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In the first part of a six-part VO! series on the history of Gujarat’s top brands, we feature Rasna: Launched in 1978, Rasna is among the most iconic brands to come out of Gujarat. Through the 80 and 90s, the brand grew to become one of the most popular Indian consumer products ever. Backed by […]
Tea, detergents, butter, ice cream, and ointments are all products of daily use, not very exciting in the general scheme of things. Until you give them a name. Wagh Bakri, Nirma, Amul, Vadilal, Moov. Suddenly, they have associations and personalities. You ask for them by name, deliberately choosing them over others. If you like Wagh […]
When it comes to celebrating the New Year, it’s different strokes for different folks. Vibes of India asked a cross-section of CEOs about their plans for the Winter Break this year and we got very divergent answers. Some are taking the opportunity to travel; others are celebrating at home and some have decided not to […]
BRIDGE2WORLD23, a festival of art featuring paintings and sculptures from across India and the UK, was inaugurated at the Ahmedabad Ni Gufa gallery by former Director of Police, Anil Pratham, on Tuesday. The six-day exhibition is spread across the Gufa Gallery, the Hutheesing Centre and the Kanoria Centre for Arts. “As a cross-cultural festival, we […]
It was a proud moment for the Bakeri family as over 100 well-wishers turned up to celebrate the Rs 30 crore renovation of the Dr Jivraj Mehta Hospital in Paldi on Sunday. Octogenarian Anil Bakeri, president of the charitable trust that runs the hospital, was there to greet the guests and one attendee even made […]
A mile long rally, with a band, horse-mounted police and a confluence of religious leaders: Ahmedabad marked World AIDS Day with a big show at the Asarwa Civil Hospital on Friday, December 1. Various NGOs working in the field of AIDS were later felicitated at a function at the hospital’s Ashmita auditorium. The event was […]
In 1994, Japanese designer Kenya Hara asked a group of architects to come up with alternate designs for pasta, keeping in mind a few basic rules: the pasta needed to have an even surface area to allow for uniform heat transfer and a shape that allowed the sauce to stick. The architects came up with […]
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 […]
