Forbes

A Himalayan trail on foreign shores

Ravi Prasad Age: 51 Designation: Executive Chairman, Himalaya Drug Company The Challenge: Take the companys range of therapeutic and personal care products to overseas markets How He Did It: He targeted doctors through articles in peer-reviewed journals and allowed customers to sample the products in supermarkets The Next Goal: Double the companys revenues riding on the strength of the international operations that is growing faster than India Himalaya started building...  

Nature's Basket: Double take

In October 2009, nine months after converting the floundering Nature's Basket into a gourmet food store, its team was pleasantly surprised. Its seven stores in Mumbai had seen sales grow at 70 per cent " a surprisingly quick validation of their change in strategy. Getting there, however, has been a rough ride. Two years earlier, Godrej's Nature's Basket business wasn't going as planned. The store, set up in 2006, had...  

Book review: Storming the World Stage

Part detective, part academic, part chronicler, Stephen Tankel provides what is arguably one of the finest and most detailed accounts of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the terrorist group that represents the greatest threat to India. The hook for the book is the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks when 10 trained LeT fighters wreaked havoc in South Mumbai. That was the turning point for LeT when it announced to the world that it had...  

Music festivals coming up

This spring, there is music in the air. Here are some music festivals that will leave you whistling a tune. Sulafest 2012 Location: Sula Vineyards, Nashik When: February 4-5 Artists: Nitin Sawhney, Blackstratblues, Papon & East India Company Damage: Rs. 1,800. The highlight this year is undoubtedly Nitin Sawhney. He is a huge favourite of Rajeev Samant, founder and CEO of Sula Vineyards. Area79 Music and Arts Festival Location: The...  

Electing hope in Punjab

While the Uttar Pradesh elections hog the lion's share of coverage in national media, the Punjab elections are proving to be the more colourful of the two. YouTube, Facebook, and other media platforms are full of the hilarious conversations between cartoon characters Jeeta and Jaggi created by the Congress, who take pot shots at the failings of the SAD"BJP (Shiromani Akali Dal-Bharatiya Janata Party) government. SAD has responded through their...  

The Ice Candy Man and how he built Coldex

You know, there is no easy way to say this, says Gaurav Jain, the 39-year-old managing director of Swastik Roadlines and explains. His father had started Swastik in partnership with two friends. Jain joined the company in 1999 when it was doing very well. It had 23 trucks. None of the founders realised what was around the corner. Ever since its inception in 1997, the company had grown on the...  

Know what to avoid while investing

The overwhelming majority of investment analysts belong to two basic camps when it involves predictions. The first tend to take themselves and their learned prognosis for the world pretty seriously. More often than not they are paid by their employers to predict the future. Funnily, these otherwise talented individuals do not appear to have come to terms with the futility of forecasting. The second camp studiously avoids making predictions and...  

A salve for a taxing moment: The Vodafone story

The court hearings had gone on through all of August. On September 8, 2010, the Bombay High Court was packed to the rafters with newspaper reporters of all hues. There was a battery of lawyers representing the Government of India and telecom giant Vodafone. There were two judges who had been hearing the famous Vodafone tax case: DY Chandrachud and JP Devadhar. Though Devadhar was in Nagpur that day, he...  

Lant Pritchett: Service with a smile

Will a day come when India's poor can access government services as easily as drawing cash from an ATM? The day will come very soon when transfers from the government will be as easy, or easier, than using an ATM. But transfers to the poor are a very small part of what any government does. And no country in the world has made accessing education or health or policing or...  

India should re-wrap economic reforms

I do not minimise the difficulties that lie ahead on the long and arduous journey on which we have embarked. But as Victor Hugo once said, "no power on earth can stop an idea whose time has come". I suggest to this august House that the emergence of India as a major economic power in the world happens to be one such idea. Let the whole world hear it loud...  

Andrade: Look at firms that shrink balance sheets

He has worked in the Indian mutual fund industry for more than 15 years. He picks tomorrows blue-chip stocks from todays numerous mid-cap companies. Investment philosophy: He hitched his fund wagon to the theme of consumption and food inflation more than two years ago and his top picks too have remained the same over that period. Other interests: Stays in Mumbai and is slightly partial to Totos, that classic of...  

Sanjay Dutt: On firm ground

Sanjay Dutt Profile: CEO " Business, Jones Lang LaSalle, India Education: Did his bachelors degree in commerce from University of Delhi and Program in Business Management from International Management Institute (IMI), New Delhi Career: Has 22 years of experience as entrepreneur and services-sector professional in the logistics and real estate industries. He has spent 13 years as a real estate professional in Mumbai The Indian real estate sector is full...  

Gold still has some shine left in it

The precious metal is in the last stage of a bull market. Once global economies get back on track, it will lose its glow. Gold prices have come off a high of $1,900 per troy ounce reached in September 2011. For some time now, prices have been moving in a $200 range between $1,600 and $1,800. Heres the thought: It is not that gold prices are going up, it is...  

'India remains hostile to entrepreneurship'

Lawrence Summers has served as US treasury secretary under Bill Clinton, a post currently held by his protegee Timothy Geithner. Presently, he teaches economics at Harvard University, where he was formerly the president. He comes from a family of economists. His parents are economists and he is a nephew of Paul Samuelson and Kenneth Arrow, both Nobel Laureates in economics. How is India positioned as a global consumption engine? India...  

'Tough times have put companies at greater risk'

Greg Case is the president and CEO of Aon Corp. Prior to joining Aon, Case was with management consulting firm McKinsey & Company for 17 years. Most recently, he served as head of the Financial Services Practice. He was previously responsible for McKinseys Global Insurance Practice, and was a member of McKinseys governing Shareholders Committee. Q. As many global economies head into a slowdown and political uncertainty, how are risk...  

Will the electric car be closer to mass market?

Think about it this way: India currently has about 15 cars per 1,000 residents. The UK has 560. Do you think Indian consumers will gladly accept a much lower standard of "motorisation" than the West already enjoys? One of the first big-ticket purchases of new members of the middle class is a car - and this quickly becomes a key asset for work, pleasure and quality of life. Thanks to...  

Four big corporate moves to watch

1. The New Brew in Town For those who take their cup of caffeine seriously, there's good news. Starbucks, the world's biggest coffee brand, is likely to make its Indian debut in the first half of 2012. A formal announcement of their retail JV with Tata Coffee is likely next month and those in the know say a search for the country head is underway and an appointment is imminent....  

Will Indian HNIs sign the giving pledge in 2012?

On March 24, 2011, two significant events took place. In the first, millions of Indians sat glued to their televisions as India beat Australia to enter the semi-finals of the cricket World Cup. Sitting in the crowd at the Ahmedabad stadium were many of India's richest businessmen and celebrities. Less than 1,000 km away, in Delhi, the world's second and third richest persons, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, respectively, were...  

Will petrol prices cross Rs 100 a litre mark?

Too many people have slipped while trying to predict oil prices. From where we stand now, it is unlikely that petrol prices will reach Rs 100/litre anytime in the next four or five years. The situation could change if the government takes the drastic measure of de-controlling diesel prices. Diesel is currently subsidised and the price is artificially kept lower than petrol. It is unlikely that such a step will...  

11 startups to watch In 2012

PubMatic: When Google announced in June this year it was spending $400 million to acquire AdMeld, the ad platform targeted at digital publishers, the picture only got brighter for PubMatic. Thats because PubMatic immediately would become the largest independent publisher-focussed ad platform. Publishers fear that Google would do to them what Apple did to the music industry. 2012 will see PubMatic going in for an IPO and adding market share...