BRAND TRIVIA

Boroline, made by GD Pharmaceuticals, is an outcome of the
nationalistic wave during the pre-Independence era. Its founder, Gourmohan
Dutta, belonged to the rich merchant class of Calcutta. He was already an
established trader of imported goods, when he decided to join the Swadeshi
movement. A practical patriot, he was convinced that the best way to help India
was to contribute to her economic self-sufficiency.
With a dream of free and self-sufficient India in his heart, he started
manufacturing medicines. One of them would be the legendary green tube – Boroline. It had a humble beginning in his house in 1929.The celebrated journey had begun. From the second half of the 1990s Boroline extended its brand to hair care products with Boroline’s Eleen. The medicinal value of Boroline is extended to a modern pain relieving formula branded as Boroline’s Penorub. Boroline’s brand image
is the brain child of the founder’s son, Murari Mohan Dutta.

Saridon, a product of Nicholas Piramal, advertises itself as ‘Headache Specialist’. Saridon was launched in Switzerland in 1933 by F. Hoffmann La Roche, a company formed by the couple – Fritz Hoffmann and Adele La Roche. Saridon was launched in India in 1969 by Roche. Under a license
agreement the brand came under the Piramal umbrella in 1996/97.
Saridon, in spite of being a serious product in terms of its usage, has
always used innovation and technology to further its cause of brand
building and brand recall. The in-film placement in Parineeta is a case
in point. Like many other successful brands Saridon, too, has also
used a jingle to communicate its core promise. The jingle ‘Na rahe
peedha, na rahe dard, bus ek, sirf ek, sirf ek Saridon’.

Star: vent of cable and satellite television sowed the seeds of the electronic media revolution in India. From those initial images of the first Gulf War beamed on CNN, television has truly come a long way with more than 150 channels available at the flick of a remote control button. Star set its first footprint in 1991. Owned at Hong Kong based business mogul Li Ka Shing, it began beaming Star
Plus (then in English), Prime Sports, MTV and BBC in the
country. In 1992, Zee entered into a joint venture with Star to
launch Zee TV. The following year Star’s ownership changed
hands and Star became a part of the global Newscorp Empire, owned by Rupert Murdoch.
By 1995, MTV and BBC had moved out and Newscorp had acquired complete ownership of the company. In 1996, Star Sports formed a joint venture with ESPN called ESPN-Star Sports. The subsequent years saw the launch of Star News – India’s first English news channel – and Star World.
When Star and Zee parted ways in 1999, it marked a new epoch for the company. In 2002, Star News was relaunched as a fully Hindi news broadcaster completing its bouquet of unmatched offerings for the viewer. Of late, Star has made serious strides into other media and its portal is India’s largest television platform on the net and recognised for its home grown technological advances like
indyatube. Star Gold premiered Swades by launching Project Swades, which actually electrified a village in real life.

Brooke Bond: For years consumers have accessed Brooke Bond in India through its major sub-brands: Brooke Bond Red Label, Brooke Bond Taj Mahal, Brooke
Bond Taaza and Brooke Bond 3 Roses. In a market fragmented by
dozens of brands, Brooke Bond, with a value share of more than 30%,
is by far the largest brand in the category. Brooke Bond is one of the
largest brands of Unilever in India, and one of the largest in the FMCG
sector in the country. The Brooke Bond Taj Mahal tea bags were
launched in the 1970s and are a prime example of innovation. Brooke
Bond’s pioneering tea expertise makes it an invaluable and legendary brand. It has a heritage of warming the hearts of tea drinkers in India since 1869.

Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), a brand synonymous with capital markets in India,is the oldest exchange in Asia. While BSE is now synonymous with Dalal Street, it wasn’t always so. In fact, the first venues of the earliest stockbroker meetings in the 1850s were under banyan trees – in
front of the Town Hall, where Horniman Circle is now situated. A decade later, the brokers moved their venue to another set of banyan trees at the junction of Meadows
Street and Mahatma Gandhi Road. Growing in numbers, the men eventually found a permanent place in 1874.The new place was aptly called Dalal Street.
Subsequently, the Native Share and Stock Brokers’
Association, a precursor to today’s BSE, was born in 1875 and formally constituted in 1887. In 2002,the name The Stock Exchange, Bombay, was changed to BSE. BSE, which had introduced securities trading in India, replaced its open outcry system of trading, in 1995, when the totally automated trading through the BSE Online Trading (BOLT) system was put into practice. The BOLT network was
expanded, nationwide in 1997.
The American Civil War and the resultant cotton trade with England acted as a catalyst in the establishment of ‘The Native Share and Stock Brokers Association’. The first building of the Stock Exchange, Sir Dinshaw Petit Native Brokers’ Hall, was inaugurated in 1899. The first Clearing House
now known as BOISL (BSE & Bank of India Shareholding Limited) came into being in Feb 1921 promoted jointly by BSE and Bank of India. P J Tower, formally known as The Stock Exchange Tower,now stands in the memory of a broker, Late Phiroze Jeejeebhoy, the architect of the Stock Markets.

