From the Editor

How do you make profits - real fat profits - by selling your products free? How do you make your product popular - that too a rage - without advertising it? Ask any businessman these questions and he is likely to be at a loss for answers. Yet Google, one of US's most valuable companies, has thrived by adhering to these unconventional tenets.

Without charging a penny for its products, the company's profits are $4.3 billion, revenues $22 billion and market value $138 billion. As for popularity, Google is synonymous with the Internet for most of its users. All this for a company that's no more than 10 years old.

Yet, it is not the speed of its growth but its approach to business that truly turns conventional business models on their head. A company that isn't obsessed with pricing and promotion is able to focus single-mindedly only on one thing: its product.

By making its products and services mega hits with consumers, the company is able to reap profits - without chasing them. This approach is quite similar to the Indian philosophy of giving precedence to wisdom (Saraswati) over wealth (Laxmi) because "fortune flies on the wings of knowledge".

Translated into Googleo-sophy it would mean profits and popularity ride on the back of a great product. There is an equally compelling story of how Google collects its ad revenues, which comes close to Kautilya's prescription for a good taxation system: Google collects money the way a honeybee collects nectar from the flower - most taxpayers (Google's customers, in this case) don't feel the pinch and government (Google, in this case) gets rich. Though Google isn't the only example of this, it is perhaps the best and the most fascinating.

And there is no better person to explain the Google phenomenon than Nikesh Arora. Born and educated in India, Arora has recently been made a President of Google Inc. - joining founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who are the firm's other two Presidents. Arora is equally at ease with engineering, marketing and finance, has worked in Asia, the US and Europe and is truly Google-ised. Turn to the cover story section for his fascinating account.

From Google to a company that seems to be its polar opposite - Ford. Yet its CEO Alan Mulally is up to some equally daring initiatives - for instance, proposing to make a car for the whole world, just like Boeing (his ex-employer) makes one plane for the globe.

Mulally tells BT how his company is in a much better shape than its other two Motown rivals, GM and Chrysler, and why he thinks India is at the centre of the next big thing for the global auto industry - the small car.

The Indian Premier League may have had to go to South Africa this year, but it's spawning a business that's taking roots in small and remote districts of India.