Artium Academy Forays Into The Southern India Markets; Welcomes Music Maestros To Its Esteemed Academic Board

* The Online Music Education and Community platform will offer customized performance driven training in South Indian Popular Film Music and Carnatic Classical Music through courses designed by Music Maestros who will also don the roles of Faculty heads

Online Music and Community platform Artium Academy today announced the launch of its South Indian music learning courses, and presented the newest members of the Artium Academic Board:

* Smt. KS Chitra, Faculty Head, South Indian Popular Film Music

* Smt. Aruna Sairam, Faculty Head, Carnatic Classical Music

* Shri.  Ananth Vaidyanathan, Chief of Pedagogy and Faculty Head – Voice Training

Artium Academy is proud to offer unique performance driven music courses designed by these Music Industry stalwarts, catering to the South Indian Diaspora spread across India and the Globe who are culturally deep rooted in Music Learning.

Speaking on the occasion, Ashish Joshi, Founder and CEO, Artium Academy said, “South India is a vibrant cauldron of brilliant music traditions,  talent, creativity, innovation,  commitment to learning and growth; where families and communities venerate the arts as expressions of God, where artists have inspired us to place the pursuit of musical values above self. To this Southern India, Artium Academy feels privileged to bring a unique platform of technology supported,  performance oriented music training, and is honoured to have the impeccable trio of Smt. KS Chithraji, Smt. Aruna Sairam and Shri Ananth Vaidyanathan as a part of the Academic Board to instil and impart a love for their music amongst eager learners across the globe. Under the leadership of these maestros, Artium feels proud to have created novel methodologies of training for popular and light music genres. At Artium Academy, every student is guaranteed quality education from a passionate instructor. Apart from training in classical techniques of swara, tala, raga, form and improvisation,  students will get voice, repertoire and performance training and the guidance to discover their own artistic individuality.  Our goal is not only to provide students with the holistic knowledge of music but to convert them into true performers.”

Said K. S. Chithra, “Talent is God given. But knowledge, techniques of skill development,  understanding of standards and musical values  - all can come only through proper training.  I feel happy to be able to infuse my learnings of a lifetime into the courses of Artium,  which are novel initiatives, designed to serve a wide generic variety of learning aspirations of students in today's ever changing popular music scenario.”

Aruna Sairam added, “Carnatic music is a highly crystallized precipitation of generations of extraordinary sadhana, inspiration, dedication, surrender to ideals and divinely inspired creativity.  Training in this art at the highest level continues to be the preserve of the guru shishya parampara.  Yet, we have to make continuous and relentless efforts to capture the nebulous and mysterious values and principles of traditional training into institutional systems and achieve the best results possible.  This is my vision for Artium.”

Shri Ananth Vaidyanathan further added, “The human race is a singing race. The human voice is a singing voice.  You are a human being - so you can sing. To have one's natural singing potential unlocked and placed on the path of development and self-expression is the greatest gift any music lover or aspirant can receive.  I feel privileged to be able to bring this truth and an entire science of voice development to all levels of aspirants through Artium Academy.”

The Academic Board comprises of some of the industry’s renowned singers and composers like Sonu Nigam, Patron-in-Chief who along with Shri Anant Vaidyanathan, India’s leading voice expert & the academy’s Chief of Pedagogy, will be framing the academic policy and the accreditation process.  In addition, Artium’s Academic Board comprises music maestros like Shubha Mudgal (Hindustani Classical), Aruna Sairam (Carnatic Music), KS Chitra (South Indian popular film music), Louiz Banks (Keyboard), Aneesh Pradhan (Tabla ), Raju Singh (Guitar) and Gino Banks (Drums) acting as Faculty Heads, driving the curriculum for their respective genres

The platform aims to enable Indians across the globe to not just listen but also learn music through a structured performance driven curriculum designed by music maestros, taught 1:1 by certified teachers on a digital platform that provides learners with personalized dashboard, learning tools, learning graphs, virtual auditorium to perform live for audiences & practice studio.

Artium Academy is India’s first online academy to have music maestros collaborate as faculty heads for a performance driven curriculum especially designed by them. Students across all age groups can attend live and interactive classes on Artium Academy’s own platform which are delivered by highly qualified music teachers who are trained and certified by the academy.

