‘One will definitely not witness irrational exuberance in 2010’

Charles Cadell, the CEO of Lowe Lintas India is a man who is on a mission to transform the agency - not an easy task as it requires shaking out some age old beliefs from the set-up. While it is essential that Cadell maintain the core principles of Lowe Lintas while effecting the change, the challenge is to bring in changes that have been calling out loud to agencies in order to keep abreast with the changing times. Needless to say, the CEO will have an eventful 2010 with his strategy already in place and execution being the order this year.
The trained pilot when not worrying about markets, brands, clients and the agency loves to travel and is also a historian. In conversation with Tuhina Anand of impact, Cadell talks about his game plan for 2010 and his agency Lowe Lintas.


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Carving distinct markets for distinct cuisines

Most of us might have heard of Ching’s noodles and Chinese sauces, but what we may have missed is the fact that the company manufacturing this brand is in fact, Capital Foods Ltd. who have five brands addressing five distinct cuisine blocks in India. These cusines are, Ching's Secret for Chinese, Smith & Jones- International Foods, Raji- Indian range, Kaeng Thai- Thai noodles and curry range and Mama Maria- Italian. Ching's and Smith & Jones are the flagship brands. The company currently distributes its products in 1,50,000 stores nationally and intends to take it to 12 lakh stores by 2012-13 by further increasing its reach from 400 towns currently to 2000 towns in India. Ajaay Gupta, MD, Capital Foods drives the marketing and advertising of all the brands.

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Rise of the countryside
By Dipali Banka

“The quantum of money in the form of primary issuances coming into equity markets this year would have a tempering effect on the secondary markets and prevent indices from entering into a bubble zone,” Uday Kotak, VC and MD, Kotak Mahindra Bank was reported speaking to university students last week. In the first week of 2010 itself, we saw three IPOs in the form of JSW Energy, Godrej Properties and DB Corp, publishers of Hindi daily Dainik Bhaskar. Though the JSW and Godrej IPOs had met with undersubscribed retail portions, DB Corp was subscribed over 39.54 times with huge response from Qualified Institutional Buyers (subscribed 68.47 times) and High Networth Individuals (25.86 times). The retail segment was subscribed 3.4 times. This signifies the confidence of investors in not only regional print companies, but the media domain on the whole.

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