Puravankara and Makkala Jagriti to Give Government School a Makeover

With a growing focus on supporting and providing education with a meaning, Puravankara has always been in the forefront to leverage the existing capabilities and expertise of various organisations to create viable impact in the community. On the similar lines Puravankara Limited and the Makkala Jagriti, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) today come together to give the government school at Hunasamaranahalli village in Bangalore a new look.

On August 15, 2019 Puravankara Limited completes 44 glorious years on the realty landscape of India. To celebrate this momentous number, the employees of Puravankara and Makkala Jagriti visited the government school at the Hunasamaranahalli village with an intent to create a conducive learning environment which motivates the students to learn quickly.

The employees of Puravankara along with employees of Makkala Jagriti took on the clean-up drive in and around school. The employees painted murals on the walls of the premises under the guidance of an artist. The theme was sports & learning, and the employees depicted different sport activities, yoga and games (that enhance reading, writing, listening and speaking skills) in the murals.  The objective is to bring in information about the subjects they are taught in school and to have a better understanding of the topics.

Speaking on the collaboration Amanda Puravankara, Director of Provident Housing Limited, said, “We, at Puravankara, firmly believe that education is the first step to building a good society. Quality education is like a strong foundation. This initiative aligns with our Founder and Chairman Ravi Puravankara’s vision of giving back to the society through education of the children. We are glad to partner with Makkala Jagriti to make the learning more fun and engaging for students and at the same time give our employees a platform to engage with communities. Going forward, Puravankara will continue on the path of being committed to being a valued partner in the community and contribute viability to create a lasting impact in larger ecosystem. Starting from this year, the Week of 15th August, every year, will be deemed as the ‘Week of Giving’ and we will take this program to every city across the country.”

Flag Hoisting Ceremony at Manipal Hospitals on the Occasion of India's 73rd Independence Day

Manipal  Hospitals saluting the nation and its freedom fighters on the eve of its 73rd Independence Day by holding a unique march past highlighting the cultural diversity of India.

Every year on 15th August the country celebrates freedom from the British rule. As we celebrate independence, we also celebrate the rich Indian culture and tradition. Independence Day is a national holiday and is celebrated with much passion across the nation.

According to Mr.Salil Jain an Industrialist, an Educationist, a Cancer Survivor and a Cancer Survivorship Coach – We Indian have become self-reliant in many fields like science, airways and in healthcare industry. Manipal Hospitals has worked very well & contributed so much to the country. By launching new technologies, Providing services based on scientific knowledge and best practice & Providing care that is respectful of and responsive to individual patient preferences.

"Let us together pledge for a New India & Cancer free India. Jai Hind Jai Bharat.

Hyperlocal Connectivity App ‘Bhonga’ Teams Up with Ex-Army Men

Bhonga, a hyper-local connectivity app which connects users within a kilometer of radius; has now teamed up with ex-servicemen to take care of emergencies on its platform. The user can use the app to reach out to everyone around for posting messages which may be an emergency, an offer, a query or even an opinion or information which he believes may be of help to people around him. The app only shares location coordinates for security and anonymity reasons and supports photos and audio.

Radhika Agarwal, Director, Linkus Infratech said; “Reliability, discipline, commitment to work and the eagerness to take responsibility are the traits that make defense personnel perfectly on top of the form for administering the emergencies on the platform. Thus, we decided to have ex-servicemen scrutinize all the emergencies shared on the app."

The team will be led by ex-military Captain Mahendra Gopal Ghag who has served the Indian Army for 32 years. Captain Ghag will now guide the citizens facing various kinds of emergencies. The team is also keen to travel across Mumbai if needed.

Commenting on the same Captain Ghag said; “Every year 60,000 soldiers retire with little option but to take up miscellaneous security jobs. I feel that Bhonga can not only leverage the experience of retired armed forces personnel but also offer valuable help to the locality and at the same time offer a great opportunity to army men to live a meaningful life by serving the nation”

Linkus Infratech plans to partner with the Army Welfare Placement Organization (AWPO), which comes under the Ministry of Defence, to enable and empower army veterans and encourage them to come and help the civilians.

