GM’s big gamble

World’s number one car maker General Motors is contemplating an engine manufacturing facility in India at an estimated investment of $400 million. The news came at an elaborate ceremony at Talegaon (near Pune), where the company is all set to establish a 145,000 unit facility to fuel its expansion plans in India. The company has plans to enter the high-volume mini car segment with the launch of Chevrolet Spark by the next calendar year and the new facility will be used for this purpose. The automobile company also plans to make India as the export hub for its Spark model. Since diesel propulsion has gained extreme popularity with the Indian public, GM is also thinking of adding diesel engines in its Indian production line. The Talegaon plant is expected to start production within the next two years.

To read more on IIPM Editorial Article, please click here...,

Also visit:

• IIPM Publications
• Arindam Chaudhuri Initiative
• Business & Economy
  

Source: IIPM, 4Ps, B&E

The employee’s job is to win virtual possessions or acquire skill levels for an avatar

The accounts, each of which may have one or several avatars, are then given to an employee, some of whom play for up to 12 hours a day. The employee’s job is to win virtual possessions or acquire skill levels for an avatar. Once an avatar is for example a WOW level 60 Shaman, the factory sells the account on some internet commerce site like eBay. In its entry for virtual or synthetic economy, Wikipedia reports that one gamer purchased a virtual space station for $100,000. Similarly on December 17, 2004, BBC News published an article “Gamer buys $26,500 virtual land”, which tells about how an Australian gamer bought, using real money, a virtual island which exists only in the game named as Project Entropia. Edward Castranova, currently Associate Professor of Telecommunications at Indiana University and author of Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games published by the University of Chicago Press, is an economist who for years worked by day in near obscurity teaching economics and studying welfare at California State University in Fullerton. By night he used to play video games including Everquest. He discovered that when Everquest players retire from the game, they oft en sell off their virtual money, platinum pieces in this case, in exchange for real money on eBay. In 2002, after gathering data on auctions of virtual wealth for real money, he determined that the value of an online Everquest player’s time is the equivalent of $3.42 per hour in real money and that the annual per capita gross national product of the virtual land Norrath is $2266 per capita – again in real dollars. Imagine a land which exists only in the realms of computer RAM and hard disks has created a real world economy larger than that in all but 77 real world countries! For more information on IIPM Editorial Article, please click here...,

Also visit the following:

• IIPM Publications
• Arindam Chaudhuri Initiative
• Business & Economy
  

Source: IIPM, B&E

Hero, it’s not just the plot you’ve lost...

We’ll say it again: It’s not just the plot that many of the big budget filmmakers seem to have lost comprehensively, but in fact even the literacy to respect the intelligence of audiences. To say that Indian audiences are undergoing a copious historic transformation is to say the least. Audiences have started rejecting ‘big-budget’ multi star driven movies that have ludicrous story-lines and worse screenplays, what to talk about the ridiculous direction. Of course, some producers have banked on distributing a massive 1,000 prints (costing Rs.5 crore additional by itself) to cash in on the first one or two weeks’ collections that occur simply because of the marketing hype. But clearly, in the coming year, with people showing a clear shift in preferences towards non-star sensible movies, movies similar to KANK, Fanaa, Phir Hera Pheri – that, despite lacking sensible story-lines, ostensibly claimed to have made money – may find it tough to even pass muster the first week. This is not to take credit away from heavy duty movies like Lage Raho Munnabhai, Krrish and Rang De Basanti, which proved how respecting the intelligence of audiences – and not simply an oversized planetary cast – can give mammoth super-grossers! And the astounding success of smaller budget movies like Dor, Khosla Ka Ghosla only reinforces the “anti big-budget” argument... Don’t lose the plot! For more information on IIPM Articles, please click here... , Also visit: Arindam Chaudhuri Initiative

Source: B&E and IIPM Publications

The history of intellectuals is written by intellectuals...

He was actually describing what “is,” and not what “ought” to be. The history of intellectuals is written by intellectuals, so not surprisingly, they are portrayed as defenders of right and justice, upholding the highest values and confronting power and evil with admirable courage and integrity. The record reveals a rather different picture. The pattern of “conformist subservience” goes back to the earliest recorded history. It was the man who “corrupted the youth of Athens” with “false gods” who drank the hemlock, not those who worshipped the true gods of the doctrinal system. A large part of the Bible is devoted to people who condemned the crimes of state and immoral practices. They are called “prophets,” a dubious translation of an obscure word. In contemporary terms, they were “dissident intellectuals.” There is no need to review how they were treated; miserably, the norm for dissidents.


For complete IIPM Editorial Article, please click here...

