Small Business

Even as the volume pressure was evident on ACC’s March quarter performance and realisations disappointed, cost controls pulled up the company’s operating performance. With both, operating and net profit ahead of estimates, the ACC stock gained more than 8 per cent on Wednesday. With the lockdown in progress, cement sales volume at 6.56 million tonne (MT) declined 12 per cent year-on-year and 16 per cent sequentially, in March quarter (Q1, for the company follows January-December accounting year). Realisations at Rs 4,702 per tonne improved marginally by 0.9 per cent sequentially helped by price hikes taken by…

April 21, 2020 4 min readOpinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. The following excerpt is from Dan S. Kennedy and Kim Walsh Phillips’s No B.S. Guide to Direct Response Social Media Marketing, Second Edition. Buy it now from Amazon | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound Trying to do social media marketing that actually works grows more difficult by the day. In fact, Facebook is regularly throwing advertisers right out the back door of the castle. To get back in, companies are often required to redo their sites and behavior in ways that neuter effectiveness. Do not underestimate…

Health insurance companies may collect premiums in parts, said the industry regulator on Tuesday as it sought to help people during the coronavirus outbreak in the country. Irdai, in September, allowed companies offering heath products to accept premium payment in instalments, which are otherwise collected annually. Companies can offer health premiums in installments as a permanent feature or as a temporary relief to policyholders for twelve months in respect of all policies due for renewal up to March 31, 2021. In doing so, the regulator has relaxed the guidelines that mandates…

The sharp fall of 25 per cent in Brent crude oil prices to $21 a barrel over two days is not good news for domestic oil producers such as ONGC, Oil India and even Vedanta, the natural resources major, whose subsidiary Cairn India is involved in oil production and exploration, as well as Reliance Industries (RIL). Oil marketing companies (OMCs), too, will be hit in the short run, but they stand to gain if oil prices sustain at lower levels. Globally, while there continues to be a demand-supply mismatch, with oil supplies exceeding demand, it has…

April 20, 2020 7 min read This story appears in the April 2020 issue of Entrepreneur. Subscribe » First there was Chillhouse. Then there was Chillology. And then things were not chill. It started with Cyndi Ramirez-Fulton, founder and CEO of Chillhouse, which is a Manhattan-based “new-age spa.” The company has attracted more than 100,000 Instagram followers who love its modern aesthetic and self-care ethos. In October, one of those followers alerted Ramirez-Fulton to another brand’s account — and it looked eerily similar to Chillhouse’s. This other account was for a different self-care destination, called Chillology. It copied specific Chillhouse…

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Jewellery brand Tanishq plans to promote video-based selling of ornaments to avoid crowds at stores when the lockdown to contain the coronavirus ends, said Ajoy Chawla, Chief Executive Officer of Titan’s jewellery business which owns the brand. Speaking at a video-conference organised by the Gems and Jewellery Export Promotion Council (GJEPC), here on Monday, Chawla said, “We will accommodate only a few customers on walk in basis. Arrange chairs in our stores in a way that customers’ service is not impacted. At the same time, we will prioritise appointment based selling or ornaments.” …

In a survey of more than 5,000 shoppers, people said they’re open to advertising … so long as the price is cut. April 14, 2020 4 min read If you’re going to advertise during the COVID-19 pandemic, offer a discount — or better yet, offer something for free. That’s the big takeaway from a survey of 5,531 consumers, produced by the Canadian product review site Chick Advisor. The company interviewed people about the kinds of advertising they do and don’t want to see right now. This is an important subject, because many entrepreneurs are unsure of how to communicate during…