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If developed countries are looking to India with respect these days, it is not because of the country’s GDP or per-capita income. Though these are growing, they remain too low to explain the response the mention of India gets in global business circles. What is really shaping India’s image abroad is its high-grade Intellectual Capital […]
Augmented reality has been around for a while and can be quite amusing. I remember getting a link to an app that allowed me to pick from a range of animal pictures and then use my phone camera to click a pic of the animal placed in my house. This was during the lockdown and […]
Management schools teach their graduates many useful things, but leadership is not one of them. Management is about promoting stability, consistency, order, and efficiency. Managers have formal titles that describe their place in the organisational structures. The purpose of leadership, on the other hand, is to bring useful change and leaders can emerge at any […]
Six years after selling their Havmor brand to Lotte of South Korea for Rs 1,020 crore, the Chona family has returned to the ice cream business, investing over Rs 100 crore in a new manufacturing plant in Bavla. The plant has the capacity to churn out 50,000 litres of ice cream daily, which will be […]
Gujarat lost one of its most dynamic young business leaders on Sunday, with the tragic death of 50-year-old Parag Desai, scion of the Wagh Bakri Group. Mr Desai, who was the executive director of the Wagh Bakri Group, had suffered a brain haemorrhage from a fall outside his house last Sunday. He was in the […]
Paintings of moustachioed, dhoti-clad Bengali gentlemen cavorting with sex workers. Postcard-sized watercolours of Hindu deities that European missionaries bought to take back home with them as souvenirs. An oil painting of a six-year-old Sita at her Swayamvara, with the thirteen-year-old Ram. A reverse-glass painting of a dark-complexioned Durga slaying Mahisasur, made in Canton (present-day Guangzhou) […]
The Supreme Court may have failed to legalise same-sex marriage, but are there any positives for the LGBT community in the judgement delivered today? After letting off some steam against the Supreme Court (SC) and the government, most activists that VO! spoke to did concede that some parts of the judgement are to the benefit […]
When Pankaj Patel was named Chairman of the Board of Governors of Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA) last year, it considerably enhanced his stature. The chairman of Zydus Lifesciences was the first Ahmedabad-based businessman invited to take a chair that had previously been occupied by stalwarts like NR Nayana Murthy, AM Naik and Kumar […]
The Ahmedabad bench of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) has directed Swan Energy to make a payment of Rs 250 crore as part of the resolution plan for the bankrupt Reliance Naval and Engineering Limited (RNEL). Led by Nikhil Merchant, who is managing director of the company, Swan Energy had bid successfully for RNEL […]
The announcement of jailed Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi winning the Nobel Peace Prize has turned the international spotlight on women’s rights, especially in the Middle East. Serving a sentence of ten years for “spreading propaganda against the State,” the 51-year-old Narges is currently lodged in Tehran’s Evin Prison, where she is fighting against the conditions […]
Developed in the manufacturing industry, six-sigma is a set of management techniques intended to reduce the probability of errors or defects. Service companies too have been trying to use the concept of six-sigma to standardise their processes. Call centres, for example, have been trying to script the interaction between their employees and customers down to […]
Unlike the announcement of the Booker Prize, which is preceded by a long list and then by a short list, stretching the process to three months, the nominees for the Nobel Prize for Literature are never revealed. Instead, it is left to literature pundits to speculate ahead of the announcement and it quite often happens that […]
While her brother Bimal Patel is the architect for the Central Vista project in Delhi, Canna Patel is the interior designer. The project includes the Prime Minister’s house, so we ask: what kind of interior décor has Narendra Modi asked for? Is he going for bright red, orange and yellow Gujarati hues, with Kutch embroidery […]
Why do people instinctively wince when they get a call from their boss, even if he is a nice guy who has never done them any harm? The explanation lies in how our brains are wired, says Jerome-Pierre Bonnifay, founder CEO of consulting firm SBIC Services, and it has nothing to do with whether your […]
Veteran artist Amrut Patel’s “Abstract Alchemy” exhibition opened to a full house at the Hutheesing Centre on Thursday, with most of Ahmedabad’s art world in attendance. The Ahmedabad-born painter, who graduated from CN Art School, has lived and worked in Delhi for the past 45 years, was felicitated at the inauguration by fellow artists Amit […]
It was quite the coming together of cultures as Australian cricketer Adam Gilchrist launched the new University of Wollongong (UOW) logo for its India Campus at the GIFT City Club on Monday. The ceremony began with the lighting of lamps and the recitation of a Sanskrit invocation to Lord Ganesha, led by Ram Gorlamandala, founder […]
Marcus Samuelsson, chef at Aquavit, a Swedish restaurant in New York, is one of the pioneers of fusion food. In the mid-90s, when he was just 24, Marcus introduced dishes like oysters with mango curry sorbet and caramelised lobster with seaweed pasta, which resulted in The New York Times’ food critic raising Aquavit’s rating from […]
The biggest problem Indian companies are likely to face in the years ahead is not going to be lack of capital or technology or infrastructure. It is going to be lack of effective business leaders. The signs are all there: a boom in head hunting, with everyone chasing a few, select executives considered to be […]
At the start his course on “The Business Environment of India” at the Anderson School of Management in the University of California Los Angeles, Romain Wacziarg asks his students: How long will it take India to catch up with America’s per capita income, given their current average rates of GDP growth (2.4% for the US […]
Australian education is on a roll in Gujarat, with two Australian Universities set to open campuses in Gandhinagar GIFT City. Deakin University has already started construction and Wollongong University is on its way. Addressing a news conference in Ahmedabad on Thursday, Dr Monica Kennedy of the Australian Trade & Investment Commission (Austrade) said her country […]
