Big buzz for Big Boss!

After the announcement of Big Boss 3 in Singapore with all fanfare, Big B flied down to Delhi to create some additional buzz for this most hyped reality show of Colors. Giving him company were the Channel’s BIG BOSS Rajesh Kamat(CEO, Colors) and programming maestro Ashwini Yardy! Well, despite all these super PR efforts, the opening TRPs of Big Boss third season (3 as per aMap data) are not very impressive. But keeping in mind the controversial profile of some of the contestants like KRK, Sherlin Chopra and Rakhi Sawant’s mom Jaya Sawant, the possibilities of ratings catching up in coming week cannot be ignored!

Pallavi Srivastava

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2010.

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

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The Sunday Indian:- B-SCHOOL RANKING SCAMSTERS EXPOSED!
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Time was when someone said handsets, and if you happened to be in India, you intuitively thought Nokia, Samsung or Sony Ericssion.

But today, a clutch of small and big players are straining to break the market mould. Surbhi Chawla meets up with some fringe players to get a handle on their strategies for changing the market matrix...

Vivek Bansal, a Meerut (65 kms. away from Delhi) based distributor of mobile phones is very happy these days. And the reasons for his joviality don’t happen to be the Nokias and Samsungs of the world, but a lesser known brand (at least in the case of mobile phones) – Intex. Just a mention of the brand name and that sudden spark in his eyes is proof enough of how fast Intex handsets are flying off the shelf.

However, this was not the situation six months back when Bansal started stocking Intex mobile phones along with the brand’s other computer peripherals. He was sceptical about the success of the brand in a world that was ruled by the big daddies of the handset world. He was surprised (yes, pleasantly) though at the positive customer response. As one of the key distributors for Intex mobile phones in and around Meerut today, Bansal feels that his cash register rings almost every hour. “The business is now getting brisk as dealers are becoming confident about the brand. We are now able to sell about 1,200-1,500 units in a month on an average,” he reveals.

Intex is not the lone player adding to the joy of distributors like Bansal. Of late there have been many new handset makers that have realised the tremendous potential in the Indian handset market, particularly in the entry level segment. Fly Mobile, Spice Mobile, Lava, Karbonn, Lemon, airphone, BYOND TECH, Intex, Orpat, Usha Lexus, Rage, eTouch, Gee Pee, Pagaria, Magicon, Onida, Micromax ... phew, hope you agree that the list of wannabes is really big.

In India, currently about 8-10 million new subscribers are being added every month. Most of these new customers are now coming from India’s tier II and tier III towns. And since despite their best efforts, Nokia, Samsung and Motorola have not really managed to be present in every nook and cranny of the country, these players are happily reporting robust sales in these markets.

Explains a gleeful Shripal Gandhi, VP, Sales and Business Development, BYOND TECH, “The current tele-density in rural areas of the country stands at a mere 10%, but it’s expected to be close to a neat 60% of that by 2012. This means a growth of 600% going forward.” BYOND TECH is a part of the Canpex Group of Companies that had mainly restricted itself to the chemicals business till now. And given the potential, other small and big business groups are also jumping on the handset bandwagon to make a quick killing. Many of them have never been in the B2C segment and are mugging up every page of their marketing handbook to grab a slice of the market.

For more articles, Click on IIPM Article.

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2010.

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

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.

The Sunday Indian:- B-SCHOOL RANKING SCAMSTERS EXPOSED!
For Exclusive Footage by Sunday Indian Click Here

Outlook Magazine's B School Ranking Scam Exposed
Don't trust the Indian Media!
IIPM exposes Career 360 and Mahesh Peri scam
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Arindam Chaudhuri's Portfolio - he is at his candid best by Society Magazine

Now this is called a ‘Fear Hug’

Once bitten, twice shy: Fear of risk embraces Mr. Banker and Individual Investor in the same hug without any discrimination

Fear, especially of risk in financial markets, is contagious. It afflicts the money specialist super bankers as well as ordinary individual investors. The pattern in householders’ financial savings and risk aversion among bankers, as a class, shows that the Rat year (the year 2008 was known as the year of the Rat under the Chinese lunar calendar system) has taken the bull out of the Average Joe and Mr. Super Banker without any discrimination. Risk has hugged them all.

The latest data shows that Indian households’ investments in equity shares, debentures and mutual funds have dropped to just 2.6% of their total financial savings in FY09 from 12.4% a year ago. At the same time, their investments in bank deposits paced higher to 58.74% in the year to March 2009 compared to 52.24% previous year.

As at March 2009, according to the latest data released by the RBI, the Indian householders preferred to channel their savings into the safety of bank deposits and reduced their investments in “risky” market related instruments such as shares, debentures and mutual funds with rise in risk perception and extreme pessimism.

