Thursday, April 3, 2014

Dettol hunts for creative shops for project work

The creative duties of Dettol will remain with Havas Worldwide and the winner of the challenge will get to work with the brand on specific projects.

Reckitt Benckiser (RB) has invited creative agencies to participate in a 'creative challenge' for its Dettol brand in India. The brand however clarifies that it is not a generic creative pitch and the creative duties of Dettol will remain with Havas Worldwide. The winner of the challenge will get to work with the brand on specific projects.

The brand's creative duties have been handled by Havas Worldwide since 2008. The agency continues to handle other brands from the RB portfolio, including Veet, Vanish, Harpic, Itchguard and Dermicool.
"Dettol has been consistently voted by Indian consumers as one of the most trusted brands for over a decade. With a legacy of more than 80 years, it has become the trusted champion of health. Given the ambition to further strengthen communication across the brand portfolio, Dettol aims to explore new partners through the creative challenge process," the company states in a note.
The pitch process is being managed by London-headquartered Agency Assessments International

SUMIT KR SINGH PG 2 SEM

Radia tapes: CBI to seek clarity from Tata, Mistry

HT Correspondent, Hindustan Times New Delhi, April 04, 2014

First Published: 01:46 IST(4/4/2014) | Last Updated: 01:48 IST(4/4/2014)

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The CBI will soon examine Tata Group chairman Cyrus P Mistry and its former chief Ratan Tata as part of its probe into former corporate lobbyist Niira Radia’s taped conversations with several high-profile individuals.

A CBI source said investigators would first speak to Mistry about three preliminary enquiries (PEs) registered by the agency in October 2013. The source said Tata would be examined after getting some clarifications from Mistry.
“We don’t have any information on this. We do not know about this,” a Tata Sons spokesperson said when asked to comment.

Acting on the Supreme Court’s directive, the CBI had registered 14 enquiries to probe possible offences emerging out of conversations between Radia and high-profile politicians, bureaucrats, journalists and businessmen, including Tata. The conversations were originally intercepted by the government as part of a tax evasion investigation. A senior official, however, stressed the agency had “not come across any criminality” so far.
Of the three PEs, one is related to alleged irregularities in the allocation of an iron ore mine in Jharkhand to Tata Steel. Then state chief minister Madhu Koda and other state officials are already under investigation, the official said.
The second PE is regarding the supply of low-floor buses by Tata Motors to the Tamil Nadu government under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission scheme, according to the official. The agency may also seek clarifications from Mistry on the alleged market manipulation and hammering of stocks of a private firm by Radia.
“As part of the probe, we will seek clarifications from Cyrus Mistry since Rata Tata has retired,” a senior CBI official told HT, adding, “After taking Mistry’s version, we will also seek clarifications from Ratan Tata.”
The agency had earlier indicated it may inform the top court that its investigation has found no criminality. A news channel journalist and a senior executive of a leading newspaper group have already been examined by the agency.
Tata had in November 2010 moved the SC asking it to protect his right to privacy and a CBI inquiry to nail those who leaked the official telephone intercepts of Radia, including conversations featuring him.
Mithilesh Chaubey
PGDM 2sem

NEWS: Google launches Universal Analytics for all

3 April 2014

Following a phase of beta testing, Google has opened its Universal Analytics (UA) to everyone with the aim of ‘re-imagining Google Analytics for today’s multi-screen, multi-device world and all the measurement challenges that come with it.’
This will allow users to combine Google Analytics with additional UA features, including Remarketing and Audience Reporting.
Google will be rolling out a User ID as part of the UA solution, with the aim of allowing marketers to better understand the customers’ full journey. The feature will show anonymous engagement activity across different screens and visits to a website to provide a more user-centric metrics. This will allow brands to tailor their website experience to their customers.
Plus, UA will now be covered by Google's Premium Service-Level Agreement. This means the same level of service and additional product features premium users have come to expect will stay the same when their accounts upgrade.
Meanwhile, Google currently processes all analytics in Pacific Standard Time, which causes a lag in data if you are outside this time zone. As a result, it will be introducing time zone based process for users to see new data faster.

ABHISHEK KUMAR

PGDM 1ST YR

BMW launches र 1.8 cr-M6 gran coupe in India

German luxury car maker BMW on Thursday launched its most expensive car in India, the M6 gran coupe, at ` 1.75 crore.