“The app is meant to empower citizens and ex-servicemen monitoring emergencies would multiply the value of the platform. We plan to have 37 ex-servicemen monitoring every constituency of Mumbai on our payrolls by the end of FY 2020-21” concluded Radhika.  

Estimation and Tendering Software ‘EASY-BID’ to Embrace Most Infrastructure Projects in India

India’s leading end-to-end Information Technology (IT) solutions provider for the infrastructure industry, Highbar Technocrat Ltd accelerates ‘Easy-Bid’ - its next-generation ‘Estimation and Tendering’ software. With a 360-degree view of the overall project cost, Easy-Bid can streamline the estimation process and increase efficiency.

Estimation is one of the core processes for the Engineering, Construction & Operations (EC&O) industry. Traditionally, knowledge and information while preparing estimates resided with individual estimators. Dependence on individuals, improper planning and missing costs etc. often led to inaccurate estimates and budget escalations during estimation. Accessing of historical information quickly and easily, ensuring apt assessments in item rates, lump sum, cost plus and cover for all models like BOT, EPC, etc. for a time-bound submission makes the task complex and challenging.

“Trying out various estimation scenarios manually/ with excel sheets/ improper software requires a lot of time and efforts. Given the time crunch, companies must not miss the opportunity and get an accurate estimation. Dependence on individuals, improper planning and missing costs lead to inaccurate estimates and budget escalations during estimation. Highbar Technocrat has demonstrated expertise in handling end-to-end business transformation for private, public and government sectors. Our depth of understanding of the infrastructure and construction domain covering both urban and industrial infrastructure has enabled us to offer future-ready and fool-proof Estimation and Tendering insights for our prestigious customer” said Ashok Wani – Head Innovation and Technology, Highbar Technocrat.

Easy-Bid a productivity enhancement solution is a very user-friendly solution. It reduces the learning curve for the users to a great extent and stabilizes the system in a short period. Highbar, with its alliance partners, provides estimation solution which covers all scenarios of estimation and tendering. Integration with major ERPs facilitates the use of estimate data during the execution phase. The resource libraries enable to store the knowledge and information of experts and make it part of the system. Multiple users can work parallelly on the same projects and components saving time.

This Rakshabandhan, Capture the Best Moments on TECNO PHANTOM 9

Within the sweet-spot price segment of INR 6-15 K, there is a stiff competition in the Indian smartphone market. TECNO is one such brand that has been constantly improvising the segment by pushing norms to make advanced camera technology and meaningful localized features available to consumers at a competitive price-points, ever since the brand’s launch in 2017

Post the success of CAMON i4 which led the crown of best smartphone with triple rear camera under 10K, the brand has taken another step forward recently by launching its Flagship ‘PHANTOM 9’ available on Flipkart in India.

Priced at INR 14999, what makes TECNO PHANTOM 9 a bang-for-the-buck smartphone is its in-display fingerprint sensor, 6GB+ 128GB configuration and Hair Crack Dual LED Front Flashlight, which isn’t available in any other smartphone in this segment.  It is designed for today’s tech savvy millennials who do not want to compromise on style along with advanced features, without going too deep in their pockets.

With a small dot notch display and minimal bezels, the design of TECNO PHANTOM 9 offers a premium feel with its dual-tone gradient finish & Lapland Aurora inspired styling. The device features a bright and colorful 6.4-inch full HD+ AMOLED display. The phone is slim and weighs around 164 grams, making it ultra-light and easy to carry.

