Sometime soon, the government of India Gazette will carry the text of the bill banning advertisements of tobacco, and related products, initiating the enforcement of the already-passed legislation. In a last-minute rush, India's cigarette companies are launching offerings while the going is good (and legal). Godfrey Philips has revived its premium offering Jaisalmer-new pack and new campaign-while ITC is testing the waters with a new product, Wills Silk Cut. Globally, Silk Cut, a brand owned by the UK's Gallaher Group and marketed in international markets by bat, is a premium cigarette. In India, at Rs 46 for a pack of 20s, it is anything but. One of the several dozen trademarks registered by ITC in India, Wills Silk Cut is still in the test-marketing stage and it is unclear whether the company will decide to go the whole nine yards.

--Debojyoti Chatterjee

"We Must Not Be Completely Stupid!"

Philips' Oosterveld: All for change

A Dutch engineer, 59-year-old Jan P. Oosterveld, Member, Group Management Committee & CEO Asia Pacific of the $31.8-billion Royal Philips Electronics, is not the least bit apologetic about his company's "...too old, too male and too Dutch," and perhaps too techie corporate culture. Nonetheless, he is all for changing it and making Philips more market-agile in the process. Excerpts from an exclusive interview with BT's Shailesh Dobhal:

Philips is considered a brilliant inventor, but a bad marketer. Is that changing?

I am not disagreeing, but if I look to our company and the categories that we play globally, we are number two in medical systems, number one in lighting, number one in domestic appliances, number one in shavers, number one in steam irons, number one in (electrical) toothbrushes. In semiconductors, where we participate, we are in (the) top three, in televisions, number two and in audio number two or three. So we must not be completely stupid!

But you are right, we're not good enough in bringing technology to the market. We are improving that by putting more emphasis on marketing, by putting more people in marketing.

Do you agree with your Chief Executive, Gerard Kleisterlee, that the company's "...too old, too male and too Dutch," corporate culture prevents it from being a great marketer?

He is my boss, what should I say! We have to admit that the Dutch influence (on the company) is still very high and we would like to change that. We believe that a mixture of people can create more creativity; only relying on just Dutch engineers (and I am one, and Kleisterlee is another) is not good enough for the future (of the company).

You are not seen as an aggressive marketer in India.

In audio, we are very big but we may want to grow that market. In televisions, we have to do something and that is a matter of distribution, talking to the trade, talking to the consumers and (launching) the right products.

How big and important is India within Asia-Pacific for Philips?

It is just under 10 per cent of sales, after China, Japan and Korea. India, in some sense, has more potential than US in certain product categories. India is important enough to not ignore, and we have also to be careful not to put everything in China, though it may be the current wisdom.

The Zone
The Wi-Fi revolution catches on in India.

Wireless Mocha: Barista plans to Wi-Fi its chain

Walked into a Wi-Fi hotspot yet? chances are, you soon will. The Chennai airport is already Wi-Fi compliant as are several five-star hotels and offices; Delhi's will soon be; and Tata Infomedia is wifying the Barista chain in which Tata Coffee is an investor.

One recent entrant to the Wi-Fi club is the Dhirubhai Ambani Knowledge City (DAKC) on Mumbai's outskirts. Sunil Bhatt, the Chief technology Officer of Allied Digital Services, the company that has bagged the project to Wi-Fi DAKC says that eventually, the entire 160-acre campus will be a hotspot. DAKC apart, Bhatt claims, Allied has Wi-Fied 22 other locations in India, including two airports, three five-star hotels, and a chain of coffee bars.

Competitor Consilnet has done around seven, mainly hotels. And not too long ago, this magazine carried an article on hotspots including parts of the College of Combat at Mhow, and the Indian School of Business' campus in Hyderabad

Expect a hotspot boom: Wi-Fi infrastructure has become less expensive; for instance, a base station that connects 10 devices now costs Rs 20,000, down from Rs 80,000 a few months back.

Executives at Intel India-the company is betting big on Wi-Fi; its latest initiative is the Centrino chip for portable comps that comes with a radio transmitter on a chip-believe India could have as many as 200 hotspots right now.