Providing highest quality video lectures with a flexible schedule suitable for all, Artium Academy endeavours to make music learning easy. The courses are structured to be a stepping stone towards a bright and musical future.

About Artium Academy 

Artium Academy is India’s first online music education platform with a performance – driven standardised curriculum designed by music maestros. Artium Academy offers 1:1 learning through live and interactive classes on its platform. With a united vision and driving force to democratise music, Artium Academy endeavours to make music learning available to everyone. While technology is the brain power enabling innovative ideas to engage with its students and teachers, music is the very core of Artium Academy. Eminent music virtuosos such as Sonu Nigam (also the Patron in Chief), Shubha Mudgal, Aruna Sairam, KS Chithra, Louiz Banks, Gino Banks, Raju Singh, Aneesh Pradhan are the Faculty Heads and form the Artium  Academic Board along with Ananth Vaidyanathan, who is the Chief of Pedagogy , to oversee the curriculum and teaching methods. 

About the South India Academic Board Members

A trained Carnatic vocalist,  Smt K.S. Chithra is among the most popular female playback singers from South India. She has six National Film Awards (the highest won by a female singer), eight Filmfare South Awards and 36 different state film awards. The recipient of the Padma Bhushan in 2021 and the Padma Shri in 2005, Chithra has been the first Indian woman to be honoured by the British Parliament in 1997 and the only Indian singer from India to be felicitated by the Government of China. She has recorded more than 18,000 songs in more than 10 Indian languages and with foreign languages like Malay, Latin, Arabic, Sinhalese, English and French. This feat has been achieved by her in her career spanning over 4 decades.  The iconic singer has collaborated with renowned playback singers such as KJ Yesudas, SP Balasubramaniyam, AR Rahman, Ilayiraja, Hamsalekha, MM Keeravani and others. Regarded as a cultural icon of Kerala, she is fondly called 'The Melody Queen' and 'Nightingale of South India’

Trained in the Veenai Dhanammal style of Carnatic Classical music, Smt Aruna Sairam epitomises the genre completely with her purity of voice, adherence to traditional values and profound music expression. Little wonder really, as she was trained by the legend Dhanammal’s own granddaughter, T. Brinda. Aruna trained in different forms such as improvisation, swara singing, variations of pitch on a note (gamakas) and ragam-thanam-pallavi, with some of the greats. Her ability to oscillate between traditional Carnatic classical singing and improvisation, earned her the sobriquet of ‘the new queen of soul’ from the London Evening Standard. Little wonder then, that she was the first Carnatic Classical vocalist to perform at the BBC Proms in 2011 at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Aruna remains a student of her craft today even as she teaches and conducts mentoring programmes nationally and with institutions in Germany, the UK, France and Canada. Bestowed with the Padma Shri in 2009, she was also awarded the Sangeetha Kalanidhi in 2018 among several other honours and is the Vice Chairman of the Sangeet Natak Academy.

Shri Ananth Vaidyanathan is a classical vocalist trained in both Hindustani and Carnatic styles, a pedagogue with a unique approach combining Cognitive Psychology and Anthropology, a gifted trainer and public speaker, and is known as India's leading Voice Expert. He is credited with taking Scientific Voice Research and Training in Indian music to a new level, and has repeatedly established the power of his techniques and voice methodology over a range of television programmes globally. As a man who firmly believes that every Human being has the voice, the fundamental capacity and right to sing, he has dedicated his life to inspiring people to find the singer within themselves and embrace the joy of this Gift of the Universe.  Ananth Vaidyanathan is a Management Graduate from XLRI, a behavioral expert, a communication trainer and an actor.

Accenture Business Futures 2021 Report Identifies Six Signals To Guide Companies Navigating Change In Era Of Compressed Transformation

A new report from Accenture (NYSE: ACN) shows that while 91% of companies in India finally have a clear picture of the challenges they face today, only a handful are completely confident in their current abilities to foresee and respond to future disruption. Business Futures 2021 aims to help leaders make sense of a new reality by identifying the Signals of business change that are reshaping organizations globally and will be critically important for leaders to understand in order to drive success today and beyond.

