar Sharma
• Singing the same tune? ; When it comes to stock markets, the Chinese influence on India has been growing consistently.
  by Manu Kaushik
• 'The malt whisky market has huge potential' ; Glenmorangie, one of the oldest malt whisky brands in the world, now owned by Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy, is yet to crack the Indian market despite India consuming 92 million cases of whisky annually.
  by Dhiman Chattopadhyay
• 'Ring tones paved the way for digital music' ; Elizabeth Schimel, Global Head (Music, Entertainment and Communities), Nokia, spoke about Nokia's contribution to the evolution of digital music.
  by Anamika Butalia
• India is still under-branded ; During a recent visit to India, Sir Martin Sorrell took time out to speak on issues as diverse as global business dynamics, new media and the challenges to old media.
  by Rohit Saran; Shamni Pande
• Will the IPO party fizzle out? ; Aggressive pricing and attractive alternatives for both investors and promoters to public issues may halt a primary market boom that's only just begun.
  by Virendra Verma
• Merchant of power ; Naveen Jindal has propelled his steel and power company into India's and the world's most profitable power producers by focussing on the wildly lucrative merchant power business. Will his competitors stop his dream run?
  by Rishi Joshi
• Calling R&D engineers ; An intensive hunt is on for R&D talent across sectors. Here's why.
  by Saumya Bhattacharya
• Leaderspeak: Sanjiv Goenka ; Here are excerpts of a small Q&A with Sanjiv Goenka, Vice Chairman CESC & RPG Enterprises.
  by Somnath Dasgupta
• The return of FMPs ; After a long gap, FMPs are back in vogue and, yes, they still make good investments.
  by Clifford Alvares
• Profiting from PMS ; Portfolio Management Services have become more transparent, thanks to a recent SEBI directive. Here's how to choose one.
  by Clifford Alvares
• Thanks, but no thanks ; The country's largest private sector company, RIL, moves heaven and earth to sell KG basin gas to the country's largest power producer, but in vain.
  by K.R. Balasubramanyam
• Goodbye Symbian ; Nokia finally prepares to bid farewell to the venerable operating system.
  by Kushan Mitra
• People, places and products ; Here's a look at the people, places and products doing the rounds these days.
• Property buyers are back ; Though still small in numbers, buyers are back in the property market convinced that prices and interest rates have stopped falling.
  by Tejeesh N.S. Behl
• Golden harvest ; We takes a tour of India's largest onshore oilfield in Rajasthan's Barmer district as it goes into production.
  by Manu Kaushik
• Make your e-mails work for you ; Writing effective e-mails is harder than you thought.
  by Saumya Bhattacharya
• Meher Pudumjee's future gaze ; The Chairperson of Thermax peeps into the looking glass and sees the engineering giant increasing the contribution from services, and from its green portfolio, to sustain its blistering pace of growth.
  by Anand Adhikari
• The profit collection ; The man from Chile had no magic, just some adroit footwork to help Bata shake off losses, get back its shine and keep it.
  by Anumeha Chaturvedi
• 'Led'ing the way ; iGATE has shown the world that LED lighting can be used to illuminate office space. Others are beginning to follow suit.
  by Nitya Varadarajan
• Is he still the Big Boss? ; Colors ups the stakes in general entertainment by getting Amitabh Bachchan onto a reality show in a bid to establish a decisive lead.
  by Anusha Subramanian
• 'I am a little nervous' ; Excerpts from an exclusive interview with Amitabh Bachchan.
• Fight over Oktatabyebye.com ; What's in a name? Everything especially if it is a brand fighting for its domain, as happened to be the case with Tata Sons that had raised objection to a Gurgaon-based travel portal MakeMyTrip creating a site called oktataby
  by Shamni Pande
• X man cometh ; The teaser advertisements with the huge X that have come up across India have whetted popular curiosity about the identity of the advertiser.
  by Tejeesh N.S. Behl
• Rebooting education, Infosys style ; While everyone may be talking about the mammoth size of Infosys' new Global Education Centre in Mysore, what's truly remarkable is: how Infy is using this centre to train and prepare several thousand graduates each yea
  by K.R. Balasubramanyam
• Reva recharged ; Imagine an electric car that can be recharged instantly by calling or SMSing a 24/7 call centre!
  by K.R. Balasubramanyam
• This minister wants less power ; It's not often that a minister in India willingly gives up some of his powers. Minister for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh rather enthusiastically hopes to do just that.
  by Puja Mehra
• Betting big on India ; EMC, the $15-billion vendor of IT storage solutions and software, has been somewhat of a laggard in the Indian market.
