ASBM Business
Updates is a Weekly Selective Compilation of Business News from Various
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ASIAN SCHOOL OF BUSINESS
MANAGEMENT
Human resource management is undergoing a massive
transformation. So deep rooted market analysis along with induction and multi-skilling
training are the need of the hours. This can pave the way for economic
and sustainable development, said Mr. SC Padhy, Director HR ,
Nalco, while inaugurating the National HR Conclave-2013 on the theme ‘Building
high performance team- The leadership challenge', organized by Asian School of
Business Management (ASBM).
Addressing the future management professional of the
country, he said, "Listen more and speak less. Involve all stake holders
in the developmental process. See the change, lead the change and also make a
change. "
Lauding the efforts of ASBM for organizing the
National HR Conclave Mr. PC Panigrahi, Director Personnel, Mahanadi Coalfields
Limited said, "There are n-numbers of challenges in the world. Through
better strategies, we can overcome from all these challenges."
Stressing on the best HR practices, Mr. Panigrahi
further added, "Companies with its innovative HR practices and skilled
human resources can lessen impact of recession."
Emphasizing on today's competitive market Dr. Saroj
Mohapatra, Vice-President HR, Jindal Steel and Power limited said, "In the
era of globalisation, companies are becoming more competitive. So there is need
for dynamic and productive HR professionals, having the ability of
crisis-management. Besides, Investment should be made in research and
development activities to meet the challenges of global economy."
BANKING
Public sector lender Bank of
India today entered into a five-year partnership with Essar Group's
outsourcing firm Aegis
for its customer
relationship management (CRM).
Ageis has set up a 250-seater delivery centre at its
Navi Mumbai centre which will provide support and manage BoI's end-to-end
customer management, including multi-channel customer on-boarding and service
operations, data management and collections, the companies said here.
"Entering into an alliance with Aegis will
enable our 65 million customers avail of services without having to visit or
contact branches," said Chairperson and Managing Director Vijayalakshmi
Iyer.
Under the contract, Aegis will provide customer
contact management, marketing services, recovery functions and transaction
support, among other services, through its delivery centre.
"We have taken a lot of initiatives in the past
eight-nine months to reduce our non-performing assets. This partnership will be
in addition to our efforts and will help improve our recovery process,"
Iyer said.
Commenting on the tie-up, Aegis Chief Executive
Sandip Sen said, "The opportunity for customer relationship management BPO within the banking
and financial sector is large."
Aegis had earlier tied up with state-owned lenders
like Union Bank of India and Bank of
Baroda to provide similar kind of CRM and other banking
services.
FINANCE
Lenovo Group, the biggest personal computer maker,
said Thursday its latest quarterly profit rose 36% as sales of smartphones and
tablet computers more than doubled.
Lenovo earned $220 million, or $2.12 per share, in
the three months ending Sept. 30, the company announced. Revenue rose 13% from
a year earlier to $9.8 billion.
The results reflect the dramatic shift underway as
people switch to going online wirelessly and manufacturers that got the bulk of
revenues from desktop PCs scramble to keep up.
Lenovo said its sales of smartphones, tablet
computers and other mobile devices rose 106% over a year earlier to $1.5
billion. Mobile's share of revenue expanded to 15% from the previous quarter's
9%.
Sales of traditional desktop PCs fell 3% to $2.7
billion while laptop sales rose 8% to $5 billion.
"'We are optimistic about the industry's
outlook," said chairman Yang Yuanqing in an earnings announcement.
"The PC market is recovering and tablet growth
continues shifting to mainstream and entry-level segments, as well as emerging
markets. These are Lenovo's strength areas," said Yang. "We are
confident that we will capture these opportunities and continue our strong
growth."
Lenovo, which is based in Beijing and in Research
Triangle Park, North Carolina, has said it expects mobile devices to become the
bulk of its business in coming years.
In its home China market, Lenovo's revenue rose just
1% to $3.8 billion, reflecting a steady decline in economic growth. It said
smartphone and tablet sales in China rose 45%.
Lenovo was declared the No 1 personal computer maker
in the previous quarter by research firms Gartner and IDC, finally surpassing
rival Hewlett Packard Co. But that success was tempered by data that show sales
of desktop computers steadily declining.
