People, places and products

PEOPLE

Charitable foodie
Shruti Shibulal

She is a chemistry major who has worked with financial giant Merrill Lynch for 18 months in New York and now runs a new age European restaurant called Caperberry in Bangalore. Twenty-four-year-old Shruti Shibulal, the daughter of S.D. Shibulal, Founder and current COO, Infosys, is firm on creating a niche for herself and hence, the food venture along with ace chef Abhijeet Saha. “My dad doesn’t know a whole lot about food,” she giggles, “but I do go to him for some sagely business advice.” Shruti is also an integral part of Advaith Foundation, which was started by her mother Kumari to impart education to the underprivileged. 2010 could see the Mexican food buff head to the US for her MBA.

Short-lived retirement
Bhaskar Menon

Bhaskar Menon has spent the last three years enjoying the luxuries of semi-retirement and repositioning himself as an advisor to venture capital firm NEA Indo-US Ventures, and privately as an angel investor. Since resigning from IT services firm MphasiS—after its acquisition by EDS—Menon, who was one of the firm’s founders, has chosen to relax at his Manhattan pad. Just as he was getting very comfortable, Menon, 48, was yanked back to reality a month ago when he was headhunted to become the CEO of e4e, an IT services company founded by serial technology entrepreneur K.B. Chandrashekhar and a handful of others. Recently, Som Das, the company’s CEO and Co-founder, CTO Sridhar Mitta and COO Murali Rangarajan have all quit, making Menon’s job doubly difficult. “e4e needs to go back to basics,” he says, “we will focus on our four key business units, improving profitability and on organic growth.” With companies slashing IT budgets and number of tech vendors, Menon will need to hit the ground running to keep e4e afloat.

Hollywood calling
Anil Ambani

Anil Ambani always had a thing for the tinsel world. On home turf, he is into film production, distribution and exhibition. Now Ambani, 50, has inked the biggest deal of all with Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks that will allow Reliance BIG Entertainment (RBE) swaggering rights in California. So, what has he offered Spielberg apart from $325 million of equity (creating total corpus of $825 million, including debt funding by Disney and banks) and a 50 per cent stake? Lots of freedom for sure. Not long ago, Spielberg and his team had walked out of Viacom-Paramount, which had earlier bought out the company, citing lack of independence. BIG Pictures, owned by RBE, has already pencilled in mini-deals with production units of half the A-list stars, including Jim Carrey, George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts. An impressive debut by all accounts!

PLACE
L'Aquila - Where eagles dare

You have probably heard of L’Aquila for two very different reasons: A tragic earthquake in this mountainous resort in April that killed 300 people and more recently when the G8 summit was held here. But beyond natural calamities and political summits, L’Aquila, which in Italian means ‘The Eagle’, is a lovely place to visit. This medieval “walled city” is surrounded by the Apennine Mountains and a maze of narrow streets, lined with Baroque and Renaissance buildings open onto elegant piazzas here. It’s a lively college town and has many cultural institutions dating back to the 13th-15th centuries. Some of them, sadly, were destroyed in the earthquake. The quickest way to reach L’Aquila is to fly to Naples and then drive from there. Jet Airways flies daily to Naples via Brussels in collaboration with Brussels Airlines. With Europe enjoying a pleasant summer, this is, perhaps, the best time to visit.

PRODUCT
Asus 1008HA 'Seashell'

It was only a matter of time before netbooks became accessorised. This new Eee PC from netbook pioneer Asus is a beautiful machine. Incredibly slim in no small part due to its in-built battery, it offers rather standard netbook fare as far as specs go—an Intel Atom N280 chipset, 1 GB of memory and 160 GB hard drive space. So, as far as performance goes, there’s nothing that makes it a class apart. But trust us, this is one of the best looking netbooks to date. Launch expected in August; Price: Rs 28,000-30,000 (approx.)