Product: ETNEWMumbaiBS PubDate: 14-10-2015 Zone: BrandEquity Edition: 1 Page: BEFP User: kailashk0106 Time: 10-09-2015 01:22 Color: CMYK THE ECONOMIC TIMES OCTOBER 14-20, 2015 NITIN SONAWANE Will the Real Hero Please Stand Up? As motorcycle growth dips and scooter growth heads northwards, Hero MotoCorp has little choice but to make quick and effective inroads into Honda “The old territory. By Lijee Philip & Ketan Thakkar scooter selling more than a “We are clearly gunning for leadership in a clear ‘mind leadership’ in motorcycles’ and farts are motorcycle in India was till re- scooters as well. We are putting a lot of stuff to Honda has a clear ‘mind leadership’ in scoot- cently as unthinkable perhaps get to the leadership position. It is not going to ers. And both are aiming to outwit each other as vindaloo finding more takers happen overnight but we will keep improving in these cross-domains while retaining their hanging on” Athan aloo gobhi, but that’s exact- our market share...clearly the ambition, the core supremacy.” ly what happened in the first five objective, the target is to go for leadership. At In 2015-16 the overall two-wheeler industry months of 2015-16. Between April and August, the same time, we are also equally focussed is expected to grow marginally, to close to 19 The world’s largest communica- Honda’ Motorcycle & Scooter India’s Activa on motorcycles, where we have over 52% million units. Scooters could comfortably tion group, WPP’s chief Sir Martin scooter has nosed ahead of Hero MotorCorp’s market share. Going forward, we will be fur- cross the 5 million mark and end bestselling motorcycle, the Splendor to ther strengthening this leadership with new up at over 5.2 million unit Sorrell’s five quick takes on the emerge the largest selling two-wheeler in the launches,” says Pawan Munjal, chairman, with a 12% growth, reckon “old farts”, his business relation- country. The race is neck and neck, with the managing director and CEO, Hero MotoCorp. analysts. Splendor clawing back lost ground, and re- Honda and Hero, joint venture partners for Hero’s first scooter launch ships in India, a Modi-led market’s gaining its lead for the April to September 2015 26 years till 2010, are not in a face-off for lead- was when it was a joint ven- prospects, Twitter and FIFA period – but not by much. If Hero sold 12,35,617 ership, in scooters as well as motorcycles. ture partner with Honda, of all models of the Splendor in the first half of Experts point out that the segmentation lines way back in 2005 when the fiscal year, Honda was hot on its tail with are blurring even as the action intensifies in it launched the PRITHA MITRA DASGUPTA 12,30,828 units. scooters. Given that the scooter segment is Pleasure, a 100 & DELSHAD IRANI To protect its flagship, Hero MotoCorp is now consistently gaining, growing at 11% so far cc scooter. You referred to Maurice Levy (Publicis Groupe’ chief flanking the Splendor brand with an indige- this year as against a declining motorcycles Continued executive) as the Freddy Krueger of advertising due nously-developed scooter of its own — its first market, and with scooters contributing al- on Pg 2 >> to his apparent unwillingness to retire. But wouldn’t — called the Duet, which will be launched most 30% to the overall two-wheeler segment, you say the same label applies to a lot of other in- this Diwali to take on the Activa head the dice seems loaded in the Japanese giant’s dustry leaders? Piyush Pandey (Ogilvy India’s on. Just before that, in the Navratri favour. Says PS Sunder, a senior profes- chairman), for instance has famously said there’s no season, Hero is unveiling a revamped sional-turned-entrepreneur who fixed date for his retirement. Why is this so-called Maestro, called the Maestro Edge, to earlier worked in senior po- young man’s business full of Freddy Kruegers? challenge Honda’s Aviator, which is sitions with two-wheeler It is not his (Levy’s) unwillingness to retire. targeted at the urban male. majors in India: “Hero has There’s no one else there. You are certainly right. Piyush hasn’t set a date yet. Neither Piyush nor I are dead yet. You know there is a very interest- Scooter vs Bike: Running Neck and Neck ing graph that somebody sent me. In the UK since Lehman (Lehman Brothers crash in 2008) the April-August 2015 (unit sales) April-September 2015 employment category that has grown most is 50 Honda Activa >>> year old plus. The employment category that has 10,01,350 12,30,828 grown least is under 24-years. And the one that is just recovering to where it was pre-Lehman is Hero Splendor >>> 9,92,429 12,35,617 25-49. So the old farts are hanging on. ANIRBAN BORA ANIRBAN Continued on Page 4 >> INSIDE Google has Pg3 bought Pg2 Dating (G)apps Dell takes to