‘Camera’ being the core strength of TECNO, the PHANTOM 9 ticks every box of premium smartphone camera features that today’s youth looks for while buying a smartphone. TECNO PHANTOM 9 possesses a triple rear camera setup with Super Quad LED flash comprising of a 16MP primary sensor, 2MP depth sensor and an 8MP Ultra wide-lens captures 120°cinematic shots, it has an additional feature of microspur that supports focusing on objects within 2.5 cm. This collectively help capture superior quality images with ample detailing and brighter pictures irrespective of low light conditions. The front camera is equipped with a 32MP high resolution selfie camera that uses the second generation of camera technology ‘4-in-1’ pixel for high-definition resolution. The unique Dual Flashlight ensures brighter, more stunning selfies irrespective of any scenes, especially lowlight ones. You can also tweak the brightness of the flash upfront by a simple swipe up/down gesture on the camera app. The selfie snapper supports features like HDR, Beauty, Wide Selfie, Animoji, and Night Algorithm 2.0. Using these features, one can capture some appealing and powerful selfies.

Talking about the performance, TECNO PHANTOM 9 comes with a 3,500 mAh battery and 12nm technology based Octa-core processor which makes the smartphone faster and power efficient. Running on Android 9.0 Pie, the phone boots the HiOS 5.0 and provides user-friendly features such as Quick Toolbar, Smart Panel, and Reading mode.

Overall, TECNO PHANTOM 9 is a great piece of innovation packed with high-end features. The versatile triple rear-camera, 32MP selfie camera, and super responsive in-display fingerprint are the key highlights of the product, making it the most desirable smartphone under this price bracket. To top it all, TECNO PHANTOM 9 comes with an exceptional promise of “111” under which a consumer is entitled to a 1-time screen replacement for six months, 100 days’ free replacement, and 1-month extended warranty, which is yet again a unique service promise in the online space.

IEEE Innovators Offer Inspired Approaches to E-waste Globally

As technology advances rapidly, the question of how to sustainably manufacture new products and how to dispose of old ones are both of increasing importance. After all, the average lifespan of devices is shrinking, and the United Nations is projecting that people will generate 52.2 million metric tons of e-waste globally by 2021.

New Opportunities

When we talk about our waste problem with experts in the IEEE community, a recurring idea is that these resourcing questions present a series of opportunities to innovate in other ways. Kaikai Xu, IEEE Senior member, Professor at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, is adamant on this front: “Opportunities often coexist with challenges,” he says. An example on Xu’s mind? “We will save a lot of energy and materials if we can reduce the power consumption and size of chips in the semiconductor industry, as there is a huge demand for electronic products all over the world. There will be a huge market for the design of low-power chips.”

For Paige Kassalan, IEEE Graduate Student member, “One industry that has a lot of opportunity is building and construction. For Solar Impulse, we had very efficient insulation to keep the pilots in a bearable temperature at 8.5km. That insulation is now used in refrigerators to allow for less energy to be lost.” Through advances in research and manufacturing, we can decrease the amount of material needed to produce items (meaning less waste), as well as make those items more efficient (meaning less energy use). Already, smart manufacturing is developing rapidly. The concept revolves around using an integrated computing platform that encompasses the full production process – engineering, manufacturing and delivery. By creating a holistic set of data, efficiency can be greatly improved.

Using Sensors and Data

Sensors, data and software have roles to play both in manufacturing and waste disposal. Disposing of waste has long been a complex issue. After all, no one wants to live near a landfill, or to have other people’s trash brought into their neighborhood. The issue gets exacerbated as electronic materials like chips, batteries and screens enter the waste stream. As a result, “Waste management and disposal continues to increase in costs while trying to adhere to tighter constraints to remain environmentally sustainable,” says Karen Panetta, IEEE Fellow and Dean of Graduate Education at Tufts University. Environmental regulation and cost pressures are helping drive innovation in making technologies smaller, as well as making the production process less wasteful. While this stands to improve the future, there’s still the question of disposing of many outdated electronics, which can be hazardous if handled improperly. To address health concerns, Panetta says, “some of the newest technological advances are utilizing low-cost sensor technologies and wireless communications to measure the decay in landfills and to monitor waste flow in open water and the effects on wildlife, humans and the environment.”