INDIA BUSINESS
Nissan has just revealed the Qashqai in the UK and the Japanese manufacturer also has plans to introduce
this model into the Indian car market. The Qashqai is a crossover that seats
seven people and this is ideal for Indian customer.
The Honda Mobilio was showcased once again for customer feedback and Etios SUV was unveiled in Brazil. This week being the festive season, the Indian car industry was busy focusing on deliveries. The coming week is when the action kicks back. Read our weekly wrap to know what all have you missed.
Nissan unveils the next-generation Qashqai - will come to India
The Honda Mobilio was showcased once again for customer feedback and Etios SUV was unveiled in Brazil. This week being the festive season, the Indian car industry was busy focusing on deliveries. The coming week is when the action kicks back. Read our weekly wrap to know what all have you missed.
Nissan unveils the next-generation Qashqai - will come to India
In 2007, Nissan launched a model that became the
crossover pioneer, found more than 2.0 million customers and was soon followed
by scores of imitators. Today, that model is reinvented.
India-bound 2014 Honda Urban SUV patent images leaked.
India-bound 2014 Honda Urban SUV patent images leaked.
Honda, the Japanese automaker will unveil the
production version of its Urban SUV at the Tokyo Motor Show. Based on the 2014
Jazz platform, the vehicle will also make its way to the Indian car market by
2015. Meanwhile, the patent images of this mini SUV have been leaked on web,
giving the idea what could be the design of the SUV when it will be put into
production.
ANS introduces navigation on Android Play Store.
ANS introduces navigation on Android Play Store.
INDIA
MANAGEMENT
Bibby Ship Management Group has acquired Murray
Fenton India Surveyors through its Indian subsidiary Bibby Ship Management
India, Motorship states. Through this acquisition Bibby Ship will expand its
Indian service into marine, cargo and offshore surveying including marine audit
services.
The operations will be based in Mumbai and Gujarat,
with geographic expansion into other areas of India planned for the future.
With this acquisition, Capt. Kapil Dev Bahl of Murray Fenton, with extensive
experience both at sea and in marine surveying and ship vetting will join Bibby
as Director – Technical Services and will head Bibby’s drive into this
business.
UK Headquarterd Bibby Ship Management manage and
supply crew to over 50 of the following types of vessels like Dive Support
Vessels, Anchor Handling Tug Supply Vessels, Platform Supply Vessels (PSV), Oil
& Gas Carriers, Product Tankers etc. Atlantic Container Line is its client
Its network of six strategically-located Indian
offices is designed to leverage from the maritime heritage and experitise
throughout the country, allowing it to provide a range of professional and
dependable marine services.
Murray Fenton (India) offers marine hull and ship
condition assessment, cargo surveying and marine audit services. Some of the
services provided by Murray Fenton India include Marine hull, marine cargo, warranty,
engineering, fire & allied perils.
Post acquisitions the services shall expand and
would include Offshore audits such as FMEA, vessel assurance and acceptance
audits, Sire inspections, Vetting inspections, New build supervision,
Pre-purchase inspection.
In this segment, Allcargo Logistics acquired United
States-based Econocaribe Consolidators Inc for about $50 Mn, to increase
presence in the U.S through its European subsidiary - Ecu Line.
INTERNATIONAL
BUSINESS
Nestlé is selling the bulk of its Jenny Craig weight
loss business to a U.S. private equity firm as the world’s largest food group
works to trim its portfolio.
Nestlé said on Thursday it was selling the Jenny
Craig business in North America and Oceania to North Castle Partners for an
undisclosed sum. The smaller business in France is not part of the deal, it
said.
Reuters reported last month that Nestlé was looking
to sell Jenny Craig, which makes packaged food and runs weight loss centres, as
part of a larger drive to unload weaker brands.
Chief Executive Paul Bulcke also told investors last
month there would be disposals, though he did not name names. “We want to be in
business, not in agony,” he said.
Jon Cox, an analyst at brokerage Kepler Cheuvreux in
Zurich, called the disposal a clear positive. “It is a sign the company is
carrying through with its commitment to weed out duds if they can’t be turned
around,” Cox said.