abc...xyz.com paathshaala Now that Google is Alphabet, it’s going to need some extra URLs to match its new identity. But the company may be taking the quest for the perfect domain name a bit too far. In addition to the ABC.xyz domain that Google showed off in August, it seems that it also recently acquired the domain for the entire alphabet. We all know what Tinder is for. Hooking up. But a new spate of Indian dating apps That ’s right. Google is now the proud owner of the might be suffering an identity crisis visible handy internet domain in their communication. And that just abcdefghijklmnopqrstu- might be why women are swiping left for Pg4 vwxyz.com. Google’s new dating apps. Rejection is hard. So, true 26-letter URL was spot- Harnessing ted in Whois records by love, marriage or hot flings? Just make up DomainInvesting.com. your mind, says BE’s Shephali Bhatt Snapchat The site noted that the URL was created in 1999 and was privately owned before being transferred to Google, though it’s not clear how much Google paid for the URL. “We realized we missed a few letters in abc.xyz, so we’re just being thorough,” a Google repre- sentative said in an emailed statement. Recode’s Mark Bergen speculates that the purchase may have been defensive, to prevent the likes of Apple or Facebook getting their Larry hands on Page, CEO, it. Clicking Alphabet on the URL today leads to an inac- tive site, and we wouldn’t expect that to change anytime soon. The internet address may be easy to remember, but it’s not one that most people would relish typing. GETTYIMAGES (Source: businessin- sider.com) Product: ETNEWMumbaiBS PubDate: 14-10-2015 Zone: BrandEquity Edition: 1 Page: BEPER1 User: kailashk0106 Time: 10-09-2015 01:27 Color: CMYK ECONOMIC TIMES THE OCTOBER 14-20, 2015 2 Dating (G)apps Is confusing communication the reason Indian dating apps are struggling to get more women to sign up? BE finds out. By Shephali Bhatt o you have a 60:40 women to men ratio on your app?’ we ask Sachin Bhatia, co-founder of mobile dating app TrulyMadly. ‘S While we mean to say 40:60, the error inadvertently helps us get to the point sooner. “I’ll retire the day it becomes 60:40,” Bhatia quips. Even Facebook doesn’t have more than 40% female users, says Amit Vora, co-founder of (yet another) Not Just dating app called iCrushiFlush. Quite obvi- ously, getting women to sign up for these apps is the biggest challenge facing every player in the category. And even though 40 is not an abysmal figure, no one can give it in writing Plain that there are no fake profiles. Bhatia, in fact, admits to some cases of female escorts signing up for the app but “they were weeded out as soon as someone flagged it off,” he shares. Vanilla To their credit, almost all the dating apps try to create an ecosystem that protects user’s in- VADILAL WAS FAMOUS FOR terest, especially women. In fact, TrulyMadly recently tied up with AIB’s advertising wing ITS ICE CREAMS. CAN IT ALSO Vigyapanti, to launch a Creep Qawwali that MAKE A DENT IN NON-ICE tries to convey their verified profiles offering. That said, everyone also admits no system is CREAM PRODUCTS? foolproof. If a fee-based Ashley Madison (a site for married people wanting to indulge in ex- SHRAMANA GANGULY tra-marital affairs) can find itself amidst fake ix-year-old Kasish Advani’s first turn as a model profiles lawsuit riot, here we’re talking about Swas in 2015 after she made it to the Vadilal annual apps that are free to download and use. calendar. In the last three years, the Vadilal ice Creating fake profiles is the easiest ploy to cream brand from Gujarat has put 100 five to 25-year-olds cover up for the paucity of genuine female us- on its annual calendar, one of the initiatives that has ena- ers. And why do women not readily sign up for bled it to catch its consumers young. these apps? Anand Halve of chlorophyll brand “Just as ice-creams have ceased to be luxury and have consultancy abridges the cause in two words: ILLUSTRATION: ANIRBAN BORA become aspirational, our endeavour has enabled young Asymmetrical intentions. Don’t worry, We protect female users consumers be pin-up models and aspire for bigger there’s an explanation that follows: Halve had will someone pay for a matchmaking site if We’re like a singles bar but with bouncers.” achievements in life,” says Rajesh Gandhi, chairman & consulted an international dating site when from unwanted elements it’s not a matrimonial site but somewhere in These apps have big names as funders be- managing director of Vadilal Industries, which is set to it wanted to rebrand itself for the Indian mar- but we don’t moral police between casual dating and holy matrimony,” hind them, and big numbers whose veracity become a `500 crore brand in the current fiscal year.