What are your plans for the movie business?

IIPM INTERNATIONAL - NEW DELHI, GURGAON & NOIDA

We are very keen on movie content production. In fact, we have already started our production company in Hollywood. We have signed a Hollywood producer to work with us and we are looking at producing around 5-10 movies in Hollywood in the next couple of years. One film is already on the floor with a $100 million budget and it is on the life of Lord Buddha.

What’s your strategy for the TV business?
Right now we are working with some of the existing channels. We have some tie-ups and there are many more in the horizon with whom we are in talks with. There is a general entertainment channel, which has not being doing well of late, I would not name it. But it is struggling and requires a revamping. We are looking to acquire it very soon. And we are not interested in the channel just for the stake, rather we are looking for an active participation to revamp the channel and bring the Spice brand.

You have also picked up 32% stake in Multi Screen Media. How are you looking at spicing it up?
The negotiations with the management are going on. We are trying to focus on the age group of 13-35. These young women and men are the future and they are looking for programmes, which move forward. I believe that we will bring this angle of youth, specially to their flagship channel SET.

What kind of leadership model do you follow?
I strongly believe in promoting young talent. You can train them, delegate and get best results out of them.

What is the best advice that you have received so far?
Re-invent yourself everyday, always look for new opportunities. Everyday you can do something new and something better. A lot of companies have got a strong foothold in their business through this and Google is one of them. So, keep reinventing yourself.

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2008

An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
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Subhiksha plans to increase its number of stores

IIPM INTERNATIONAL - NEW DELHI, GURGAON & NOIDA

Even the consumer has turned his eyes towards hypermarkets and supermarkets (see pie-chart). But will organised Indian retailers stand to gain from this consumer interest, simply by expanding their hypermart footprint? Not really. Even though disposable incomes of the Indian consumer class has increased, it is still less, compared to international standards. McKinsey in its report titled “The Great Indian Bazaar - Organised Retail Comes of Age in India” says that a typical Indian spends between $7-10 in one hypermarket shopping trip as compared to $45 in the US and $10-18 in China.

However, another school of thought believes that the growing middle class will further demand and improve expenditure patterns of Indian consumers. “By 2016 more than half of the Indian households will be from middle class and this will create more demand for organised retail in India as compared to other countries, says Roopa Purushothaman, Chief Economist, Future Capital Holdings.

Another big difference area is in that Indian retail is dominated by real estate players. Land rentals have doubled in the last two years and have created a situation where acquiring real estate at affordable rentals has become a difficult task, especially in metros and Tier-1 cities. One reason why rentals have sky-rocketed is the ambitious expansion plans of individual retailers (Subhiksha plans to increase its number of stores to 2,200 by the end of 2008 from current 1,580; Spencers targets opening 300 convenience stores and 75 large format stores by March 2009...) and their herd-mentality to open stores in the same locality to compete with each other. Moreover, despite all talks to the contrary, almost all players are concentrating their retail engines on metros and Tier-1 cities, further escalating rentals. Naqvi of Technopak states, “The ratio of rental cost per manpower cost is high in India in comparison to the ratio in international markets, which is proving to be a hurdle in the expansion plans of most of the players.” Perhaps this is the reason why retailers are now targeting Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities.

Even on the plank of credit purchases, India lags behind developed nations. For generations, Indians have been purchasing goods on credit from their local kirana stores, primarily because of the trust and loyalty of both the kirana store owner and the customer. However, such credit purchases have not really kick started in the organised format because of lack of trust and confidence between the retailer and consumer. Yes, a few retailers have tied up with credit card companies to encourage credit purchasing, but Indians are quite unlikely to use ‘plastic’ to buy their routine daal and atta! In stark contrast, global markets thrive on credit purchases.

