A talking newspaper woke up 25 lakh readers of The Times of India and The Hindu across metros on Tuesday. We're talking about Volkswagen's latest media innovation for its luxury sedan, the Vento. Sources told CNBC-TV18’s Animesh Das and Sweta Sriram that the company has spent close to Rs 6 crore on the exercise. Volkswagen has done it again. The German automaker, which has been making a lot of media noise since October 2009, has managed to get everyone talking with this new campaign. 25 lakh readers across five cities were either fascinated or taken aback this morning, when their newspaper spoke to them, telling them about the Vento. India Business Hour Excerpts from India Business Hour on CNBC-TV18 Watch the full show » We hear each device costs around Rs 5. Add that to the base price of a full page ad on the ToI, along with other ancillary costs, and the price per paper comes out at around Rs 40. By these calculations, it appears that Volkswagen has spent around Rs 6 crore on just one day. But people in the know including Divya Gururaj, MD, MediaCom, which is the media agency for Volkswagen India disagree. The bottom line is that no one is talking about the exact spend. However, one thing is clear: The company has been stepping on the gas in terms of advertising campaigns—from its first-ever newspaper roadblock in October 2009 to tricks like a hole in the paper in March 2010 to a talking newspaper—each to drive towards firmly blipping on the Indian consumer's radar.

Having burnt their fingers with the online Common Admission Test (CAT) last year after virus attacks undid the IIMs’ first attempt at switching from a paper-pencil test to a computer-based one, the country’s top-notch business schools are now working on a plan to set up their own online testing firm.

“The IIMs are working on this plan. After all, we are business schools and not experts at holding tests. Considering the huge number of applicants, the switch was made from paper-pencil test to a computer-based one. It is now felt that while IIMs should divest themselves of the testing part completely, we must also be able to retain control on it in some way. Employing agencies for the testing is not a viable long-term option, so the plan to set up our own testing firm,” confirmed an IIM director.

According to the model for the testing firm, IIMs would retain governance of this firm while the actual execution would not be with them. However, the modalities for the same could take a while as this issue would require consensus-building between all IIMs, added another IIM director.