Apps to keep yourself Fit and Healthy

Obino: For real-time Health

Among the myriad health and weight stands out with its personalised approach a dedicated coach will monitor your eating habits real time, interact with you through the app, and prescribe tailored diets and lifestyle changes. While a pedometer in the app tracks your steps during the day, another fitness coach will guide you on activities and weight loss exercises. But all that's not going to work without that extra ounce of commitment on your part.

Noisli: For customizable ambient Noise

The app plays a selection of sounds including rain, a stream, storm, and others to help you concentrate while working or studying, or relax before going to sleep. The sounds can be mixed and there's a color changing background to help with your relaxation. Other features include offline sounds and timer with a fadeout function.

Poccare: For appointment with doctors, hospitals and wellness chains

It's a patient-centric app that not only helps you with a hassle-free appointment with doctors, but also allows consulting them through video call and live web chat. You can set medicine reminders, access your medical records including diagnosis and test records, and get answers to common health questions.

Sleep Cycle: For Intelligent sleep analysis

A good night's sleep is just as important as eating healthy and exercising. If you have trouble sleeping, this app can tell you when you were in a deep sleep or awake during the night, how much sleep you got, your sleep quality, sleep quality affected by weather, activity and more. It comes with a lot of features, data charts and customization options.

Calm: For guided meditation sessions

If you are looking for an app that can help you relax, improve concentration and sleep better, download Calm. It has a library of meditation audios and 'scenes' that you can watch. If you register, you will be able to access a seven-day program to get into the practice of meditation. Once you feel ready for more programs, you can subscribe it to access its entire library.

RunKeeper: For sports and fitness activity tracking

The app tracks your workouts as well as weight loss. It has planned routes and set workouts, though you can create your own with audio coaching. You can create a custom fitness challenge, invite friends, track each other's progress, and cheer each other on chat. It can be synced with other tracking apps like MyFitnessPal's Calorie Counter and Fitbit.

Change in Planning Commission

A key component of the Nehruvian socialism – the economic approach by India’s First Prime Minister – the Five Year Plans have been laid to rest by the NDA Government. The 12^th Plan, the last of the Five Year Plans, had come to an end on March 31, though it has been given an extension of six months to allow ministries to complete their appraisals.

The decades old Five Year Plans will make way for a three year action plan, which will be a part of a seven year strategy paper and a 15 year vision document. The Niti Aayog, which has replaced the Planning Commission, had launched a three year action plan from April 1.

Five Year Plans – FYP were centralized economic and social growth programs. Joseph Stalin, president of the USSR implemented the first Five Year Plan in the late 1920s. India too followed the socialist path but here the planning was not as comprehensive since the country had both public and private sectors. The Planning in India was only about the public sector. The first Five Year Plan was launched in 1951. The idea was to plan public spending for equitable growth rather than leaving expenditure to the market forces.

The Five Year Plans played a great role in lifting India’s social sector and building of heavy industry. A centralized planning system could ensure that the money gets spent where it was the most needed.

For a long time, there had been a feeling that for a country as diverse and big as India, centralized planning could not work beyond a point due to its one-size-fits-all approach. Moreover, since the Planning Commission used to be controlled by the Central government, it often ended up as a tool to punish states ruled by the opposition parties when it came to allocating funds. Due to the top-to-bottom approach in centralized planning, it was felt that the states needed to have greater say in planning their expenditure. The planning commission was seen to be imposing its diktats on states who could have better known what and how much they needed.

The Niti Aayog, which has replaced the Planning commission, is the new body that gives policy direction. Its founding principal is cooperative federalism. Most important difference is that Niti Aayog has no power to grand funds or makes decisions on behalf of states. It is only an advisory body.

IPL 2017: New Ad Campaigns

Completing a decade of revolutionizing Cricket in India, the Indian Premier League (IPL) continues to attract immense advertiser interest. Brands pay hefty fee to air commercials during the sports extravaganza making the event similar to the Super Bowl in US, which is known for Brands showcasing their biggest campaigns of this season. Let’s take a look at the five brands which aired new campaigns during the ongoing league.

