In a letter to the brand’s business partners, Bjorn Gulden, global CEO of Puma SE, announced Ganguly’s elevation in the company adding that that he will continue to work out of Puma’s India head office in Bengaluru.

With this campaign, the brand aims to highlight the inspirational stories of real women, influencers and athletes from different age groups and fields through the medium of a film, said the company.

No large-cap company in the FMCG/ retail space is offering growth visibility as high as Titan.

Our revenues were flat in a quarter where the industry consumption on gold was minus 32% in tonnes.

Jewellery remains the main business of the company, generating most of its operating profit (EBIT). It added 34 jewellery stores in the first nine months and plans to add another 16 by the end of the fiscal taking the total store count to 337.

“Titan phased out its older models and launched Fastrack’s Reflex 2.0 in the 2018Q3. It helped the brand to get a healthy 70% sequential growth in its overall shipments in the overall wearable segment,” IDC said.

“While we are yet to feel the pressure in products sourced from third-party suppliers, there are shortages in Apple’s original accessories,” said one of the re-sellers of the American brand in an upmarket store at Gurgaon.

In an interview with Fox Business, Cook said: "I see India as a huge opportunity for us. For years, we could not enter there unless we entered there with a partner into retail and we did not want to do that. We wanted to maintain control of our brand and so forth".

"We strongly appeal to you to not increase GST on mobiles. The increase of 6% would directly lead to hike in prices of product, impacting consumer behaviour leading to a slowdown in demand affecting business adversely,” said the letter written by AIMRA national president Arvinder Khurana.

The industry body represents 1.50 lakh mobile retailers who may be unable to pay their monthly instalments and interest towards credit cards, vehicle loan, home loan and business loans taken by them. A similar letter highlighting the concerns of the mobile retailers was also sent to non-banking finance companies (NBFCs).

“For incubators, we want to look at India as the first starting point,” said Manish Agarwal, CEO of Reliance Entertainment.

King Digital Entertainment Plc, owner of Candy Crush, has signed an exclusive licensing deal with Mumbai-based Dream Theatre, to license and sell Candy Crush branded products across South Asia.

Reliance Entertainment, an arm of the Anil Ambani-headed Reliance Group, on Thursday named Amit Khanduja as the new CEO of Reliance Games, effective June 1.

With 35% users each in the US and Asia Pacific region and the remaining in Europe, 99Games is one of the first Indian gaming studios to hit this success.

MadRat has developed an interactive suit designed to encourage children to venture out and play even within the restrictive confines of housing complexes.

Free download of Really Wanna See You from Lydia Loveless ' new CD "Somewhere Else", currently featured on The Sound. Find out more about the artist here .

Free download of Outskirts of Love from the CD of the same name by Shemekia Copeland , currently featured on The Sound. Find out more about the artist here.

Free download of This is True from the CD True by the Elders , currently featured on The Sound. Find out more about the artist here.

Earlier, the loan default was estimated at over Rs 800 crore but scrutiny of documents by CBI revealed that the amount is much larger.

Though the business is a precarious one, bookstores are here to stay as long as there are readers driven by a compulsion to read, say leading booksellers in the capital.

Readers have placed online orders and bookstores are keeping a track of each order and are hoping to cater to every such customer once the situation gets better.

"We have 2,200 exclusive dealers or retailers and therefore what has worked well for us is this exclusive chain right from manufacturing to the consumer."

According to the notification, companies that make phones priced at ₹15,000 and above and which make a cumulative investment of ₹1,000 crore over four years, starting with ₹250 crore in the first year, will qualify for an incentive of 6% for the first two years, followed by 5% for the next two and 4% in the fifth year..

Having suffered an unprecedented sales decline of 6-7 per cent in 2019-20, the industry will be up against challenges in both supply and demand sides due to the coronavirus pandemic, Panasonic India and South Asia President and CEO Manish Sharma said.

Products such as laptops, smartphones and printers have become crucial for those working from home, while household appliances like washing machines, ACs, TVs and vacuum cleaners are now more important than ever for households.

​​Individually, each brand is seeking more clarity and approval on the guidelines. The guidelines say that we would have to open in a phased manner. All brands are gearing up to open up, wherever, it will be permitted," CEAMA President Kamal Nandi said.

Samsung has created an ecommerce platform in partnership with Benow.in along with mobile phone retailers across the country that will allow them to sell and deliver smartphones. Offline stores are also being used to fulfil orders placed on Samsung’s e-store for television and appliances.