Shakespeare once said “Comparisons are odious.” Unfortunately for her, India has always faced the veracity of critics when it comes to comparisons. Be it the Delhi Metro being compared to London’s Tube; Western Express Highway pitted against America’s freeways or Indian superhero ‘Kkrish’ pitted against Superman. Despite bottlenecks, the retail graph is only moving upward. If Americans started from A and moved to Z, Indian retail has started from Z and is now moving to A. Some say that as long as all alphabets are there, who cares whether A came first or Z? But if retailers take too much time in this backward integration journey, the prophesied time-table for success may not be really met!

For more articles, Click on IIPM Article.

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2008

An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
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CELEB USE OR GROSS ABUSE?!

IIPM INTERNATIONAL - NEW DELHI, GURGAON & NOIDA

Idea Cellular is not an exception. In these times of a slowdown, marketers would do well to keep their marketing pennies close to their chest and not simply waste on having a celeb in their ad. Instances of celebrity abusement abound. The Dulux ad featuring Kareena & Karan Johar, Versa campaign sporting Amitabh & Abhishek Bachchan, the Tata Indicom commercial boasting Kajol & Ajay Devgan, Hrithik Roshan’s campaign for Macro Man and Acer, Hema Malini in an ad for a water purifier, the list is endless!

Even globally, the situation is not too different. Celebrities like Shaquille O’ Neal for Reebok and Britney Spears for Toyota’s brand, Soluna Vios had to go through similar abusement woes.

Given that such abusements are an embarrassment for both celebrities and brands, who is to be blamed for the quagmire? Well, in typical fashion, advertisers dump the blame on talent management companies, who in turn, swing the blame right back into the brand manager’s court. Playing tennis apart, fact is that unlike what every person in the endorsement supply chain claims, there is in fact, no science to the endorsement game. As Manish Porwal, CEO, Percept Talent Management justifies, “Just riding on the star appeal makes no sense. Moreover, offshore recommendations by talent management companies also leads to this abusement.”

This is not to say that celebrities should be cast out of the endorsement game altogether. If used correctly, they can boost the brand a million times. Beauty major Emami, which has pioneered the art of roping in celebrities since 1976 (Chayvanprash, Navratan Oil, Boroplus) in fact is quite gung-ho on its benefits. “We want to rope in more celebs, but rising costs are a constraint. Whenever this affordability is overcome, our strategy will centre around endorsements,” gushes Aditya Agarwal, Director, Emami Group.

As ad veteran Luke Sullivan says: “If you were to put five million bucks in a commercial, I wouldn’t worry much and put my five year old and tell him to shoot a commercial. But if you don’t have this (the money) then think of something else (innovate?).” A quick takeaway Mr. Marketer: It’s easy to spend big money and get James Bond star Pierce Brosnan to endorse your new, gadget-heavy, yet sleek bike. But it’s smarter to simply let your creative team take a 3 day-4 night holiday at some exotic locale, rack their brain cells and come up with a power-packed ‘big idea’, which will sell, with or without the celebrity!

For more articles, Click on IIPM Article.

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2008

An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
IIPM Programme :- SUPERIOR COURSE CONTENTS
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IIPM - Admission Procedure
IIPM, GURGAON
IIPM : EXECUTIVE EDUCATION
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When IIPM comes to education, never compromise
Why Study Abroad When IIPM Gives You 3 global Advantages!
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Something’s cooking at Reebok. From being a sportswear brand, it is now expanding the net with its ‘Fish Fry’ range and ‘Reebok Classic’ stores.

IIPM INTERNATIONAL - NEW DELHI, GURGAON & NOIDA

Something’s cooking at Reebok. From being a sportswear brand, it is now expanding the net with its ‘Fish Fry’ range and ‘Reebok Classic’ stores. 4Ps B&M’s angsuman paul caught up with man at the helm of Reebok India

Just one day before global sportswear major Reebok was about to unveil its till-then hush hush new global branding initiative – ‘Your Move’ – 4Ps B&M broke the story and indicated how the revamped tagline (Reebok’s earlier tagline was ‘I am what I am’) would fit in with Reebok’s new focus on capturing market share even in the non-sports category in India. But that was the beginning of 2008 and now it’s nearing the end of the year. Over the last six months, Reebok has taken at least six such branding initiatives to grab every possible corner of India’s Rs.11 billion sports footwear & apparel market. And why not, when India is the only market where this British brand enjoys leadership, leaving brands like Nike, Adidas and Puma behind.