Nestlé bought Jenny Craig in 2006 for $600-million
from private equity groups ACI Capital and MidOcean Partners as part of a push
into nutrition that has sent the maker of KitKat and Crunch bars into baby food
and sports nutrition.
But several of its brands, including PowerBar energy
bars, have failed to take off. Reuters reported in September that Nestlé was
seeking to unload that brand as well.
When Nestlé bought Jenny Craig, it had annual sales
of $400-million and was achieving double-digit growth with 3,000 employees and
600 centres, according to analysts at Vontobel.
“With the economic crisis, sales started to
stumble,” Vontobel said in a research note, in which it estimated current year
sales at around 300 million Swiss francs ($329-million). “The brand was
loss-making and has been destroying value for years.”
MARKETING
Allied
Integrated Marketing announced today that it has acquired Grand Central
Marketing, Inc., one of the leading experiential marketing firms in the
U.S. The acquisition expands Allied's existing experiential marketing
business, and will enable the company to offer its clients bigger and better
activations and promotional programs by leveraging GCM's experience in the
design, production and execution of large-scale events. The combined division
will be renamed Allied Experiential.
GCM's
founders, Matthew Glass, CEO, and Jennifer Granozio, COO, will become Senior Vice Presidents at Allied,
and will lead Allied Experiential. Also staying on as part of the new
Allied Experiential leadership team are GCM execs Jennifer Guillette and SeeLun
Mak, who will be Vice
Presidents. Billy Zimmer, who currently leads Allied's experiential
team, will also join the new team as Vice President. Allied
Experiential's main offices will remain in New York and Los Angeles, and will be
supported by Allied's network of 21 field offices across the U.S. and Canada.
"We
are very excited to have Matthew, Jennifer and the rest of the GCM team join
the Allied family," said Allied President Clint Kendall. "The
addition of GCM will take Allied Experiential to the next level in terms of
creativity and expertise. In a fragmented media world, experiential
marketing is more important than ever, especially when combined with smart
digital integrations like those GCM has pioneered with its Social Central
team."
"This
is a great opportunity for GCM's employees and clients," added
Glass. "At the new Allied Experiential division, we're looking
forward to maintaining GCM's boutique agency culture while giving our clients
even more powerful integrated campaigns through Allied's deep digital,
publicity, promotional and creative capabilities.
RETAIL
Small is suddenly big in the world of retail chains.
Faced with low throughput and higher costs, retail stores are becoming more
compact and more focused. The new wisdom is that this allows not only cost
cutting, therefore, better revenues, but also easier availability of rental
space.
Hypermarkets are normally sized in the region of 50,000-70,000 sq ft. Retail chains like Spencer's Retail, Rahejas-owned Hypercity, Aditya Birla Retail's More and Bharti Retail's Easyday now plan to shed acreage and go in for 'compact hypermarkets' that are around 30,000 sq ft in size. These would be much smaller than the regular hypermarkets, but more spacious than supermarkets and stores with 1,500-6,000 sq ft floor space.
Take the RP Sanjiv Goenka group-run Spencer's Retail. The chain plans to open 47 hypermarkets in the next three years that have an average size of 30,000 sq ft. "The western concept of 55,000-60,000-sq-ft stores does not work in India, given the cost structures. Secondly, the kind of space hypermarkets abroad dedicate to apparel, we cannot do here," says Spencer's chief executive officer, Mohit Kampani.
Indian food and grocery retailers pay 5-6 per cent of their revenues as rent, which is almost double of what retailers pay in the west. Kampani says that compact hypermarkets have 15 per cent higher sales per square feet than regular hypermarkets.
Currently, the average size of Spencer hypermarkets is 25,000 sq ft. Since the chain plans on increasing the share of apparel and other categories that carry higher margins, the size of stores will go up to around 30,000 sq ft.
Hypercity opened two compact hypermarkets this year in Whitefield in Bangalore and Vadodara in Gujarat and more inaugurations are in the offing in the coming financial year.
Hypermarkets are normally sized in the region of 50,000-70,000 sq ft. Retail chains like Spencer's Retail, Rahejas-owned Hypercity, Aditya Birla Retail's More and Bharti Retail's Easyday now plan to shed acreage and go in for 'compact hypermarkets' that are around 30,000 sq ft in size. These would be much smaller than the regular hypermarkets, but more spacious than supermarkets and stores with 1,500-6,000 sq ft floor space.
