Brand Centre launch kicked off with adidas Uprising, a campaign inviting the citizens of Bengaluru to live their passion for sport

adidas has opened its biggest Brand Centre in the country, located at Indra nagar, spanning at 5,000 square feet over two floors. The Brand Centre brings together cutting edge sportswear and sports inspired street wear label under one roof, taking the adidas retail experience to a whole new level.

The opening of the brand centre was marked with the launch of adidas Uprising, a unique campaign inviting athletes and sports enthusiasts of the city of Bengaluru to take to the sport they are or have been passionate about. Sporting icons and adidas athletes Virat Kohli, Sania Mirza, KL Rahul, Unmukt Chand & Saurav Ghosal, joined the adidas Uprising by taking to their field of sport to encourage maximum participation from the city.

Talking about the launch, Damyant Singh, Sr. Marketing Director, adidas India said, “This brand centre in essence serves as the adidas capital for Bengaluru. This is a brand statement, a hub for sports enthusiasts and streetwear hounds in the city, and will give consumers the opportunity to experience the entire breadth and depth of the adidas brand in a sports performance-led environment.”

He further adds, "adidas Uprising is a great endorsement of Bengaluru being the first-choice destination for adidas to launch the biggest statement store. Bengaluru is the hub of sporting activities and has some of the most brilliant sports persons across all the major sports played in the country today.  adidas continues to cultivate this rich sporting heritage by inviting the people of Bengaluru to come out and play, and further inspire to build an even greater sporting culture in India. We plan to take this movement to Delhi and Mumbai in the coming months and other key cities in the future.”

The adidas Brand Center offers a range of unique interactive elements that will provide consumers with a truly special retail experience.  The Brand Center shall have a special football zone complete with astro-turf flooring, iconic boots and European club jerseys, which can be personalized providing an immersive retail experience for football fans and consumers.

The adidas running zone features shoes classified on the basis of a runner’s foot movement, which can be further analyzed by understanding his or her gait. The brand centre will be the epicenter for everything around adidas running in Bengaluru with an interactive map showcasing the runs happening in the neighborhood with the aim to connect new runners with active running communities in the vicinity. Also periodic sessions with adidas running experts, part of the ‘adidas Wolfpack’ to answer all the questions related to running.

adidas will play host to plethora of high-profile and interactive sporting events all day on September 27th, 2015 and capture the spirit of uprising by inviting people of Bengaluru to participate, compete and perform. adidas Uprising includes series of sporting activities & eventinspired by street culture - Athletics, Badminton, Basketball, Cycling, Squash, Cricket, Football, Running, Training, Tennis, Rugby, Skateboarding and Beatboxing.

Microsoft India MD, Letsbuy founders and others invest in India’s first Content based Subscription eCommerce platform for Men’s Grooming & Essentials

·      Karan Bajwa, Managing Director – Microsoft India, Amanpreet Bajaj, Country Manager – India, Airbnb and Manish Vij, Founder CEO – SVG Media invest in The Man Company

·      Complete range of men’s grooming products – from head to toe

·      Offers convenience, choice and customer stickiness by combining technology, premium products and engaging content

The Man Company, India’s first content-based subscription eCommerce platform for men’s grooming and essentials, has attracted new angel investors – Karan Bajwa – MD Microsoft India, Amanpreet Bajaj, Country Manager – India, Airbnb and Manish Vij, Founder CEO – SVG Media. They join Parvesh Bareja, Director, Helios Packaging, Dinesh Singh, IIT alumnus and ex Hindustan Lever with immense international and domestic experience in cosmetic, toiletries and perfumes manufacturing, and Hitesh Dhingra, Co-founder, TrulyMadly, in investing in the start-up. Amanpreet and Hitesh earlier co-founded Letsbuy.com, which was bought over by Flipkart.

“We, at The Man Company, are indeed very excited and this is a big leap of faith for us to have them on board at this initial stage. I am certain that the combined experience of the entire team will give The Man Company a huge competitive edge,” says Mohit Saxena, Co-founder and CEO, The Man Company.

Need for a Men’s-Only Brand

Men form a very large customer base of this category and there are very few brands that focus on their entire grooming needs. By and large men end up consuming brands that are meant for women.

“Market studies show that men are paying greater attention to their grooming and personal care needs. However the availability of quality men’s grooming products still remains a challenge both in terms of availability and affordability. Coupled with the fact that the process of buying grooming products is not a priority, subscribing to what they need becomes a huge convenience. The Man Company seeks to fill this gap by offering the complete range of high-quality products on a subscription format that are value for money,” added Mohit Saxena about The Man Company’s product range.

