MAM
‘Five Star Chicken’ to use radio as one of the pillars for building its brand
BENGALURU: Thai food retail major The Charoen Pokphand Foods Limited Indian subsidiary CP India Foods, (CPIF) plans to use radio as one of the main three pillars for brand building and mass media communications for its restaurant chain brand ‘Five Star Chicken‘ reveal company sources. The other two pillars are social media and sampling at ground events.
To that extent, CPIF has brought on board Big FM Bangalore as a radio partner and procured around 12 radio spots per day for a 45 day period on the station. “Typically, we plan to run a campaign for around 45 days, with a 15 day break, before commencing another radio campaign,” revealed the source.
“This time around, the campaign coincides with the launch of our first Five Star Café in India. We will be opening our next Five Star Café in Bengaluru shortly and plan to have around six Cafes by the end of this year. Our tag line is ‘Happy things happen in happy places‘. We ran a teaser campaign for the Five Star Cafe on the 16th, 17th and 18th of this month and then revealed the brand on the 19th. Big FM has a kiosk at our Café and will be broadcasting live from here this evening.”
“We might look at other radio stations also. For online, we have had contests in place on Facebook and the winner of the best cheer won a one year supply of Chicken, we have more contests in place,” he added.
“We plan to use other mediums of mass media communications over the next few months once our store count in South India increases. Print is another medium that we are looking at quite seriously.”
“Typically, a Five Star Chicken outlet brings in revenues of about five Lakh rupees per month, through the campaigns, we think that revenues may grow by 15 to 20 per cent,” said the source further.
The company started selling its Five Star Chicken products in Bengaluru through small mom and pop type outlets of 100-300 square feet area during the latter part of 2012. Since then, CPIF has upped the number of outlets to 30, 10 of which are company owned. By the end of this year, CPIF plans to have about 80 outlets in the garden city and about 15 in Chennai. By end 2014, CPIF will have about 150 outlets in these two cities and over a three year period, it has planned for 300 outlets, including a few in Hyderabad.
Five Star Chicken is one of the subsidiary food companies and brands of The Charoen Pokphand Foods, a first Thai multi-national conglomerate with over $10 billion business in agro-industry and food in many countries across the world. Five Star Café is its first concept store in Bengaluru.
MAM
Three senior OpenAI infrastructure executives join Meta
Key members of Stargate project move to rival amid aggressive AI spending race.
MUMBAI: Three key architects of OpenAI’s ambitious data centre plans have switched sides and joined Meta Platforms, according to people familiar with the matter. Peter Hoeschele, who played a central role in OpenAI’s high-profile Stargate initiative, is among the new hires. He is joined by Shamez Hemani, who focused on computing strategy and business development, and Anuj Saharan, another leader in the computing organisation. The Information first reported their departure from OpenAI on Thursday.
The moves come as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has pledged to spend aggressively on AI infrastructure. The company is projecting capital expenditure of up to $135 billion this year alone, with hundreds of billions more expected before the end of the decade to support its Meta Superintelligence Labs and new models such as Muse Spark.
OpenAI, which is pushing ahead with massive data centre expansion, had described its early lead in securing computing power as a competitive advantage. Stargate, originally announced last year as a $500 billion venture involving OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank, has since become an umbrella term for the company’s broader data centre ambitions. However, the project has seen recent adjustments, including a pause on its UK plans and the decision not to expand the Abilene, Texas site.
A spokesperson for Meta declined to comment, while Hoeschele, Hemani, and Saharan also declined to comment. OpenAI said it was grateful for the contributions of the three employees and remains focused on hiring talent for its infrastructure plans. The company recently brought in former Intel executive Sachin Katti to lead its industrial compute efforts.
In the high-stakes race to build the future of artificial intelligence, talent is proving to be as valuable as computing power itself. Meta’s latest hires suggest the competition for top infrastructure minds is intensifying, even as OpenAI continues to scale its own ambitious projects. The move highlights how quickly the AI talent war is heating up across Silicon Valley.