Coincidentally, the steep fall in stock market indices and accompanying unprecedented volatility saw Indian households’ investment in shares and mutual funds as percentage of total financial savings nosedived to just 2.60% during the year FY09. In contrast, when the stock market was booming, they were happy to put more money, larger allocation of their financial savings, at the rate of 12.40% into such market instruments during the year ended March 2008. All the euphoria evaporated with one whack of volatility.

The flow of funds into bank deposits seems continuing, as per the latest indications, even though the interest rates offered by banks have dropped significantly over the last two quarters. Despite reduction in deposit rates by nearly 300 bps across maturities, continuing flow into bank deposits shows investors still have to recover from the previous year’s stock market shock and certainly are unwilling to keep pace with the dancing volatility in equity markets. Once bitten, twice shy.

Height of risk aversion among banks those are unwilling to lend lest it dilute the credit quality. They are obsessed with retaining the asset quality, which would otherwise impair their capital. They fear rise in NPAs so much that they are willing to sacrifice the difference in deposit rates offered to customers and the interest earned from RBI at Reverse Repo rate. This is despite the patting and pushing by the banking regulator and even the government mandarins.

Even mutual funds that attracted investors in droves just one year ago with plethora of existing and launch of new schemes bore the brunt of this risk aversion as investors were extremely less enthusiastic about investing in mutual funds, particularly equity oriented schemes. Investors, who pumped in Rs.568 billion in mutual funds in FY08, pulled out Rs.104.78 billion from these in FY09. Equity mutual fund schemes during the year FY09 saw net inflow of just Rs.40.24 billion against Rs.469.05 billion during the previous year.

Recent mutual fund data also reveals that banks are parking record amount of funds in liquid and ultra short term schemes, which would hardly yield – 6% annualised.

Is the end of tunnel in sight? Will the government policies inspire confidence among investors to risk capital and spend, instead of saving more?

Will the banks lend rather than send back depositors with ultra-low rates? Well, these are a trillion, not a million, dollar questions.

For more articles, Click on IIPM Article.

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2010.

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

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.

The Sunday Indian:- B-SCHOOL RANKING SCAMSTERS EXPOSED!
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Outlook Magazine's B School Ranking Scam Exposed
Don't trust the Indian Media!

Exclusive In chat with Society Magazine - Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri
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A doubtful Ratan Lal Bhagat questions their future...

With negative demand for cabin crews, diversifying into provision of other training courses seem the sole route to survival for cabin crew training institutes.

“I have wasted both time and money by enrolling into this course, as I am still waiting to be placed and looking at the deteriorating situation of the airline sector, I am not very hopeful,” says a disgusted Simran Mehta, an aspiring air hostess, whose flying dreams have been grounded, like those of many others, with the failing financial health of the domestic aviation sector over the past two years. Clearly, the domestic airline sector is going through its worst phase ever in modern years and the domestic aviators are being forced to cut down costs (and therefore manpower count) to stay afloat. As technical staff and pilots cannot be done away with easily, the cabin crew have become the soft targets. The sight of Jet Airways cabin crews taking the street in October last year, in protest of the management decision to lay them off is still fresh in the minds of many. And if you thought that was a phenomenon far too impossible in the present times, the truth is - it is as prevalent! And all this put together have badly affected many air hostess training institutes around the country, whose businesses have literally hit the wall.

Over the last three years, prior to the sectoral crash, a plethora of such training institutes had mushroomed across the length and breadth of the country. Nearly 35 to 40 institutes with as many as 110 branches had spread their wings to fulfill the flying dreams of many aspirants. But failing to cope with the demand-supply mismatch, along with many students opting for better and more fruitful avenues, a number of them have been forced to close down shops. Flying Cats is no more, while the Air Hostess Academy (AHA) has closed down many centres.

Even Frankfinn, which operates through 110 centres and claims to have placed the maximum in the cabin crew business is facing the heat as K. S. Kohli, Chairman, Frankfinn Institute of Air Hostess Training worringly states, “We have registered a 10 to 15% decline in the number of new admission in the past two years. The bad financial state of the airlines and their rumoured retrenchment measures through reduction in the number of crew members per flight has developed wrong sentiments, thus affecting overall footfalls in the training centres...” A worse decline (about 25-30%) in the number of new admissions have been registered by many other such institutes. Even renowned names like Kingfisher Airlines promoted Kingfisher Training Academy, Maples, et al, are finding it tough to sustain during such trying times. In the face of such a predicament, the question is – what are the survival measures that are being adopted by these training institutes?

For more articles, Click on IIPM Article.

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2010.

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

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.

“We will change your outlook” - The Sunday Indian on B-SCHOOL RANKING SCAMSTERS EXPOSED! A must read...
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Outlook Magazine's B School Ranking Scam Exposed
Don't trust the Indian Media!

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