Ashok Leyland: The genesis of Ashok Leyland lies
in a young nation’s quest for self-reliance. On Pandit
Jawaharlal Nehru’s persuasion, Raghunandan Saran entered
automotive manufacture and set up Ashok Motors in Madras
for the assembly of Austin cars, in 1948. Later, in 1955, with equity participation from British Leyland,Ashok Leyland commenced the manufacture of commercial vehicles. A turning point in Ashok Leyland’s history came in 1987 when Land Rover Leyland International Holdings Ltd (LRLIH), the holding company of Ashok Leyland was taken over by the transnational, multi-billion dollar conglomerate, the
Hinduja Group, along with IVECO, the European trucking giant. Since July 2006, the Hinduja Group has become a 100% share holder of LRLIH. Ashok Leyland is the
largest supplier of logistics vehicles to the Indian Army supplying a host of modern special purpose vehicles such as the Stallion 4x4s. ‘Engineering your tomorrows’ has been Ashok Leyland’s punchline. Ashok is the name of the company’s founder Saran’s son. When India reached out to Pakistan at Wagah in February 1999, it was an Ashok Leyland bus that took people across the border. Ashok Leyland buses have also been the choice for the Srinagar–Muzzafarabad and the Poonch- Rawalkot cross-overs.

ACC: The Indian cement industry dates back to 1914 when the first unit with a capacity of 1000 tonnes was established in Porbandar. ACC was formed in 1936 when ten existing cement manufacturers came together under one umbrella – the country’s first notable merger, at a time when the term mergers and acquisitions was not even coined.
The history of ACC spans a wide canvas beginning with the struggle of its
pioneer F E Dinshaw and other Indian entrepreneurs of the cement industry.
The founding companies belonged to four prominent business groups – Tatas,
Khataus, Killick Nixon and F E Dinshaw. ACC was formally established on 1st August 1936. Sir Nowroji B Saklatvala was the first chairman. The new company had four managing directors, one from each constituent group. Its first Board included distinguished luminaries of the Indian business world of
the time – J R D Tata, Ambalal Sarabhai, Walchand Hirachand, Dharamsey Khatau, Sir Akbar Hydari, Nawab Salar Jung Bahadur and Sir Homy Mody.
Today, the company is part of the Holcim group of Switzerland, which is the world leader in cement, concrete and aggregates. ACC changed its name from its original The Associated Cement Companies Limited, to simply ACC Limited in Sept 2006.
In the initial stages of its operations, each of ACC’s plants sold cement under different names – beginning with BBB, India’s first cement brand. Other unique names included Five Rivers, Anchor, Castle, Ganapati, Nilgiri, Charminar, Flag, Sun and Swastika. In its move towards consolidation, the brand name ACC took over. ACC nurtured the Concrete Association of India (CAI), a unique agency set
up to promote the use of cement as a strong and viable building material. The Indian Concrete Journal, the oldest journal of its kind, is still published by ACC.
ACC was the first company in India to introduce Ready Mix Concrete on a commercial basis.
When the first Indian expedition reached Antarctica they raised the Indian flag on a pedestal built with special cement developed by ACC that could set under extreme sub-zero conditions.
ACC has championed the cause of national sports. It was among the first to employ cricketers – names like Rusy Mody, Ramakant Desai, Madhav Mantri, Bapu Nadkarni, Dilip Sardesai, Polly Umrigar, Sunil Gavaskar and Karsan Ghavri. In the 1960s and 1970s, more than half the Indian test cricket team were
ACC employees.Two giants of the Indian engineering arena Holck Larsen and Sumant Moolgaokar started their careers as young engineers in ACC.