Be brand adjacent and boost your co

When Modi gave Meloni a sweet ₹160 gift pack of Parle Melody Chocolaty toffees, traders stampeded - into the wrong Parle. Parle Products, the FMCG confectioner, is unlisted. Real estate and infra company Parle Industries, however, was listed, available, and suddenly irresistible. Its shares surged 5%, volumes ballooned to 8.57 lakh, and its market cap briefly looked like it had a sugar rush. Our takeaway? Where logos jostle like elbows in a rush-hour Mumbai local, have a cunning strategy that's more effective than any marketing gimmick: give your company a name that's almost the same as a boom firm. Call it 'brand adjacency' - the art of basking in another's spotlight without ever lighting a bulb of your own. Parle Industries has revenues of ₹4.68 cr and profits of ₹45.7 lakh. Ordinarily, its stock would be as exciting as a municipal tender notice. But...

This is not a bug in the system. It can be the system. When in 2021, Musk tweeted 'Use Signal', investors rushed to buy Signal Advance, a tiny medical device firm, sending its stock up zooming in days. During Covid, traders mistook the defunct telecom firm Zoom Technologies for the videoconferencing giant. Investors have long confused LG Electronics with LG Balakrishnan and Bros, 'a leading player in transmission products'. Fun fact: Ta-Ta is a thriving chain of supermarkets across Uruguay.