  by Rahul Sachitanand
• What GDP doesn't tell ; At a time when India is tracking gross domestic product (GDP) growth and all that can influence it even minutely with near-compulsive obsession, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has asked world leaders to junk the fascination for t
  by Puja Mehra
• 'Our agriculture business in india will double in five years' ; DuPont Group Vice President James Borel, Global Head of all DuPont's Agriculture & Nutrition businesses, was in India recently.
  by E. Kumar Sharma
• 'We're looking to buy in India' ; Michael A. DiGregorio, CFO of executive search company Korn/Ferry International, was in India recently. He spoke to Saumya Bhattacharya on opportunities in India.
  by Saumya Bhattacharya
• New careers on blogs, DTH, mobile ; Job portals explore new platforms to expand their footprint.
  by Saumya Bhattacharya
• Goodbye to greed (but not to good) ; Wall Street may be coming back from the brink a year after it collapsed, but a clutch of one-time hotshot investment bankers has few regrets about bidding adieu to the greed-is-good culture to plough a new furrow.
  by Rachna M. Koppikar
• Investing via social networks ; Investors are increasingly using tips and ideas from social networking sites and specialised online groups for making investment decisions.
  by Rachna M. Koppikar
• Go online for MFs ; MF transactions online are turning cheaper and investor-friendly.
  by Clifford Alvares
• Stormrider ; R. Mukundan, who took over at the helm of Tata Chemicals at a time when the global credit crisis was peaking, has been able to pull off something many CEOs have been unable to: Manage global acquisitions made in boom times.
  by Virendra Verma
• Lessons in Twittering ; We carried a list of 'twitting rules' a few months ago. Maybe it is time for another one in the light of recent events.
  by Kushan Mitra
• Chip makers eye small towns ; Recession-hit global chip makers are targeting the Indian hinterland as their next big market.
  by Rahul Sachitanand
• Be a master motivator ; Motivation works best when it is customised to the situation and the individual.
  by Saumya Bhattacharya
• Ideas for real austerity ; The government and the Congress party's recent "austerity drive has created much debate. BT looks at a few practical steps that the government can adopt to actually save money.
  by K.R. Balasubramanyam
• 'We need to move from saying 'no,no' to 'yes, but'' ; The minister's office in the Ministry of Environment and Forests has new doors glass doors. Message: Transparency. The minister, Jairam Ramesh, works on his ultra portable laptop and often prints docum
  by Rohit Saran; Puja Mehra
• The best B-schools ; As B-school applicants and recruiters hunt for bargains, a new crop of schools makes its way into the top ten as well as the overall list.
• People, places and products ; Here's a look at the people, places and products doing the rounds these days.
• Leaderspeak: S. 'Kris' Gopalakrishnan ; Here are excerpts of a small Q&A with S. 'Kris' Gopalakrishnan, MD & CEO Infosys.
  by Rahul Sachitanand
• Belling the PC-based CAT ; A primer on the new avatar of one of India's toughest exams.
  by Saumya Bhattacharya
• A brave new world for the class of 2010 ; Gone are sky-high salaries and plush I-banking careers. The B- schoolers are content with stability for now.
  by Saumya Bhattacharya
• Picking the right MBA programme ; This is a good time to get an MBA degree. It would be easy to say this on the basis of exploiting the economic recovery that is just getting underway.
  by Robert F. Bruner
• The B-School bureaucrats ; Is it worthwhile to explore a career in the government after B- school? A sampling of B-school bureaucrats answer an emphatic yes.
  by Puja Mehra
• What they don't teach you at B-school ; Not everybody in the MBA-brandishing club is keen to keep scrambling up the corporate pecking order. A few land up in places that won't figure on most placement calendars.
  by Anand Adhikari
• The IIM caste system ; A, B and C are the cream. Can the new IIMs, like Shillong and the seven in the pipeline, ever be able to hold a candle to their illustrious peers?
  by Suman Layak
• MBA from IIT ; By carving a niche for themselves, the IITs are beginning to make a mark in management education too.
  by N. Madhavan
• ISB's moment of reckoning ; This internationally ranked Hyderabad school has all the makings of a blue-chip institution. Why didn't respondents of our survey think so?
  by E. Kumar Sharma
• How we rank B-schools ; The BT-Nielsen study refines the focus on its most important constituent the customers. Here's why.
• The new middle order ; A few middle-rung B-schools have started to make their presence felt, which is only good news for the teeming MBA aspirants.
  by Rishi Joshi
• The problem with management education in India ; Schools are evaluated based on how quickly students get placed and how big their pay packets are. Thus, greed is inculcated at an age when idealism should be.
  by S.L. Rao