Essentially a performance oriented version of the 6 series coupe, the M6 is powered by a twin turbocharged 4.4-litre petrol engine that develops peak power of 560 PS and torque of 680 NM. Competition is in the form of the Audi RS7 (`1.3 crore), Mercedes CLS63 AMG (`1.2 crore) and the Jaguar XKR-S (`1..3 crore)
BMW also offers a competition package that raises the power to 575 PS, making the M6 gran coupe capable of 0-100 kph in 4.2 seconds. A standard Porsche 911 Carrera does it in 4.8 seconds.

BMW said it would launch at least three other M series models — M3, M4 and M5 — in India this year. The company led the Indian luxury market till 2012 but lost out to Audi and Mercedes in sales last year.
“It is not a cheap car but we are not looking at volumes with the M6. In fact this year, we are not looking at volumes at all,” said Philipp von Sahr, president, BMW India. “Our cars are priced higher than our competitors but they also have a bigger profile. Volumes are not a priority this year, profitability is.”

NAME-RAJ GAURAV
PGDM 2SEM

Asian gas buyers trying to break out of rigid market structure

* Asia buyers' club looks to be on hold after cancelled Feb meeting
* LNG prices to remain high if no structural change to market -JOGMEC
* KOGAS want to cut spot supply purchases in favour of term contracts
By Meeyoung Cho and Jane Chung
SEOUL, April 4 (Reuters) - Asian gas and power companies are starting to pair up for joint purchases of LNG after more ambitious efforts to form a regional group to win lower prices and less rigid contracts have stalled.
Japan, India, South Korea and other Asian gas importers - who take about 70 percent of global liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports - have been trying to form a buyers' club to use their dominant market presence to delink contract prices from oil and allow importing companies to resell any excess cargoes.
But after two meetings to discuss a regional buyers' group last year, a third was cancelled in February and no others have been scheduled. The issue was also not on the official agenda last week at a gas industry conference in South Korea.
Tired of a lack of progress on the government-led initiative, a number of firms - including Japanese power companies and state gas utilities in India and South Korea - are looking at other ways to buy LNG collectively, with the gain of any advantage becoming more critical as import costs soar.
Asia's rising demand for LNG pushed spot prices to near-record levels above $20 per million British thermal units LNG-AS in February, while the gas import bill in top importer Japan rose nearly a fifth last year.
"As long as there is no structural change to the supply of LNG or gas into the Asian market, prices will remain high," Hirobumi Kawano, the head of state-run Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corp (JOGMEC), told Reuters last week at a conference in South Korea.
LNG has traditionally been sold in Asia under long-term contracts linked to benchmark oil prices, giving buyers supply security and producers of the fuel a guaranteed return on billion-dollar investments.
And while co-buying is unlikely to give companies a break on prices, it would improve flexibility by allowing them to shift cargoes between two or more delivery points, executives say.
With no broader grouping, there may be few other ways for Asian LNG buyers to win any leeway in their contracts.
Participants at the industry meeting in South Korea last week said that just how cool Asian governments had gone on the buyers' club idea could be measured by the fact that few Japanese companies were represented by senior management at the conference, apart from Chubu Electric Power.
"Japan is not that far away. So if you can't even get Japanese buyers to a major conference, what chance does the Asian buyers' club see in this regard?" asked Noel Tomnay, head analyst of global gas research at Wood Mackenzie.
Japan's LNG imports in 2013 hit a record 87.5 million tonnes at a highest-ever cost of $69 billion, up 17.5 percent from the previous year.
JOINT AGREEMENTS, IMPORT COSTS
Chubu Electric and Indian state gas utility GAIL last week signed a deal to consider cooperation in joint procurement of LNG; and the head of state-run Korea Gas Corp (KOGAS), Jang Seok-hyo, said his company has also agreed with Japanese companies to co-purchase when volumes are available.
Otherwise commitments from companies remain few. Tokyo Electric Power Co's proposal to domestic and foreign firms to jointly procure up to 40 million tonnes of LNG a year, for instance, has drawn little interest.
Import costs, industry leaders said at the meeting, are not likely to drop until projects in Australia and U.S. shale gas exports bring a new wave of LNG toward the end of the decade.
Asian gas prices, which cover chilling and shipping costs, are at least three times prices in the United States, where the shale boom has reduced what consumers pay for piped gas.
Importing countries have also proposed creating a regional trading hub to mirror the market structure in the United States and Europe and allowing for more spot and short-term trading.
But the idea has been slow to develop, with a lack of infrastructure such as pipelines and storage terminals, as well as the absence of harmonized regulatory rules in the region.
"The hubs in (the United States and Europe) took 20 years to develop. There's no reason to think that things will be any different here," said Chris Holmes, senior director for Global Gas & LNG at IHS Global.
Despite all the talk of creating a trading hub and increasing market liquidity, rapidly rising demand from China and South America is prompting some traditional buyers in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan to return to the reliability and security of long-term contracts.
KOGAS, the world's largest corporate buyer of LNG, currently buys 20 percent of its gas in the spot market or under short-term contracts, but says it wants to reduce that proportion to 5 percent to lower price and supply volatility.
"Spot gas prices have on average cost 10 percent more than long-term supply," said Jang, the company's chief executive.