Amazon – The online marketplace along with its advertising agency Ogilvy and Mather created a fictional cricket team called Chonkpur Cheetahs for this IPL season. Through a series of films, the campaign portrays the journey of this aspiring team to reach their goal of playing T20. It also communicates how in various small ways Amazon enables them to get a step closer to their dream of playing T20. The dreams of the Chonkpur Cheetahs is a metaphor for the dreams of millions of Indians and how Amazon can enable them by providing access to different products.

Vodafone – The telecom company, which has been associated with the league since its inception, brought back animated character ZooZoos in the new campaign made by Ogilvy & Mather. First introduced during the second season of IPL in 2009, the cute animated characters are shown in three different ads celebrating Indian team’s famous huddle, run outs and boundary moments.

Pepsi – PepsiCo India’s cola brand launched its summer campaign during the IPL, featuring Indian cricket team’s captain Virat Kohli made by Advertising agency JWT India, the spot features Virat Kohli giving it back to Australian fans by stopping a boundary during an intense match. Pepsi has been associated closely with IPL; it has been the league title sponsor for three years between 2013 and 2015 and was eventually replaced by Chinese handset maker Vivo.

Maruti Suzuki – The country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI), which is also the associate sponsor of IPL, has rolled out a new campaign for its compact SUV Vista Brezza. The television campaign, made by Dentsu Creative Impact, highlights the stylish built and advanced features of the car.

Parle Products – To establish the wide array of products the company has to offer, IPL’s associate sponsor Parle Products has launched a new ‘Naam Toh Suna hi Hoga’ campaign along with its advertising agency Taproot Dentsu. The films are a humorous take on the daily lives of Indians stuck in awkward situations – an employee being questioned by his boss, a school principal complaining to a student’s mother and two women bragging about their lifestyle.

Some Essential Life Skills

If you haven’t mastered some of the most essential life skills already, it may be time to take a different approach. Whether you’re looking to listen better or negotiate for a raise, here are some of the most surprising ways you can master essential life skills.

Listening – it’s a surprisingly simple yet underused concept. If you want to listen better, keep your mouth shut. As Austrian pianist Alfred Brendel once said, “The word listen contains the same letters as the word Silent.” Not only does thinking about what you’re going to say next take your attention away from the speaker, but hijacking the conversation shows that you think you have something more important to say.

Conserving Willpower – the Greatest Human strength, “we all have a finite amount of willpower in a given day. The key to conserving it is to limit the number of decisions you have to make.

Time Management – The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say ‘no’ to almost everything. If you don’t prioritize your time over others, you’ll find your productivity will suffer and resentment will mount.

Honesty – If you don’t have anything nice to say, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t say it. HHPP to remember, Radical candor is humble, helpful, and immediate, in person and it doesn’t personalize.

Creative Thinking - The best way to come up with your next big idea may be to simply stop trying. During a 2011 study, researchers found study participants to be more creative at times when they were relaxed or unfocused.

Public Speaking – Most people think that trying to calm down is the best way to cope with public speaking anxiety, but research suggests that this doesn’t work. A better strategy is to stop trying to relax and instead reframe your jitters as excitement.

Negotiating – Recent research suggests that it’s better to emphasize what you’re giving the other person as opposed to what they’re losing in any negotiation.

Reading More – Assuming that most books are average, not great, then there are really only one or two major ideas to get out of them, which can take you less than three hours to ascertain if you skim. Start by reading the table of contents to understand the ideas dispersed within the book, make notations on the pages you want to revisit, read more deeply for 30 minutes on your second visit, and if the book is worth another read, take an hour or two to read the best parts again.

Learning a new Language – A growing body of research suggests that the best way to remember something forever is to practice remembering it. Rather than reading a new word over and over, read it once and practice recalling it several times.

Stress Management – Rather than letting stress hurt productivity and focus, the idea behind resilience is using stress to your advantage as energy to help you perform in high-pressure environments like investment banking.

Making Friends – It’s hard to make new friends as an adult, but joining a choir could help. Recent research suggests that singing can be a great icebreaker among large groups of strangers and can facilitate friendships down the line.

Asking for Help – A recent study suggests that asking for advice makes you look more, not less capable. Author Tim Ferriss says that the biggest mistake is asking conventionally successful people for help. Instead, he suggests consulting those who’ve gone from zero to expert in about six months.

World in the next 5 years

These are uncertain times whether it’s the anti-globalization backlash in the US, or the probable break-up of the European Union (EU) or closer home, the increase in terrorist activity in Pakistan, we’re badly in need of a crystal ball that will tell us how these disturbing trends pan out.