Take the RP Sanjiv Goenka group-run Spencer's Retail. The chain plans to open 47 hypermarkets in the next three years that have an average size of 30,000 sq ft. "The western concept of 55,000-60,000-sq-ft stores does not work in India, given the cost structures. Secondly, the kind of space hypermarkets abroad dedicate to apparel, we cannot do here," says Spencer's chief executive officer, Mohit Kampani.
Indian food and grocery retailers pay 5-6 per cent of their revenues as rent, which is almost double of what retailers pay in the west. Kampani says that compact hypermarkets have 15 per cent higher sales per square feet than regular hypermarkets.
Currently, the average size of Spencer hypermarkets is 25,000 sq ft. Since the chain plans on increasing the share of apparel and other categories that carry higher margins, the size of stores will go up to around 30,000 sq ft.
Hypercity opened two compact hypermarkets this year in Whitefield in Bangalore and Vadodara in Gujarat and more inaugurations are in the offing in the coming financial year.
Japanese retail giant and Asia's largest player,
Aeon Corporation, is planning to enter the multi-brand retail sector in India.
The company is scouting for potential partners, and a small team working out of
Mumbai is finalising the strategy in terms of investments and store formats,
people in the know told FE.
"Aeon is interested to enter India. It is a big
chain. They are studying the market and are yet to apply to FIPB,” said Mikio
Aoki, director for the southwest Asia office, trade policy bureau at Japan's
ministry of economy, trade and industry.
A second Tokyo-based Japanese government official
confirmed the same development. Asia-focussed Aeon is diversified into various
retail formats like supermarkets, convenience stores, department stores,
discount stores and drug stores. It also has a consumer finance arm.
A third source close to the development added that
the company has a small team working out of Mumbai, which is evaluating the
entry strategy, the right products for India and the store formats. “Aeon has
set up a small 'unofficial' office in Mumbai to study the market. They are
likely waiting for clarifications on multi-brand retail FDI rules, and could
wait till the new government takes charge next year,” the source said.
Though Aeon is yet to formally apply under the
recently notified multi-brand FDI rules, company officials have already had
meetings with the government agencies.
SUPPLY CHAIN
A new supply chain forum for the rail industry has
been unveiled by business secretary Vince Cable and transport secretary Patrick
McLoughlin.
The aim of the Rail Supply Chain Forum is to ensure
that the government is working in partnership with industry so British
businesses are better able to win work both in the UK and abroad, according to
Cable.
The forum was announced during a visit to Hitachi’s
new £82 million manufacturing facility at Newton Aycliffe, in County Durham,
home of the new Intercity Express Trains.
Cable said: “Hitachi’s decision to base its European
factory in Newton Aycliffe shows the UK is an attractive place for
international businesses to invest and grow. It also underlines the industrial
benefits of the rail revolutions now taking place in the UK. As well as
attracting inward investment, we also need to develop a strong, co-ordinated
and competitive supply chain here which complements and supports other industry
initiatives.”
The establishment of the forum will bring together
DfT, BIS and industry stakeholders to develop an industrial strategy to
maximise the economic potential of the UK rail sector.
______________________________________________________
Source of
Information for this issue: Google alert accessed on 11th Nov 2013
We welcome your suggestions in improving this information updating service.
Knowledge Is Power. Be Informed, Be Knowledgeable, Be Powerful.
Best wishes
Compilation
Sabita Sahu
Sabita Sahu
Junior Librarian
Concept, Layout and
Editing
Syamaghana Mohanty
Chief Librarian
Chief Librarian
Information and
Documentation Division, Chanakya Central Library
Asian School of
Business Management
Shiksha Vihar Bhola,
Barang Khurda Road,
Chandaka
Bhubaneswar-754012
Tel:0674-2374832, 2374833
E-mail:library@asbm.ac.in, chieflibrarian@asbm.ac.in
Sabita Sahu :Junior Librarian and Syamaghana Mohanty : Chief Librarian, Knowledge and Information Services Unit, Chanakya Central Library, Asian School of Business Management, Bhubaneswar. chieflibrarian@asbm.ac.in ; www.asbm.ac.in
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