Several brands took the decision since both offline and online market is closed leading to piling up of inventory in their warehouses, and several of their plants falling in red zones or in states where permission has not yet been given. Some states like Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Karnataka have also decided to not provide any relaxation to industries till the lockdown ends.

Companies like Panasonic India, Godrej Appliances, Dixon Technologies and Super Plastronics Pvt Ltd said with retail outlets shut there is no point to start production as there is existing unsold inventory of March at warehouses and dealers.

"Sales and profits of set products business, including smartphones and TVs, are expected to decline significantly as COVID-19 affects demand and leads to store and plant closures globally," Samsung said in a statement.

Brands including Godrej, Panasonic, Samsung are now extending video consultations and helplines to serve a fraction of the complaints that can be solved over guided videos or calls. The brands are reaching out to customers through social media or through remote assist helplines.

The company has cut prices anywhere from Rs 2,000 on the smaller screen televisions going up to Rs two lakh on a flagship 85-inch model apart from rolling out long tenure no-cost EMI schemes and bundling offers. It has launched a new 85-inch model at Rs 5.9 lakh bringing down its earlier pricing structure of Rs 10 lakh in this screen size.

Documentation solutions firm Xerox today announced the appointment of Ashraf ElArman as Managing Director of its Indian unit, effective June 22.

India’s largest maker of writing & printing paper has been in talks with Nine Dragons for some time now. Discussions are likely to lead to a binding agreement soon, sources said.

Reliance Retail’s marquee label operator Reliance Brands is the India master franchisee for Hamleys, which reputedly has its origins in the world’s oldest toy store in London that was opened in 1881.

Reliance Brands has completed acquisition of 100 per cent stake of Hamleys Global Holdings (HGHL) through a special purpose vehicle company set up in United Kingdom for cash consideration of GBP 67.96 million, Reliance Industries said in a BSE filing Thursday.

Hamleys entered Indian in 2010 with its first store at High Street Phoenix Mumbai and is currently the largest toy retailer in India with 100 stores in 36 cities.

Reliance Brands will take Hamleys toy stores to the US and Canada to capitalise on the vacuum created by liquidation of one the world’s largest toy store chain Toys R Us.

It has hired Sumeet Yadav, former CEO of South African restaurant chain Nando’s in India, to head Hamleys, according to two people aware of the development.

BigThinx’s neural networks create a personalised 3D virtual avatar from 2D images for fashion brands and their customers.

Twelve tons of the gel will be produced as soon as this week.

We foresee a deferred demand. Most of the weddings in Q1 got pushed to Q3 or Q4 due to the lockdown. People may spend less money on destination weddings, clothes and other events around it. But we expect investment in jewellery for weddings, said Ajoy Chawla, CEO of Titan’s jewellery division.

Customers can purchase the precious metal from two grams upwards following which a gold ownership certificate would be sent to them on the day of Akshaya Tritiya based on the customer recommended platforms.

The revenue growth of organised gold jewellery retailers could halve to 5-6% (compound annual growth rate) in the current and next fiscals, compared with 12% in the preceding three fiscals, a CRISIL study of 44 such retailers it rates shows.

The lockdown has resulted in closure of retail stores across the country. Apart from this, there have been supply chain disruptions with restriction on movement of non-essential goods. While jewellery buying is generally spread throughout the year, it peaks during periods of Akshaya Tritiya, wedding and festival seasons as buying gold is considered culturally auspicious.

GJC chairman Anantha Padmanabhan said, “There may be some token booking for gold by individuals for amounts like Rs 5,000 or so. But there will be no big investments in gold as all the shops are closed. The drop in demand will be around 94%.”

Senco Gold & Diamonds is offering a discount on the gold rate. Sankar Sen, CMD of the Kolkata-based company, said the special Akshay Tritiya offer entails giving a discount of Rs 400 per gram on the gold rate during the offer period that runs from April 22-27.

"As we started getting a lot of enquires from our regular customers, we have started taking Akshay Tritiya bookings online from 21st April onwards on our e-commerce platforms. The same will be delivered to the customers post lockdown ends," Aditya Pethe, director, WHP Jewellers said.

Mr. Ajoy Chawla, CEO, Jewellery Division at Titan Company Limited said, "All 328 Tanishq stores remain shut this year and hence it would be unfair to compare numbers with last year. But the overall customer response to tanishq.co.in from key metros and even with tier-2 and tier-3 towns has been extremely encouraging.