Global economic growth will slow, making life difficult for governments, who will come under increased pressure to deliver jobs and welfare. Governance will become more difficult. Real wages have been stagnant in the West, and this will lead to increased populism and dissatisfaction with globalization. Both the US and Europe will turn inward. Stresses in societies will increase as they fragment along religious and cultural lines, aided and abetted by the echo chambers of social media.

Geopolitical risks will rise, as ambitious new powers such as China and Russia seek to expand their presence. Non-traditional forms of warfare, such as cyber-warfare and terrorism, will gain prominence. Environmental stress will increase. One of the reasons for the doom and gloom, from the American viewpoint, is the demise of Pax Americana and the emergence of assertive new power centres which are not enamored of democracy.

India will be the world’s fastest growing economy in the next five years. However, “internal tensions over inequality and religion will complicate its expansion”. Violent extremism, terrorism and instability will continue to hangover Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the region’s fragile communal relations. Populism and sectarianism will intensify if Bangladesh, Pakistan and India fail to provide employment and education for growing urban populations and officials continue to govern principally through identity politics.

It quotes an estimate that India alone will need to create as many as 10 Million jobs per year in the coming decades to accommodate people of working age in the labour force. Increasing urbanization will mean that providing services for burgeoning city populations will be a huge challenge for resource strapped governments in South Asia, and that may ‘create new social, political, environmental, and health vulnerabilities’.

Message is that the world is now a more uncertain and dangerous place, which makes pursuing the right policies all the more important. For India, the lesson is that the leadership’s focus must be on providing jobs for the masses and improving the delivery of services to them, while at the same time doing all it can to ensure peace, including communal peace, in the region.

World without Wi-Fi

The Wi-Fi Icon – a dot with radio waves radiating outward – glows on nearly every internet – connected device, from the iPhone to thermostats to TVs. But it’s starting to fade from the limelight. With every major US wireless carrier now offering unlimited data plans, consumers don’t need to log on to a Wi-Fi Network to avoid costly overage changes anymore.

That’s a critical change that threatens to render Wi-Fi obsolete. And with new competitive technologies crowding in, the future looks even dimmer. In an all data you can eat world, consumer’s use of Wi-Fi at public places like stadiums and airports will drop to a third of all mobile data traffic from about half. This means businesses not upgrading public access Wi-Fi as often. Smartphone users might not even turn on their Wi-Fi capability.

Customers are rational. When pricing incentives favor Wi-Fi customers use more Wi-Fi. When pricing incentives shift, so does behavior. The erosion of Wi-Fi influence is likely to be slow and uneven. While unlimited data plans make the technology less necessary for phones, many home devices, from a MacBook to Amazon Echo, still use Wi-Fi to connect to Internet. Wi-Fi also helps fill in gaps in some office buildings and homes that have spotty cellphone coverage.

Some wireless carriers also still rely on Wi-Fi Networks to handle a large portion of the growing volume of internet traffic. Putting all of that Netflix binging and Spotify listening on cellular networks could strain capacity. Unlimited plans aren’t the only threat. Wi-Fi has survived 20 years and spurred a roughly $20 Billion industry of gear, service providers and chipmakers – mainly because it’s technology is open to innovation and it operates freely in the nation’s unlicensed airwaves. Wi-Fi now faces competition from other technologies that also run in those same frequencies such as LTE and CBRS (Citizen Broadband Radio Service).

Learning from Womenonmics

Japan Prime Minister is best known for his economic revival strategy consisting of three arrows, collectively called Abenomics. His three arrows consisted of expansionary monetary and fiscal policies (the first two arrows) and structural and economic reforms (the third). This third arrow consisted of deregulation, trade liberalization, tax reform and industrial restructuring.

An important component of the third arrow was “Womenonmics”, getting more women into the workforce and in positions of leadership. Japanese women are highly educated on average, and indeed have a higher college enrollment than men. Japanese female participation rate has risen to 73% - slightly ahead of the US, it is still far below Sweden’s 88.3%. A recent government survey showed 63% of women quit their jobs disappointed by their career prospects. 70% of the women are not able to return to the workforce after the birth of their first child. The reasons include non-availability of quality childcare centres.