PRAVEEN SHARMA
PGDM IST

Microsoft unveils new phone software Cortana to rival Apple’s Siri

Cortana lets users customize their phones’ lock screen, offers new choices for tweaking start screen

Microsoft corporate vice-president Joe Belfiore demonstrates the new Cortana personal assistant during the keynote address of the Build Conference on Wednesday in San Francisco. Photo: AP

Seattle: Microsoft Corp. is adding a voice-controlled digital assistant called Cortana to its Windows Phone software, seeking to match a feature that’s already available in Apple Inc. and Google Inc. smartphones.

“Microsoft today showed off the feature along with new Windows Phone 8.1 software. The new programme also has an action centre, which is a pull-down menu that gives people access to basic functions regardless of which programme they already have open,” said vice-president Joe Belfiore, at a company conference in San Francisco for developers.

Chief executive officer (CEO) Satya Nadella, appointed to lead the world’s largest software maker in February, unveiled Microsoft’s Office software for Apple’s iPads last week. At this week’s conference, called Build, he’s turning his attention to showing Windows developers tools and tactics to boost Microsoft’s single-digit share in phones and tablets, as well as providing money-making opportunities in a contracting personal-computer market.

“Reinvigorating the Windows franchise continues to be a key ingredient in Microsoft’s recipe for success as it looks to offset headwinds from the secular challenges in the PC market,” Daniel Ives, an analyst at FBR Capital Markets & Co., wrote in a note.

Delicate Balance

The contrast between Microsoft’s willingness to offer its wares for non-Windows devices and the Build conference for programmers of Windows-based systems underscores how Nadella must strike a balance between supporting an ailing Windows franchise and embracing rival platforms. The CEO is seeking to ensure key products like Office and cloud services can have the widest possible distribution and don’t get locked out as Windows alternatives dominate the device market.

The new Windows Phone software also lets users customize their phone’s lock screen and offers new choices for tweaking the start screen.

Cortana, which fully replaces the search function on Windows Phone, according to Belfiore, is named for the artificial-intelligence character in Microsoft’s best-selling Halo Xbox video-game series.

Windows stands to be the fastest-growing smartphone operating system over the next four years with 30% annual growth, according to a 26 February report by researcher IDC. Even at that rate, Windows Phone would only make up 7% of the total market in 2018, compared with Google’s Android software at 76% Apple’s iOS at 14%.

In tablets, Windows had 3.4% share in 2013, IDC said. For Microsoft’s Surface tablet, the share was 1%.

PC Decline

Global computer shipments fell a record 10% last year and are forecast to continue to decline this year as tablets and smartphones lure consumers away from traditional desktop and notebook designs, according to IDC. Tablet sales volume—dominated by Apple and Google, whose operating systems account for 95% of that market—will rise an average 16% annually through to 2017.

One possible boon to Windows developers: Microsoft is working on obtaining tools, via acquisition or development, to make it easier for application developers to target multiple operating systems without having to rewrite software. The Redmond, Washington-based company is considering an acquisition or investment in Xamarin Inc., or other companies that enable mobile apps to run on different devices, people with knowledge of the matter said last month. Or Microsoft might build those capabilities itself, one of the people said.

Nadella, in his first public speech since taking over as CEO, said last week that he’ll hold nothing back to get the company’s programs across all devices, in a clear departure from the software maker’s longtime focus on its Windows operating system.

While Nadella has emphasized that Microsoft will focus on devices and web-based cloud services, he has also made clear that Windows remains a massive agenda for us and the company plans to innovate with the operating system. Bloomberg

RAHULSINGH 1
PGDM 1 YEAR
2 SEM