The Knowledge to Decide

Eco-friendly, organic and vegan are now common themes in the cosmetics industry – but Halal products are the latest trend . Halal cosmetics sales are estimated at over USD 50 billion globally and forecasted to grow at 14.6 per cent a year from 2017 to 2021 . A quarter of the world’s population is Muslim, at 1.6 billion people in 2016 . Will Halal products become a pillar of the global beauty products industry? What are Halal beauty products? The word ‘Halal’ means ‘permissible’ in Islamic teaching. So such beauty products may not contain any alcohol ingredients, pork or animal blood. Food products prohibited under the Islamic Sharia Law need to be avoided during manufacture. Moreover, manufacturers of such products need to adhere to strict standards throughout the supply chain. This means right from the packaging to the storage; these products must qualify as Halal. Aside from their religious appeal, Halal beauty products have also become known for quality assurance an

Have you caught your Pokémon yet? Pokémon Go – the mobile application-based game – is immensely popular. The game uniquely uses Augmented Reality technology. It has succeeded in growing its user base beyond just fans of the Pokémon comic. With the ability to drive foot traffic to stores, the app has created a new and potentially powerful platform for companies . Clocking in 7.5 million downloads since its debut in the U.S. on July 2016 , is the app a marketer’s boon – or is it destined to become just another “has-been” fad? What is Pokémon Go? Taking gamification to the next level, Pokémon Go is a gaming application based on the concept of augmented reality (AR) to deliver a real-life Pokémon experience. Released in July 2016, the game was developed by Niantic Labs and published by the “father” of Pokémon, Japanese company Nintendo. Using Augmented Reality technology similar to Google Maps, players need to find Pokémon characters at random physical locations and captur

The ASEAN nations collectively – if considered a nation – would be the seventh largest economy in the world. Their combined Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is about USD2.4 trillion (as of 2015). ASEAN has a consumer base of more than 600 million, an expanding labor force and a rising Ecommerce industry. There is a growing need to streamline industrial inventories and develop an efficient logistics industry to aid increasingly complex supply chains. Will ASEAN’s logistics industry rise to the challenge? The growing wealth of ASEAN economies With rising costs in China, creeping political turbulence around the world and slower global growth, ASEAN is being seen as a haven of tranquillity by investors. ASEAN’s business sphere is not mature, dominated as it is by small and medium-sized enterprises. But the abundance of natural resources and cost-effective skilled labor has lured many companies to carry out manufacturing processes in this region. For instance, Thailand and Indon