“To stay competitive and resilient in the new context created by the pandemic, organizations need high levels of agility and responsiveness. They must seize the many opportunities presented by the compressed transformation journey that they are already on,” said Piyush N. Singh, India Market Unit lead, Accenture. “Using data and analytics, leaders can spot, respond to and target potential risks ahead and explore new growth avenues. Another opportunity for reinvention and growth is embracing decentralized decision-making to become more of an edge organization – with empowered, multidisciplinary teams that are centered on customer outcomes.”

Longstanding trends like the increased importance of experiences, greater adoption of cloud, and changes in buying patterns have all been interrupted, accelerated, or reversed due to the pandemic. At the same time, new supply chains and business models were set up in days not months, and the promise of new scientific breakthroughs was emphatically realized in months, not years. When coupled with profound, structural changes following more than a year of turbulence, a business environment ripe for reinvention emerged, with a strong desire to look deeper into the future and to better map the trajectory and impact of change.

Six signals to prepare for the future of business

Starting with an expansive list of 400 crowdsourced trends, Accenture teamed with external advisors, academics, and researchers to narrow down the list to 25 Signals of business change. While all 25 Signals were shown to mature and have their greatest impact on organizations within the next three years, six Signals stood out as being essential to the future success of organizations, presenting opportunities and incentives for leaders to embrace change and find new ways to grow, starting today:

1) Learning From the Future – See change before it happens

As organizations fundamentally rethink ways of doing business that deliver growth, focusing on historical data to inform the future has been challenged. To make decisions faster, many organizations are now capturing new data sets and using analytics and artificial intelligence to spot, respond to and target changing market and consumption shifts. The report finds that 78% of organizations in India have increased their use of both internal and external sources of real-time data over the past 12 months, yet only 43% reported that people across their organization consistently use real-time data in their day-to-day work. Moreover, only 37% of businesses in India said they have a C-suite member accountable for these efforts, and fewer than half (45%) have sufficient skills within their workforce to support this capability.

2) Pushed to the Edge – Decentralize decision-making

The global crisis has made markets much more fragmented, and distinct regions are emerging with their own governance systems, economic models, and cultural norms. At the same time, consumer behaviors are changing fast, with new competitors catering to evolving needs. Businesses are responding by pushing decision-making authority to people at the edges of their organizations, creating a networked structure of teams that can act with speed and agility. When businesses empower their “edges” to make most day-to-day operational decisions, they free up their headquarters to focus on key strategic decisions. The report found that 97% of organizations in India are willing and able to operate more like a broad federation of enterprises to respond to increasingly fragmented business environments, and 67% say their business model will change over the next year.

3) Sustainable Purpose – Move from purpose-focused to purpose-run

Organizations recognize the need to have a purpose that benefits all their stakeholders, but a growing gap between intentions and results emerged. The purpose paradox demonstrates the challenges faced in building sustainability into the fabric of their operations and delivering on commitments made for the benefit of all their stakeholders. The report found that 32% of executives in India say that they are not personally committed to delivering value for all stakeholders, and nearly half (48%) of organizations in India report that one of the biggest barriers is balancing their commercial interests. However, there are signs that the tide has begun to turn toward safeguarding sustainability ambitions alongside profits, with only 24% of leaders in India saying they would consider cutting investments in environmental, social and governance (ESG) initiatives to avoid missing earnings guidance.

4) Supply Unbounded – Break physical limits of fulfillment

The global pandemic stretched supply chains like never before as organizations took drastic steps to keep goods moving. To meet growing expectations for fast, flexible, cost-effective, responsible and sustainable order fulfillment, organizations are breaking the physical limits of their supply chains and moving production to the point of demand. The report found that the majority (93%) of organizations in India have increased or plan to increase the use of micro-fulfillment centers; a similar number (94%) of organizations have or plan to create regional supply chains. Here, too, the alignment on value for all stakeholders shows its prominence, with 82% of organizations in India saying that their customers’ expectations around sustainability significantly increased in the last 12 months.

5) Real Virtualities – Redefine reality and place

As virtual environments come of age, the physical and virtual worlds are blurring and redefining our sense of reality and place while also creating new ways for people to live, work, consume and socialize. Emerging from a year of limited physical interaction, businesses are doubling down on virtual, with 87% of organizations in India investing in technologies to create virtual?environments and, among those, 93% are planning to invest further. While current virtual-reality (VR) technology mostly engages our senses of vision and hearing, over time it will become increasingly realistic, engaging all senses, and creating a greater connection to the physical.

