Economy

Business Standard newspaper conducts a B-school Summer Project Competition every year, sponsored by Crompton Greaves. B-schools from around the country are invited to send what they consider their ‘best summer internship project report’. As readers know, most two-year MBA programmes have a compulsory 6-8 week industry internship. This often carries a full credit or two, so students and faculty take it very seriously. Business Standard gets around 150 reports [one per school] from  B-schools spread all over India. These are reviewed by a knowledge partner and 15 of these are then selected and sent to a jury panel for review.…

As another lockdown began in Bengaluru, the entire day’s hustle and bustle found itself compressed into the four-hour window from 6 am to 10 am. That's when even the most paranoid of folks leave their homes to buy everything from chicken to cigarettes to chat masala. Some are taken aback when asked to pay Rs. 100 for 5-odd cigarettes while others sigh as they queue up to buy beer at 7:30 in the morning.  Read More: Will your neighbourhood grocery store recover from COVID lockdown? My daily morning ritual was a walk to the main road, to buy newspaper and…

Last year a nationwide lockdown was suddenly imposed with barely four hours notice, the lockdown this year is a lot different.  For one, the Maharashtra government seems to be more in control. Maharashtra consulted with several stakeholders before imposing the lockdown and considered their views before imposing restrictions.  There have been no sudden announcements this year. In fact, before introducing a fresh round of restrictions, there are enough hints thrown in from the government to prevent panic in the people.  Though the complete day lockdown was introduced only from April 21, 2021, the state’s health minister Rajesh Tope kept referring…

May 1, 2014. A bomb blast at the Chennai Central railway station came as a rude shock for the city. The incident jolted the Railway Protection Force. Frantic calls were made to the 108 helpline. Time was precious. But even before medical assistance reached the station and the nearby hospitals could be informed, the men in red ran towards the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital, carrying the injured the best they could. The hospital was around half a kilometre away and it has to be acknowledged that such spontaneous action had saved many lives.  These are the porters in Chennai’s…

The Union Budget 2021 laid out an elaborate financial package to develop metro rail lines across cities. While more metro lines are being envisioned with a focus on building back the economy, post-pandemic mass transit infrastructure also needs to be leveraged to sustain the growth of jobs and urban economy. One such clear opportunity lies before the Mumbai Metro. Mumbai Metro line 2A (Dahisar – D.N. Nagar) and 7 (Andheri East – Dahisar East) are expected to be operational within the next few months, adding 35 kilometre of mass transit lines to the megacity. Before the pandemic, the 11.4 kilometre long Metro line 1 (Versova-Andheri-Ghatkopar) served…

On a warm evening in March, staff members worked swiftly inside a glitzy salon in Malad, Mumbai, to sanitize their customers’ hands and feet as they noted down their details and studied the number of appointments pending for the evening.  Most masks stayed on as a customer waited for her hair color to set in just as another client soaked in the afterglow of her manicure. The Glam Factor salon, a family-run establishment in the western suburbs of the city, was slowly getting back on track this year after the pandemic stalled their profits in 2020 after India went into…

In March 2020, Lakshmi's employer asked her to take a week's leave. After the week, Lakshmi, a domestic worker, was asked to not come to work for another month. After that, her employer stopped picking her calls and that is how she realised that she had been let go. Lakshmi's story is not unusual. This one narrative from a Bengalurean woman finds itself reflected in large-scale numbers seen in published reports. The Global Gender Gap Report 2021 saw India slipping down 28 places and being ranked at 140th position among 156 countries. One of the parameters this report looks at…

The economic slump from the lockdown threw many businesses into a tizz. But a few enterprising women in Ahmedabad decided to convert the lemons life threw at them into not just lemonade, but also profit from it.   “For me it was a golden opportunity,” said Beenoo Mukhi, Corporate Trainer, Founder of Eternal Quest, a company that specializes in sales and corporate training. “Lockdown meant meetings and sales were happening online. There was a felt need for trainers like me. Moreover, sitting in Ahmedabad, I could train people anywhere. The good thing was internet connectivity and infrastructure for online training was…

Off the busy NSC Bose Road opposite the Madras High Court building, run two streets parallel to each other. On any work day, you would find a stream of loadmen carrying wrapped packages on bullock carts and rickshaws on these streets, even as two-wheelers snake their way in and out and shoppers walk leisurely past. There's not much to distinguish the streets from any other commercial locality on Broadway just by the looks of it.  The real uniqueness lies elsewhere. These two streets -- Prakasam Salai and Baker Street host hundreds of wholesale optical stores.  From the cutting of lens…

There was a time when you could build a long. successful career by focusing on one narrow domain in which you were an expert. For example, you could start in accounts, move up to finance, then to the board and may be the MD’s suite. That changed some decades back when managements began to realise that an ‘I’-shaped knowledge base was not enough in a changing world. Companies started rotating people from finance to manufacturing to marketing before considering a person suitable for the corner office or the ‘C’ suite. In line with this, business schools created the ‘T’ shaped learning…