By using sensors to get tangible numbers, it becomes easier to make better policy decisions when it comes to waste, according to Panetta. And that doesn’t just apply to sites that contain e-waste – it’s also applicable to all types of landfill contents, as well as local infrastructure like drinking water. “For instance,” Panetta says, “consider the water quality issues that plagued cities in Michigan. Engineers took the initiative to collect the data, work with residents to conduct the water testing and proved to the municipality that there was a true health issue, which contradicted the municipality’s position. The results and conclusions from this data science approach were indisputable.”

Adfactors PR, upGrad Team Up for Training 300 PR Professionals in Digital Mktg, Comms

India’s largest PR firm Adfactors PR has signed a MoU with leading education company upGrad to train 300 of its client-servicing employees in a post-graduate certification program on digital marketing and communications. The core program has been designed by experts from MICA, India’s premier marketing focused B-School, with additional modules co-created with Adfactors PR, for PR professionals.

The objective of this transformational initiative is to foster a 360-degree digital ecosystem-readiness within the firm by building a deep understanding of social media, online reputation management, multimedia content capabilities, content marketing, digital analytics, campaign planning, and digital crisis management skills.

While the first batch of over 100 employees, drawn from the Delhi and Bengaluru offices of Adfactors PR, have already started their training, two other batches of 100 each will start from 16th August and 1st October, respectively. The course will have participation across levels from Account Executives to Vice-Presidents.

The entire program is funded by Adfactors PR for all its employees. The Phase 1 of this program, to be completed by June 2020, will be followed by Phase 2, where the remaining 300 client-servicing executives will complete this training.

upGrad Co-founder & Managing Director Mayank Kumar said, “Adfactors PR’s endeavour is the largest digital transformation initiative that we have seen from a non-IT company. This unique enterprise partnership fits in wonderfully with upGrad’s own vision that in an ever-changing industry, professionals need to continuously upskill themselves in order to stay relevant. We are extremely happy to see that a new-age PR firm is also committed to a similar goal.”

Adfactors PR Co-founder and Managing Director Madan Bahal said, “As India’s leading PR firm, we have to be future-ready to meet the evolving needs of our clients. For our employees, such comprehensive education will serve as a bridge to migrate to the digital future. By March 2021, we expect every single employee of the firm to have post-graduate capabilities in digital marketing and communications.”

Bahal adds “We chose upGrad as our digital training partner after a comprehensive evaluation exercise. We found the course best in class from the options available – contemporary and enriched by industry expertise. The upGrad enterprise team was very helpful in successfully launching this program tailored to our needs.

The course will allow learners’ unparalleled guidance from key industry experts, dedicated student mentors and engaging interactive activities with peers at special offline base camps, and a chance to network with 2,000-plus digital marketers and experts. It entails a structured curriculum of 8-12 hours of learning modules per week for each course.

MICA, Chairperson – Online Programs, Dr. Anita Basalingappa said, "Continuous updating of knowledge and skills is a given in today's times. We at MICA look forward to enabling more such partnerships in collaboration with upGrad".

Adfactors PR: Founded in 1997, Adfactors PR is India’s largest and most-awarded PR firm. The consultancy services over 380 retained clients, including some of the largest corporations and financial institutions – both Indian and multinational. The firm is founded on values such as freedom and empowerment, transparency, continuous learning, customer-centricity, simplicity and humility.

A multi-specialist, full-service firm, Adfactors PR has a market-leading position in multiple practice areas, including strategic communications, financial communications, media relations, advocacy, litigation and crisis communications. The firm has expertise across a range of sectors, which represent critical components of the Indian economy.

Adfactors PR has a professional staff of over 700, who operate out of a network of 40 locations in India, Sri Lanka and Singapore.