Editor: Arindam Chaudhuri

Source: IIPM Publication

Reliance Industries Ltd. (4Ps Publication, IIPM)

Well, how innovative is Reliance Industries Ltd? To answer this inimitable query, one should perhaps ask another as inimitable question: how innovative is Mukesh Ambani? Of course, he was ranked 42nd amongst the World’s Most Respected Business Leaders (and second amongst Indian ones) by PricewaterhouseCoopers two years back. Of course, he came 13th in Fortune’s Asia Power 25 List. Of course, he was the reason why Reliance’s manufacturing capacities increased by over 1200% within a short period of time. But innovative? Beyond doubt, yes! And a quality that has most imperatively rubbed off on his company. No doubt, Mukesh’s much talked about Rs.25,000 crore investment in the retail sector would be written about for ages to come, but what might be forgotten quite easily is the fact that Mukesh has converted Reliance Industries Ltd into one of the savviest and most innovative project management corporations ever seen in the history of Indian operations. Under this umbrella of project management, is the most important critical success factor of financial planning, including brilliant aspects of tax planning, that Reliance has not only mastered, but has taught in the year 2002, with the merger of Reliance Industries and Reliance Petroleum, the group in one shot saved hundreds of crores of rupees in taxes due to many legally allowed loopholes. A master of even the capital markets, Reliance – India’s only non governmental claim to the Fortune 500 list – has given more appreciation to shareholder value even during its recent demerger, than perhaps any other private corporation in India’s history. And now with its new found impetus to dominate the Indian retail industry, Reliance is replicating the same famed innovative practices in project management, that have allowed it to comfortably beat all that the competition had to offer. With even the likes of global giants like Wal-Mart studying Reliance’s progress with keen interest, it is no doubt that this corporation has a lot of rewriting work to do in the future; the work of rewriting established rules – something that Mukesh would be comfortable with!


For complete IIPM Editorial Article, please click here...

Editor: Arindam Chaudhuri

Source: IIPM Publication

IIPM Editorial ->Here’s bohemian bonhomie

Drugs, art and rock ‘n’ roll: Psychedelia takes form in Dali and Barrett

“The one thing the world will never have enough of is the outrageous.” So spoke Salvador Dalí, a man mired in the mandate of madness, an eccentric egocentric who satiated his world’s need for spectacles. Then there was another. A boy of the baby boom generation, who never planned to be outrageous, but it were his unintentional oddities along with his explosive genius that made him an icon of the 60s. By turns denying, by turns feeding news of his peculiarity, Roger “Syd” Barrett, co-founder of the iconic British band Pink Floyd claimed: “I’ve got a very irregular head.” And “… you know, man, I’m totally together.” While the two zany artists had the same-named wife and ex-girlfriend, Gala, the themes of drugs and madness also ran throughout their lives. On 11th May, 1904, a son was born to the lawyer Salvador and his wife Felipa in the town of Figueres, Spain, whose name would become synonymous with Surrealist painting and influence the stirrings of psychedelic music in the 60s. Dalí showed traits of his wackiness from the beginning when he’d wet his bed on purpose to see the dismay on his father’s face!


For complete IIPM Editorial Article, please click here...

Source: IIPM Publication, Editor: Arindam Chaudhuri

ZEE TV :: IIPM Publication

Many had written him off, but there were the happy few who still believed in the magical powers of the media wizard named Subhash Chandra and his magic potion named ‘Zee’. Much to the relief of those few & surprise of many, Zee’s got back into shape, readied itself for battle and is now being anxiously tracked by the very competitors who gave Zee no second chances

For a good many years, the feisty entrepreneur Subhash Chandra, has been putting up a plaintive question in front of perennially sceptical analysts: “Why can’t you just Zee it?” And the standard response has been: “What’s to ‘Zee’, when we have the shining ‘Star’!” The man who had the guts to take on the mighty Rupert Murdoch empire has been seemingly paying a price for his ‘effrontery’. While the Star Network honchos have been celebrities in the analyst world as incarnations of media & entertainment messiahs, Chandra’s Zee Network has been treated like a poor country cousin that gate crashed into the media party. But not any more! In fact, today the master strategist Subhash Chandra sits smiling (though certainly not resting on his laurels) even as those very blinkered analysts have ‘discovered’ that the Rs.53 billion Zee Network was a placid stream working all along on a long term vision, which gradually opens into a wide ocean! But is this the end of all perils for the gleeful Chandra army? Has the Indian challenger actually gone far enough to pose a long-standing threat to the leviathans of the media industry?

For more on IIPM Publication Article, click here...

Source: (Business& Economy), IIPM; Editor: Arindam Chaudhuri