Complete Product Range – From Head to Toe

Unlike in the case of women’s grooming products, men have very limited range to choose from and have to switch brands to cover all their needs. The Man Company provides a wide range of quality grooming products with mutiple essential oil variants in each product line. The range includes shampoos, body washes, face washes, hair gels, shaving gels and soaps to start with. The other product lines will be added as a continuous process of creating the complete head-to-toe grooming solutions for men

High on convenience: Subscription eCommerce

“While men are consumers of this category, shopping for it is not necessarily high on their ‘to-do’ list. We are providing an option for people to try out these awesome products and then subscribe to them. We ensure that it reaches them at their predefined frequency without ever having to go and shop for them again. This convienence, we believe, is a very big value-add to the way men buy grooming products,” added Mohit Saxena about The Man Company’s subscription option.

The Man Company offers a wide variety of quality products at the customer’s doorsteps, when they want it. It also gives customers the control of the subscription – customize their products basket to suit their needs, set the frequency of their order, and revise or cancel their subscription any time they want to.

Covenience with Engaging Content: The Man Company Blog

Besides the lack of choice of grooming products for men, there is also a dearth of quality content aimed specifically on what men want. The Man Mag, The Man Company blog, generates customised, high-quality content around what men like to consume. Grooming and grooming tips, life hacks, travel, food and wine, sex and relationships, technology, auto, health and fitness etc. are some of the subjects around which content is aggregated

Growth of Men’s Grooming Market

The male grooming market in India is expected to grow to Rs. 5,300 crore by 2016, according to a study by Euromonitor International. Unlike in the past when men’s grooming used to be clubbed with women’s essentials, it is a high-involvement category. With the growth of eCommerce in India and the increase in purchasing power, more and more men are exploring options and variety in grooming and essentials products. The demand is not limited by gerography or purchasing power.

Celebrating the occasion of Ganesh Chaturthi in full fanfare, Red FM initiates ‘Bappa Ko Promise’ campaign.

The campaign is all about making a promise to Ganapati, to do visarjans only in artificial tanks (artificial water bodies created by municipal authorities); so that natural water bodies are preserved.

One winner will be picked for each immersion day namely the 2nd, 5th, 7th and 11th days of Ganpati, team Red FM will go to a select winners’ house in every market, and manage his/ her Ganapati’s visarjan in an artificial tank. The on-ground activity comprises an awareness drive in RWAs (housing societies) which will have a presentation and street play (nukkad natak) - promoting visarjans in artificial tanks.

Commenting on the campaign, 93.5 RED FM COO, Nisha Narayanan said, "Ganesh Chaturthi is a festival of significant importance for our listeners in Mumbai and we wanted to make it really memorable for them.”

Over 6000 idols commissioned every year to Mumbai, the job of cleaning the remnants of the Visarjan can be quite tough job. Ganpati Visarjan had got a lot of after effects the entire stretch of the beach exhibits half broken bodies of idol all piled up around the beach, as groups of young men drag the other lot from the sea of filthy brown water waves carrying polythene, thermocol and paint crashes by. The aim of this initiative by RED FM is to bring awareness for the masses to keep the city clean and to work towards bringing back the ecological stability of the city.

The Apple-Cisco partnership promises to transform the workplace; It may forge a whole new marketplace along the way.

There’s been some highly successful, win-win partnerships in the IT sector over the last 10 months: Google and Luxottica, Uber and Spotify, Snapchat and Square’s Snapcash. Now Apple, which recently became partners with IBM to create apps (software) for the workplace, is stepping up its push into the corporate market in a game-changing alliance with Cisco.

The Apple and Cisco partnership has the goal of better integrating iPhones with corporate networks in general, and specifically with Cisco products for visual conferences over videolink or web services. While Apple’s IBM alliance was mostly oriented toward the large corporations IBM serves, the Cisco deal shows that Apple has clearly committed to becoming a company that serves enterprise in general, alongside its current strength in the consumer markets.

While having the biggest supplier of network equipment show favour toward iPhones and iPads will steer enterprises toward Apple devices, the Cisco alliance will also bring extra leverage to the many partnerships in which Apple either helps to develop apps or helps app-developing firms connect their offerings to give greater functionality for small businesses.

Opening opportunities for innovation

The opportunity for Cisco, IBM, and other partner firms lies in the fact that so many employees already own iPhones, often as a result of their own choice rather than a company purchasing policy. Integrating these iPhones deeper into what the company does can be an opportunity for simple tasks like meetings over a distance, and for more complex processes like scheduling, staffing, and sales. Cisco and Apple can integrate mobile devices and apps more tightly with business networks because each company supplies both hardware and software. Or, as Cisco’s Collaboration Group senior vice  president Rowan Trollope noted, “We can move beyond what just a normal app developer could do.".

