Ask any cloud-gazer how amorphous an image can be. If the image is your business', it sure helps to have it on your dashboard. That's what CIRRUS, short for Corporate Image Reporting & Retrieval Update Systems, aims to do. Track your press coverage, and report how you look.

A service launched last year by Agencyfaqs!, a dotcom targeted at the advertising community, CIRRUS fine-toothcombs almost all Indian publications for some 1,300 firms, every day. It multiplies the reports' size with the respective papers' readership, arrives at an aggregate visibility score, and then weights them 'positive', 'neutral' or 'negative' to get Image Points. "Across companies, it's safe to say that 60 per cent are neutral, and 6-7 per cent negative," observes Srini Balram, who runs CIRRUS.

Maruti Udyog tops India's Image chart. But wait-a-minute -- UTI as No. 2? Well, it's only because of the sheer volume of UTI coverage (despite the weights). Since most of it is bad, its 'quality of exposure' is poor. It's in desperate need of PR gloss. Who else? VSNL and Star.

But how much of the Image is self-created? "A lot of it," says Balram's gut. Yet, media being media, the Image can veer way out of control. This is why PR-man Andrew Pirie, Co-president, Asia-Pacific, Weber Shandwick, sees PR's job as presenting the client's 'best case'. Lawyer-like, except for a difference in market-sensitivity. "Their tendency is to say 'keep it quiet'," says Pirie, "our's is 'let's talk about it'."

-ARESH SHIRALI

Cereal success
Move Over Lux

Kohinoor Basmati: Now in Knightsbridge

A Delhi-based company is selling rice like a FMCG. Can it translate its initial breakthroughs into sustained success?

It retails in Harrods, Safeway, Costco, some 200,000 outlets in 45 countries, as many stores in India, and was a co-sponsor, along with Bombay Dyeing, of the recent Mrs World pageant in Mumbai.

Here's the surprise: it is the Kohinoor brand of basmati, owned by Delhi-based Satnam Overseas we are talking about. Kohinoor's recent entry into Harrods marks the culmination of the company's three-year effort to build a global brand, something that has cost it a mere Rs 6 crore thus far. "We are selling it just like Lux," says Satnam's Joint MD Gurnam Arora referring to Hindustan Lever Ltd's popular soap.
Satnam's brand play is part of an ongoing endeavour by Indian basmati exporters to break out of the commodity- and private-label bracket. At Harrods for instance (Kohinoor is the first Indian basmati brand to sit on a Harrods shelf), a kilo-pack of Kohinoor retails for four pounds, a pound and half higher than what Satnam's offering fetches in the commodity market. Next step: innovative packaging -- ceramic jars imported from Taiwan -- and a coffee table recipe book. Did Lux do that?

-SUVEEN K. SINHA

EGRESS
Gone In 60 Seconds

Deepak Chandnani: He's off

A dotcom in dire straits opts for a reshuffle.

As it always is, when Deepak Chandnani quit Yahoo India it was due to ''personal reasons''. While the man reported to be headed for NCR claims everything is normal, Yahoo!-watchers expect more changes. The parent, goes the buzz, has refused to invest more into Yahoo India. Yahoo has 27 million users in India, half of them on Yahoo! India, but has been hit by the lack of online advertising. The India portal does make money from mobile services, but with the parent not keen to find a new CEO --Chandnani's portfolio is split between two people -- we wonder what's up?

-VINOD MAHANTA