To complete its transition from a sportswear brand to an overall lifestyle brand, Reebok has rolled out ‘Reebok Classic’ stores - which on entering give none of the regular sporty look & feel (a la Reebok); instead the stores wear a more elite, fashionable look – a taste of things to come! Reebok aims to open 70 more such stores by the end of 2008. The vision is that by 2009, the company would mint over 10% of its total turnover from these stores.

In contrast, globally Reebok had moved beyond being a mere sportswear brand way back in 1986, when it acquired the Rs.500 million haute couture brand Rockport. But as part of a global strategic decision, the two hardly ever highlighted their association. It was only in 2006, after its $3.8 billion takeover by Adidas, that Reebok started deeply penetrating and promoting itself as a bon ton lifestyle brand globally.

For more articles, Click on IIPM Article.

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2008

An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
IIPM Programme :- SUPERIOR COURSE CONTENTS
Now IIPM's World-Class Education... for everybody!!
IIPM - Admission Procedure
IIPM, GURGAON
IIPM : EXECUTIVE EDUCATION
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When IIPM comes to education, never compromise
Why Study Abroad When IIPM Gives You 3 global Advantages!
IIPM Ranked No. 1 B-School In Global Exposre - Zee...

Is the ‘teleputer’ finally here?

IIPM INTERNATIONAL - NEW DELHI, GURGAON & NOIDA

And how does one handle the unbelievable number of spam messages that have become a trademark feature of almost any email account? Filters! The option of applying filters – which would enable the subscribers of this service to select the senders or domains from which they want (or don’t want) the emails – is also present. And with just a swish of your cell phone, in other words an SMS, you can even deactivate or later activate the service without any issue or delay.

So that was the fancy part! And now to the brickbats. Although this service really catches the fancy of people in the first go, there is a lot of scepticism that arises out of the fact that an SMS is normally restricted to only 160 characters and the mails that people get would be usually longer than that. To that effect, Netcore Solutions had made the provision that a user can send/receive up to 480 characters in the first message itself; and multiples thereon.

In other words, if your email is really long and, say, runs into 4,800 characters, it would be broken up into 10 parts, and the subscriber would be able to see the email one part at a time, of course with a facility to directly jump to the second part the moment the first part ends (and so on so forth). Though promising, critics do state that this is only a poor alternative to seeing the email in one go, a feature that is available in any standard net email service. And the situation gets worse when one has to ‘view’ heavy attachments. How does one do that if one only gets to ‘read’ emails? But then, as supporters say, this was never meant to be the perfect alternative to the Blackberry, but only a practical low-cost solution for the non net users. Rajesh Jain, MD of Netcore Solutions, adds, “This service can also be a further driver to GPRS because, if one wishes to read the complete email in one go, one can also log onto the GPRS mode [if available on the phone]; and in case the email has attachments, then the GPRS can even be used to view those attachments!”

For more articles, Click on IIPM Article.

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2008

An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
IIPM Programme :- SUPERIOR COURSE CONTENTS
Now IIPM's World-Class Education... for everybody!!
IIPM - Admission Procedure
IIPM, GURGAON
IIPM : EXECUTIVE EDUCATION
IIPM’s 36th Glorious Year of Academic Excellence
IIPM Ranked No. 1 B-School In Global Exposre - Zee...
4Ps Power Brand Awards 2007
When IIPM comes to education, never compromise
IIPM is A World of Career
Why Study Abroad When IIPM Gives You 3 global Advantages!
IIPM Ranked No. 1 B-School In Global Exposre - Zee...