From the viewpoint of firms that provide these services now, the iPhone looks like a Trojan horse – something that got into the business because it looked nice and harmless, but is now ready to become a potent competitor.

Moving into new arenas

So who does the iPhone now compete with? The interesting feature of these competitive moves is that an iPhone (in fact, any smartphone) can be programmed and networked in so many ways that it is very unclear where the limits are. Both established Apple partners and new firms can apply their creativity to the task of seeing what business activities can be improved by integrating iPhones. Cisco’s competitors in video-conference service space will already be concerned about the Apple link which takes advantage of the complementary business presence and software/hardware of Cisco and personal presence and software/hardware of Apple. But this is just a starting point. The next steps can happen very quickly, with new app-based businesses able to be up and running within a few weeks of conception.

Looking a step ahead

Gaining a network advantage in existing and yet-to-be-thought-of market places comes from placing your business in a position where it can benefit from its network of partner firms. With rapidly updated technology transforming  the way people work it is not surprising that Apple is forging partnerships to leverage a solid platform in this space;  after all their business is based on products that connect to networks giving users their own  personal network advantages.

Written by Henrich R. Greve,Professor of Entrepreneurship at INSEAD and a co-author of Network Advantage: How to Unlock Value from Your Alliances and Partnerships

Source:INSEAD

Economic Skepticism Starts to Recede

India consumer confidence appears to have rebounded after a month’s decline, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters and Ipsos.

September’s figures show the Primary Consumer Sentiment Index (PCSI) up 1.3 points from August, standing at 66.3 for September, 2015.

Looking further into the sub-indices that make up the PCSI, the growth seen in consumer confidence is strongly driven by perceptions of the current economic climate – up 1.5 points from August.

More modest gains are seen in perceptions of the current investment climate, a measure of how confident people feel in their ability to invest or save for the future (up 1 points), perceptions of job security 62.3 percentage points (remains the same as last month) and future economic expectations (up 1.5 points).

The figures show that the growing economic skepticism seen through the last month may have eased off as events such as the Greek debt crisis and slowdown in China became less prevalent in the media.

Amit Adarkar, Managing Director of Ipsos India, said: “The month of August saw a number of events that may have made Indians feel uncertain about both the global and Indian markets. As the Eurozone and Chinese stock market crises appear less frequently in the headlines the Indian public may be becoming more confident in the current and future economic climates.”

The Thomson Reuters/Ipsos PCSI measures 11 key indicators of consumer confidence and outlook as perceived by consumers – aged 16-64 – in the India. It has been providing aggregated global consumer sentiment data on a historical basis, since March 2010.

Survey Methodology

These are findings of an Ipsos online poll conducted August 21 to September 4, 2015.  For this survey, a sample of 500 adults from Ipsos' India online panel aged 16-64 was interviewed online. As this is an online poll in India, representative of the online community in the country, it is not reflective of the general population; however, the online sample in is particularly valuable in their own right as they are more urban, educated and have more income than their fellow citizens and often referred to as “Upper Deck Consumer Citizens” or Primary Consumers. The precision of the Thomson Reuters/Ipsos online polls is measured using a Bayesian Credibility Interval. In his case, the poll has a credibility interval of plus or minus 5.0 percentage points for all adults.

The Thomson Reuters/Ipsos India Primary Consumer Sentiment Index (PCSI), ongoing since 2010, is a monthly national survey of consumer attitudes on the current and future state of local economies, personal finance situations, savings and confidence to make large investments. The Index is composed of four sub-indices: Current Conditions Index; Expectations Index; Investment Index; and, Jobs Index. The PCSI Index is benchmarked to a baseline of 100 assigned at its introduction in January 2010. Index number is calculated by utilizing data from the survey results. Responses are divided into aggregated Top Box (Reward) numbers and Bottom Box (Penalty) numbers. Using Shapely Value Analysis, values were generated for the penalty and reward for each question. The magnitude of each question is the difference between the reward and penalty. An Importance factor, which the ultimate weight of the particular question in the index, is the magnitude of each question divided by the total magnitude of all questions. A Top Box Weight for each question is calculated by dividing the Reward by the magnitude of each question. Similarly, the Bottom Weight for each question is calculated by dividing the Penalty for each question by magnitude of the same.  The Index Value for each question is calculated by using the formula: Importance x (Top Box Wt * Top Box %) - (Bottom Box Wt * Bottom box %).