Category: Entertainment

Cola Sales Down?

07 Jun
Raju Alluri Advertisements, Entertainment, Misc

Looks like cola sales in India are down by about 15% this April and May when compared to the same period last year. What could be the reason? Here are my thoughts:

  • Prices have increased considerably: Entry level 200ml cola bottle costs 8 rupees now, as opposed to 5-6 rupees last year. Compared to that, fresh coconuts cost about 5-7 rupees a piece. Coconut water consumption increased in most parts of southern India I have seen.
  • People preferring fruit juices: Fresh fruit juices are now as affordable as similar sized colas. That makes a dent.
  • Stocks: In two instances during my last month’s travel, I was told that they don’t have stocks of a particular cola in these mid sized towns. So I had to go for carbonated drinking water (called “soda” in India)

It would be interesting to see how the next year’s market would be. Will the cola companies cut their profits by NOT signing big stars for advertisements, or would they stick with the prices and adopt some other technique to improve the sales.

Congratulations Shaun Pollack

06 Jun
Raju Alluri Entertainment, Sports

Congratulations to Shaun Pollack for his maiden ODI century in his 285th ODI. He walked in at 31/5 and took the team to 283, scoring 130 runs, almost twice the runs of next highest scorer in the match. Even though Africa XI lost the match, Pollack provided the necessary ingredient of the match, the fighting spirit. Great match to watch over dinner!

India Newspaper Growth

06 Jun
Raju Alluri Advertisements, Entertainment

Very interesting statistics from the this WAN-Press report earlier this week: India has one of the biggest growth rates in both newspaper sales and newspaper advertisement revenues increase.

  • News paper sales in India: Increase of 12.93% over last year and 53.63% over last 5 years (worldwide: 2.3% last year and 9.48% over last 5 years)
  • News paper advertising revenues in India: Increase of 23% over last year and 83% over last 5 years (worldwide: 3.77% increase last year)

So, India is going great with newspapers despite having considerable growth in other media like TV, Internet and FM Radio.

Makes me think about our family’s newspaper readership. We have two dailies (Usually Eenadu and Times of India or Deccan Chronicle) subscribed at home. I also buy an average of another daily newspaper (if I am home) based on the day of the week. Typical buys:

  • Tuesday: Business Standard
  • Wednesday: Economic Times
  • Friday: Hindu
  • Saturday: Deccan Chronicle
  • Sunday: Andhra Jyothi

In addition, I buy Deccan Chronicle (or Times of India, depending on our subscribed one) on other days, if I am in a mood for reading an extra newspaper. During holidays, I read Andhra Jyothi.

Recognizability

25 Apr
Raju Alluri Entertainment, Personal & Family

Chris and I were in several phone meetings across the globe in the last year or so and we frequently chat using emails. Today, While in Newark, CA, USA campus, while introductions are in progress during a meeting, Chris said he recognized me based on the graphic on my weblog. Impressive work by the caricature artist and thanks Chris for remembering those characteristics :-).

Technology at movie theaters

17 Apr
Raju Alluri Entertainment, Movies, Technical

Over the weekend, we went to the recently opened Cine Planet movie theaters at Kompally village, Hyderabad. As you might know, one of the issues with movie theaters in India is the black market for movie tickets. People procure tickets for movies and sell them at a higher cost once the box office is sold out. This theater has an interesting solution for that.

The box office takes a photo of the purchaser of the ticket using a small webcam. The quality of the picture is not great (may be 1024 x 768 level) but serves the purpose. For each purchase, they issue one single bar coded ticket/receipt, irrespective of the number of patrons. Once you reach the screen, there is a small kiosk there with a bar code scanner and a monitor. The monitor shows which of the seats are already occupied (I love this) based on the tickets scanned so far. Once the ticket is scanned, the monitor also shows the face of the individual who purchased the tickets.

Good work!

I see only a minor glitch with this. Most of us are used to go to movies as a group and different parts of the group arrive to the screen at different times. In the classic ticket selling scheme, where one ticket is issued per person, one of us used to wait for others who are yet to arrive and rest of us proceed to the screens. We don’t have that luxury with this scheme.

With this new approach, bodies like law enforcement agencies can get some clues on on the patrons, just in case there is a need to investigate. That is a plus point. Not sure how long the picture data is mined.

Outside the technology part, the place is very calm and enjoyable. Ample parking, very good food court and reasonable prices. Ticket costs are Rs 60 (less than 1.5 USD) and a visit to food court costed 7 of us (3 adults and 4 children) less than Rs 550 (about 13 USD) for lunch.

Only two screens are open as of now and looking forward to see the other two fully operational.

Kids want Champak

25 Mar
Raju Alluri Entertainment, Personal & Family

Kids have been reading Magic Pot magazine for a few years. For the last 3 fortnights, I was buying them the Multimedia edition of the Champak magazine. The multimedia edition is same as the regular fortnightly, except that they ship a games and activity CD in the package. I gave them the first magazine about a month ago and cached the other two until kids completed their annual exams yesterday. Both Spurthi and Surya declared that the quality of stories is better in Champak and they want to regularly read Champak instead.

Compatibility Rules

26 Feb
Raju Alluri Entertainment, Personal & Family

Just now bought a cell phone because my old one is given to my father. Latha and me went to the store and almost bought a Nokia 6070, but after seeing the charger and the data/headset interface, we resorted to Nokia 6030 Silver. The deciding factor is compatibility. I don’t want to maintain two different sets of chargers in Bangalore and here in Hyderabad. Nor do I want to carry my charger all the time. Buying 6030 helps me because the same charger can be used with my other 6030 Black and my Father-in-law’s phone.

Now, Latha is planning to use my 6030 Black and I get to use the 6030 Silver.