6) The New Scientific Method – Become a scientific company

The pandemic shone a spotlight on scientific innovation, putting it at the top of the business agenda. While during the past decade, every company became a digital company, in the coming decade, every company will need to become a scientific company – and apply science to tackle the world’s fundamental challenges. Working at the convergence of the new frontiers of science will bring radical possibilities, but only if organizations can enhance their approaches to innovation. The report found that 85% of organizations in India agree that adopting a scientific approach to innovation will position them for future success, and 86% said that investing in sciences outside their?traditional industry boundaries will be critical to their organization’s success.

About the Research

Accenture used a three-step process to compile its 2021 of Business Futures:

Crowdsource: 400 Signals of business change were crowdsourced from more than 400 researchers and members of Accenture’s expert network — including representatives from across business, academia, and civil society. We synthesized this input to an initial list of 30 Signals.

Prioritize: We then stress-tested the Signals with our global community of more than 2,000 industry and functional leaders across Accenture — using interviews, surveys, and workshops — to refine the list of Signals to 25, of which we prioritized six.

Test and substantiate: We then used mixed research methods to test and further substantiate the six prioritized Signals. These methods included economic modeling, data science (leveraging AI and natural language processing) as well as a global survey of 2,650 C-suite executives fielded from March through April 2021. Respondents were C-level executives at large organizations based in 18 countries including India and spanning 20 industries.

 About Accenture

Accenture is a global professional services company with leading capabilities in digital, cloud and security. Combining unmatched experience and specialized skills across more than 40 industries, we offer Strategy and Consulting, Interactive, Technology and Operations services — all powered by the world’s largest network of Advanced Technology and Intelligent Operations centers. Our 624,000 people deliver on the promise of technology and human ingenuity every day, serving clients in more than 120 countries. We embrace the power of change to create value and shared success for our clients, people, shareholders, partners and communities. Visit us at www.accenture.com.

Karnataka To Participate In IndiaSkills 2021 Regional Competition - South From Dec 1-4 , 2021

* 68 students from Karnataka will showcase their skills in the competition

* Over 400 participants from 5 states will exhibit their skills in the two-day competition

* After competing in over 50 skills, the winners will enter IndiaSkills Nationals, a gateway to WorldSkills Competition that brings together participants from 85 member nations 

National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC), under the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE), Government of India, will organise the last phase of IndiaSkills 2021 Regional Competition for South in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh. The two-day competition will gather more than 400 participants from five states—Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Telangana—who will compete in over 50 skills. From Karnataka, 68 students will showcase their skills in the competition. IndiaSkills is the country’s biggest skill competition that enables the youth to showcase their skills, prepares them for a global platform, and gives them an opportunity to participate in the WorldSkills International Competition.

Today, the Southern chapter of IndiaSkills 2021 Regional Competition was announced by Shri Challa Madhusudhan Reddy, Advisor to Government (APSSDC - Skill Development & Training). Shri Konduru Ajay Reddy, Chairman, Andhra Pradesh State Skill Development Corporation (APSSDC), Shri N. Bangara Raju, Managing Director, APSSDC, and Col. Arun Chandel, Senior Head, SMIS Division, Central Ministries and WorldSkills India also graced the event.

The young participants, aged between 19 and 24 years, will compete in a range of skills including painting and decorating, mobile robotics, patisserie and confectionery, health and social care, automobile technology, plumbing and heating, beauty therapy, renewable energy, visual merchandising, cyber security, welding, among others. The skill competitions will be held at 11 Partner Institutes (PIs) situated at various locations in Visakhapatnam – refer to Annexure 1.

The opening ceremony of the competition will be held on 1 December at Andhra University Convention Centre, Visakhaptanam and the event will conclude on 4 December with a closing ceremony at the same venue, where the winners of the competition will be felicitated. Following this, the winners of all four Regional Competitions will get an opportunity to exhibit their skills at IndiaSkills Nationals that is scheduled for January 2022. The IndiaSkills Nationals gold and silver medalists in each skill will represent the country at the WorldSkills Competition to be held in Shanghai, China (October 2022).

Col. Arun Chandel, Senior Head, SMIS Division, Central Ministries and WorldSkills India said, “We are delighted to witness the last leg of the regional competitions in Visakhapatnam. But this is just the start of the journey of WorldSkills Competition. The determination and perseverance displayed by the candidates from other regions have been inspiring, and I expect the same level of dedication and passion from the participants of South. I wish all the luck to the participating candidates and their respective states.”