Still, that's less than a tenth the number in China, and around 1 per cent the number in South Korea. Why, even Nepal has several-this season, mountaineers seeking to try their hand at conquering the Everest dabbled with some worldly connections, courtesy a Wi-Fi-enabled base camp in Nepal. That's way beyond cool.

-Priya Srinivasan

Protato, Anyone?
No, this isn't about Dan Quayle Redux; with genetically modified potatoes, aubergines, even tobacco in the pipeline, India is set to become a GM nation.

If you're the snack-while-you-read type, this time next year, you could well be munching on wafers made from genetically modified potatoes while you read one of the July 2004 issues of this magazine. The country's first genetically modified food, the protato (that's protein potato), developed by Jawaharlal Nehru University is likely to be cleared for commercial launch in the next six months. That's just the beginning, gush advocates of GM foods, holding forth the promise of a brave new world where disease resistant (and high-yielding) GM crops do away with hunger, although, given India's recent experience with food rotting in Food Corporation godowns while some people starved to death indicates that a mere supply-side solution can't do away with hunger.

Still, not everyone can stomach the taste of GM potatoes (or any other GM food for that matter). It isn't safe, they argue; nor is it necessary. "Why not?" counters Manju Sharma, the Head of the Indian Government's Department of Bio-Technology (DBT) for short. "If we can solve the problem of malnutrition and under-nutrition, why not?" Genetic modifications help food crops survive stressful environments and pests and parasites, and enhance their productivity. Parts of India are prone to droughts and estimates put the number of people suffering from malnutrition in the country at 300 million, nearly a third of its population. That alone should be enough reason to introduce GM crops into the country. It has been enough in the US, Argentina, Canada, and China. The US alone boasts over 66 per cent of the total area under transgenic crops, a number that has increased 35 times since 1996 to some 58.7 million hectares today.

Opposition to the introduction of GM foods in India ranges from the rational to the absurd. Constituting the rational face of such hostility are organisations such as Gene Campaign that believe that India, instead of blindly following the US tack on GM foods, should frame its own policy. Apart from a testing procedure that will determine the environmental and health risks of GM foods, says Gene Campaign's President, Suman Sahai, this policy should mandate that all GM foods have to be labelled as such. "Until a stringent regulatory and monitoring network is in place, we should not allow GM crops or foods into India," explains Sahai. That's the stand Fortress Europe has chosen to take, although the US is fighting the EU's ban on imports of GM Foods at the World Trade Organisation. "GM foods and crops do not fulfil the needs test, the economics test, or the ecological and health risk test," says Vandana Shiva the Founder of Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology. "They are an unnecessary hazard. "

Shiva has taken the government (Ministries of Environment and Agriculture and DBT) and Mahyco-Monsanto to the Supreme Court over the release of BT Cotton (the only transgenic in India thus far) alleging that the testing norms for transgenics prescribed by the government itself have been flouted. Still, if her claims about transgenics not fulfilling the economics text, and Sahai's about BT cotton's yield being below non-BT cotton's in certain areas are true, then no court ruling is needed to squash the march of GM crops or foods; the simple logic of business will do the task. The DBT's Sharma counters that the release of transgenics is governed by the Indian Environment Protection Act of 1986, and that post nutritional and toxicological tests, GM crops and foods have to be approved by the Institutional Biosafety Committee, the Review Committee on Genetic Manipulation, and the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee. "Everything is in place," she insists. And Mahyco Monsanto has produced studies that claim that the 55,000 farmers who used BT cotton reported a 65-70 per cent reduction in the use of pesticides, and an average increase in yield of 30 per cent.

Both sides are probably in the right, although it must be said that studies on the impact of GM foods on humans remain inconclusive-Shiva maintains that the ill-effects could surface after a few decades and draws the none-too-obvious analogy about the pesticide DDT being found dangerous after it was in use for several years. Still, circa 2003 GM foods and crops remain the best bet, yet to feed a growing (and hungry) populace.

-Vandana Gombar