Suneera Tandon Businessworld, 10 September 2011 We serve biryani and parathas at our highway outlets,” says Venu Madhva, chief operating officer at Café Coffee Day (CCD). At Barista, you can knock down a few glasses of beer or sip wines, while a mug of coffee is to clear your head. “This is for variety,” says R. Shivashankar, director of South-Asia region at Lavazza, the company that bought Barista from the Tatas. Costa Coffee will have more affordable food. “We want to increase our footprint in ‘non-Costa’ locations,” says Costa’s CEO, Santosh Unni. Existing coffee chains have woken up and smelt…
Sapna Agarwal, MINT (A Wall Street Journal Partner 9 September 2011, Mumbai Tommy Hilfiger Group has bought out the Murjani Group's 50% stake in the latter's joint venture (JV) with clothes maker Arvind Ltd for an undisclosed sum, as part of a global strategy of consolidating its operations and having a more direct role in its various markets. The US company has also bought the Murjani Group's licence for Tommy Hilfiger trademarks in India, ending the Mumbai firm's six-year association with the brand. Mohan Murjani, chairman of the Murjani Group, launched Tommy Hilfiger in India in 2004, sub-licensing its clothes,…
Now that direct investment into India is on the verge of opening up, the country could hold increased opportunities for clothing companies who want to source and sell fashion there. Rebecca Danton reports from a recent conference on ‘Sourcing And Selling Fashion In India,’ where speakers discussed the advantages and disadvantages of setting up and trading within India. In terms of its fashion and clothing opportunities, India is generally seen as a poor relation to China. While the great red dragon of the Republic of China embraced the end of global clothing and textile quotas and furthered its domination of…
A few months ago, when asked to speak about value-addition at a food industry seminar, I decided, in a deviation from the usual discussion, to dissect the meaning of “value”. Most people in industry focus on only one dimension of value-addition – the economic value added by processing and transforming food raw materials – virtually ignoring two other dimensions which are required for most of the (undernourished) population: calorific value and nutritional value (see “Perishable Value Opportunities”). At the end of that seminar session, an agriculturist from the audience put forth a very pointed question: “What is the cost of…
Sagar Malviya and Sarah Jacob, The Economic Times 26 August 2011, Mumbai/Bangalore Paris Hilton -- American actor, singer, fashionista and great-grand daughter of Hilton Hotels founder Conrad Hilton -- will spread her business empire to India next month by launching her handbags and fashion accessories. The 30-year-old celebrity, who helped Chihuahuas become fashionable, will travel to India for the launch of her eponymous brand at Shoppers Stop, the department store chain's MD and customer care associate Govind Shrikhande said. Shoppers Stop will open Paris Hilton shop-in-shops across its metro stores. Paris Hilton built a brand around her celebrity lifestyle over…
Geopolitical friction has again sparked renewed concerns over inflation and rising input costs for FMCG companies as @itmeansjustice @whysnavi write. @devangshu commented.