Participants for regionals have been selected through competitions organised at the district/cluster and state levels in August-September 2021, which recorded over 250,000 registrations. This year, IndiaSkills Regional Competitions brought 1,500 participants from 26 states/union territories across four regions. Patna, Gandhinagar and Chandigarh successfully completed the Eastern, Western and Northern chapters of IndiaSkills Regionals. Visakhapatnam is ready to host the IndiaSkills Regional Competition – South.

During these competitions, participants get multi-level industry training through boot camps and programs such as project-based training, industry and corporate training, exposure visits to industries, mind coaching, and personality development. NSDC, through its Sector Skill Councils (SSCs) and Partner Institutes, trains the candidates for the competitions and for future endeavors as well.

NSDC has been leading India’s participation at the WorldSkills Competitions. WorldSkills, the gold standard of skill excellence, is a biennial event that records participation from over 80 nations. Skilled and talented youth from across the world compete on the global platform in multiple skills. In the previous edition of WorldSkills held in Kazan, Russia in 2019, India ranked 13 of 63 participating countries. More than 1,350 candidates participated in 56 skills, and team India gave its best-ever performance by winning four medals—one gold, one silver, two bronze medals—along with 15 Medallions of Excellence.

Kotak Life Drives Campaign Success Via Google Search

* Achieves 128% more conversions and 16% reduction in cost per conversion in the first month of implementation

To improve the scale of customer lead generation, Kotak Mahindra Life Insurance Co. Ltd (Kotak Life) today announced that it has adopted a new approach for its digital campaigns that leverages new tools and features on Google Search, in partnership with Kotak Life’s digital media agency iProspect. Given the faster uptake in digital sales of life insurance products driven by a change in customer behaviour, low data charges, higher mobile phone penetration, and physical restrictions imposed in a post-pandemic India, Kotak Life’s new approach has driven a 128% jump in digital search conversions and clocked a reduction of 16% in cost per conversion in just the first month of the new campaign set-up. This has helped the company achieve a 4% increase in the conversion rates – from posting a query to buying a policy.

Prasad Pimple, EVP-Digital Business Unit, Kotak Mahindra Life Insurance Co. Ltd. said, “For implementing a Digital Business model, it is important to identify a wide and relevant in-market audience online. This requirement led us to experiment with a  new approach for our Google Search campaigns which helped increase scale and valid leads contribution, while reducing cost per lead. We are looking forward to expanding this to more product categories in the coming months.”

Kotak Life has a strong digital presence with platforms that offer customers a seamless buying experience both online and offline. The approach, ‘NEEV’, helped structure and consolidate 60 plus ad groups to an optimized number for Google Smart Bidding.   The revamped structure has shown an impact immediately post-set up. The campaign is constantly on an optimisation mode and continues to show a good impact on the business ROI. 

About Kotak Mahindra Life Insurance Company Limited

Kotak Mahindra Life Insurance Company Limited (Kotak Life) is a 100% subsidiary of Kotak Mahindra Bank Limited (Kotak). Kotak Life provides world-class life insurance products with high customer empathy. Its product suite leverages the combined prowess of protection and long-term savings. Kotak Life is one of the fastest growing insurance companies in India and has covered over 7.8 million new lives as on 30th September, 2021. For further information, please visit https://kotaklife.com/

Fynd's Erase.bg, An AI Image Editing Tool Cracks Product Hunt's Top Positions For October’21 Beating Over 4k Products

* A free-to-use web app, erase.bg makes background removal & image editing extremely easy & scalable even with high-quality images.

 After Fynd's success in creating retail technology and omnichannel solutions for brands, they have successfully created and scaled their groundbreaking photo editing tool. Erase.bg is now attracting international attention with its winning entry into product hunt's top products list.

Erase.bg comes with a whole host of image editing features like bulk image support, high-quality downloads, and more. Product Hunt is an acclaimed global technology community that rates new products based on their efficiency, innovation, and use. Erase.bg landed the #2 spot as the product of the day on 21st October’21, #2 for the product of the week & took the #5 spot for the product of the month in October'2021. This increased Erase.bg's web traffic by 6x and the total images processed shot up by 9x.

From removing the background of signatures to changing the background for brand logos, Erase.bg has something for everybody. Highly customizable with options to re-size & re-imagine how an image can be modified to fit business needs. With Erase.bg people can download unlimited high-resolution images completely free of cost.

"Replacing background images with any design of your choice is a very convenient solution for photographers, designers, and even brands. Recycling bulk images by replacing their background is very useful for agencies & e-commerce brands to create scalable marketing strategies & product catalogs, this is what Erase.bg does with amazing simplicity" said Farooq Aadam, co-founder of Fynd.

Erase.bg also comes with API support that can empower organizations to edit & download HD images on their private platforms.

About Fynd

Fynd is a leading omnichannel platform and retail technology company, creating a thriving ecosystem for retail businesses to grow and expand market influence. Keeping technology at the core of operations, Fynd is adept at understanding the needs & expectations of the end consumer, recognizing market trends, and creating bespoke solutions for both the end consumers and businesses.

Bridging The Gap: Overcoming Pandemic Disruptions To HIV Testing

* Of India’s 23.5 lac (2.35 million) people living with HIV, only 17.8 lacs (1.78 million) know their status. 13.8 lacs (1.38 million) are on antiretroviral treatment, of which 84% are virally suppressed

* HIV-1 Viral Load Testing – critical to monitoring HIV viral suppression – fell by ~41% in 2020 alone, owing to the pandemic[i]

* World AIDS Day, 1st December, is an important day to highlight the gaps in HIV testing and support a return to testing, through scalable solutions, across India

India is home to the third largest number of People Living with HIV (PLHIV) in the world – an estimated 23.5 lac[ii] (2.35 million). Amongst the adult population in the country, the HIV prevalence is roughly 0.22%, though this rate is far higher amongst specific at-risk populations.[iii]

With the onset of the pandemic, the continuum of care for PLHIV, including access to routine services, was disrupted, challenging gains made in HIV testing and care.[iv],[v] The vulnerable population faced several obstacles – fear of infection resulting in reduced consultations and hospitals being converted to pandemic care facilities.[vi]. HIV testing fell by ~41% in 2020 alone, across Asia and Africa.[vii] While testing protocol was impacted by the pandemic, India is gearing to meet the new UNAIDS’ fast-track 95-95-95 goals by 2030, adopted by the National AIDS Control Organization, and the UN Sustainable Development Goal of ‘Ending the AIDS Epidemic as a Public Health Threat by 2030.’

Currently, of the estimated 23.5 lac (2.35 million) PLHIV, 17.8 lac (1.78 million) know their status. Of these, 13.8 lac (1.38 million) are on antiretroviral treatment (ART). As of March 2020, among those on ART, 84% (as opposed to the 95% target) were found virally suppressed.[viii]

Dr. Sunita Upadhyaya, Associate Director for Programs, CDC said, “A streamlined approach to HIV care is a must to bridge the gap in testing, with only 65% of India’s annual target of 13.8 lac (1.38 million) viral load tests conducted this year. Addressing this, the government has a future-forward vision to transform the national approach to HIV care, with significant plans to take charge of treatment centres, viral load testing and optimize lab functioning pan-India. Facilitating a smooth transition for states, the CDC has also extended support, such as in viral load sample transportation, across Manipur, Mumbai, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.”

Dr. Upadhyaya further added, “A robust, diversified testing approach is required to address the access issues, with a focus on key and vulnerable populations. Testing is also critical to enable patient centricity, empowering those in far-flung regions with access to much-needed diagnostic solutions. Over the last few months, public sector labs spread across the country have made progress by increasing state linkages to testing, which is a welcome step. Recognizing the infectious diseases posing public health threats today, it is critical for the government to leverage existing investments and offer an integrated diagnostic model through a one-stop shop of services, enabling collective screening or testing for HIV, Hepatitis, Sexually Transmitted Infections and COVID-19, particularly for at-risk populations.”

Atanu Mitra, General Manager for Abbott’s Molecular Diagnostics business in India said, “At Abbott, we are committed to helping address the HIV burden in the country and we are working with the National AIDS Control Organization to support the country’s end-to-end testing needs. By leveraging world-class technology and our scientific expertise, we can collectively advance quality diagnostics for viral load testing so that people so that people with or without HIV can get the care they need to live their best lives.

The adoption of a robust testing strategy can scale routine viral load testing (VLT) amongst patients. Presently, there are 64 VLT centres in India, and over 600 ART centres. PLHIV should visit their ART centre every 3 months as per the latest protocol, with VLT sample collection typically aligning with this visit.

VLT is recommended once-a-year for those on first-line treatment, and every six months for those on second-line therapy. It guides care, monitoring, with testing at regular intervals, providing an indication of a PLHIV’s response to treatment.

To overcome issues of accessibility to diagnostics in states with limited connectivity with VLT centres, mixed sample types can be adopted for testing where feasible. While the current protocol covers solely plasma samples, these are associated with stringent control requirements for transportation and storage. Thus, new innovations like Dried Blood Spot (DBS) testing can be scaled up in locations facing logistical challenges of sample transportation. Currently in India, DBS is restricted to children for mother-to-child transmission cases. However, it can be further utilized across different age groups amongst PLHIV to support adherence to routine testing.

Mixed-method technologies can also guide the way forward, via a combination of lab-based centralized testing and point-of-care testing. This can be introduced strategically to scale access to vulnerable groups, including the antenatal population, children, and prison inmates. Local communities, especially in rural areas, can also offer greater support to PLHIV to overcome challenges –stigma, discrimination, and distance from centres, through social support and streamlining delivery of decentralized testing and care services.

This World AIDS Day, December 1st, is an important opportunity to spearhead awareness and action towards global HIV-AIDS control targets through education, prevention, stigma reduction, and accelerated testing and treatment. In line with this year’s theme, ‘Ending the HIV Epidemic: Equitable Access, Everyone’s Voice,’ multi-stakeholder support and initiatives are crucial steps to end this epidemic, in India and worldwide.

Delhi’s Fastest Wired Broadband ACT Fibernet Launches GIGA Speeds In Delhi

 

* Delhi gets GIGA Speeds powered by Advanced Smartfiber ® Technology. Giga plans start at INR 1999/- per month

ACT Fibernet, one of India’s largest fiber broadband ISP (Internet Service Provider) today launched ACT GIGA for the residents of Delhi. The new GIGA plan comes with assured 24*7, 1 Gbps speed (Giga speeds, 1000 Mbps) and unlimited data* limit for Rs. 1999. Additionally, a new plan ACT Welcome has been introduced for Rs. 549 with 50 Mbps speed and unlimited data* limit. The new plans will be available to customers from 30th November 2021.

ACT Fibernet is a pioneer of GIGA speeds in India launching GIGA for the first time in India in Hyderabad in 2017. Since then GIGA is available across multiple cities with ACT Fibernet.  With increased usage of home broadband for streaming, gaming, work from home, learn from home and with so many more devices being simultaneously connected to the internet, customers are looking for more from their home broadband. GIGA Speeds will ensure that heavy usage customers are able to get seamless connectivity for all their daily internet needs.

ACT Fibernet is powered by revolutionary new Smartfiber® technology which creates VIRTUAL dedicated speed lanes, ensuring that a customer gets his plan speeds 24*7. Assured. So with ACT Fibernet, you don’t get ‘upto’ speeds, but FULL SPEEDS. This technology advancement has helped ACT Fibernet in being recognized as DELHI’s Fastest Wired broadband provider #based on analysis by Ookla® of Speedtest Intelligence® data for average download and upload speeds. With the launch of GIGA plan, customers can be assured that they will get full 1 Gbps speeds to download and 1 Gbps speeds at upload.

Speaking on the launch Saurabh Mukherjee, Chief Operating Officer, Atria Convergence Technologies Ltd. said, “With home broadband usage skyrocketing high speed, reliable and stable home internet access is the need of the hour. The launch of our 1 Gbps Speeds in Delhi will help the citizens of Delhi especially high usage customers to get a seamless internet experience. We also believe that this GIGA plan will immensely aid working from home professionals and small and medium offices which rely upon high data transfers, real-time cloud connectivity, graphics and animations and other such new-age industries to work seamlessly.”

Saurabh further added, “In order to cater to needs to a wider segment of the population, we are also launching an affordable ACT Welcome plan. with this, we are confident ACT Fibernet will transform the way internet is now being consumed at large.”