Female participation is crucial for Japan, since its population is declining and also ageing rapidly. The elderly will make up 40% of the total population by 2060, and the ratio of working to retired persons will be 1:1 by 2050. Unless women participate in much greater numbers to expand the workforce, the pension and tax burden will be crushing and will affect economic growth. Realizing this, Abe put in place numerical targets and tangible metrics in his “Womenonmics” strategy. He initially aimed to have 30% of leadership positions for women in government and business.

The “Womenonmics” plan also contains reforms like removing the tax penalty for working mothers, and introducing new training subsidies to help them return to the workplace. Even though India is not in the OECD peer group, there are lessons from Japan “Womenonmics”. The Indian parliament recently passed a landmark maternity benefits bill, which will benefit women returning to the workforce.

Beyond education, skilling, pay parity and board positions, India’s agenda also includes providing women leadership positions in political life. The recent violation experience in Nagaland, wherein the local community refused to let women enjoy 33% reservation in local government shows how far we have to go. This resistance to even constitutional mandates shows that there is as much a cultural hurdle as an economic policy hurdle to achieving progress for women.

Leadership Lessons from US Navy SEALS

If you’re struck and mind refuses to go further, you are only 40% done. You still have remaining 60% of ability, energy and persistence to move further.

Ownership – Leadership starts with ownership. Responsibility and ownership spell power. Take the ownership for the outcomes that go wrong even if things were not in control. Extreme ownership leads to drive and ability to make half chances work.

Engagement – The level of engagement and the probability of success is directly proportional. Higher the engagement of the team in planning, lesser is fatigue in challenging phases of execution. If the leader or any team member is down, others must be able to perform and complete the task.

Detachment – Sometimes, a leader needs to take a tough decision in an unwanted situation. Train your mind for intense situations and extreme pressure so that you can step past the roadblocks and deliver results.

Lead by Example – Procrastination and avoiding responsibility is not what an effective leader would do. SEAL leaders know not to ask team members what they wouldn’t do themselves. From discipline in daily routine to extreme training, from learning to adapt to embracing new ideas and concepts to win, a successful leader leads by setting an example.

How to use LinkedIn to grow Business

LinkedIn is one of the world’s largest social networks with over 470 Million users globally. While most use LinkedIn to manage their professional profile on the web, SMEs have made the most valuable use of the professional network. Today, LinkedIn is considered to be amongst the top platforms for B2B lead generation globally.

The Sales-cycle is usually longer for B2B businesses. This happens because there are multiple decision makers involved in the process of onboarding a new vendor/partner. The most powerful way for B2B Businesses to increase sales while reducing the overall cost of selling is to build powerfully engaged customer communities. Building customer communities provides deeper insights into what customers find valuable.

Clearly define who your customer is and search – For a software development company the customer is the CIO/CTO/CMO/CEO. The second level to defining your customer is his/her geographical location. Once you define your customer clearly, use ‘LinkedIn Search’. The powerful LinkedIn Search shows results categorized into people, companies and jobs. Choose from the options and enter the location where you think most of your customers will be. LinkedIn will show the people working in various organizations who are your target audience. Even if LinkedIn displays a list of people that you are already connected with, visit their profile and explore the similar people suggestions that LinkedIn gives as ‘People also viewed’.

Connect and build relationships – Once you have a list of potential customers, it’s time to make connections. Being a professional network, it is important to keep in mind that you must not choose people at random and send LinkedIn invites to them. You must see if you have a common connection between you and the person you intend to connect with and ask for a recommendation. If you want to still explore the option of doing it yourself because you believe that people will find you valuable, before sending a LinkedIn invite, ensure that you write a ‘custom message’. When you are connecting with a third person for the first time, offer a valuable opportunity instead of asking for something on the invite itself. An invite tells the other person that you are valuable and you will not be another random connection that adds no value to the professional network.

Engage and Communicate Value – LinkedIn offers a powerful way to engage with one’s network at scale. Use the LinkedIn posts feature to author blog posts that you feel will be highly valuable and relevant for your network. Share actionable insights and thought leadership via your LinkedIn posts. As your network starts engaging with your content, your profile discovery increases. While LinkedIn posts are engaging and have an amplified reach via LinkedIn Pulse, the ones who find it hard to express their thoughts as a blog post can use images as status updates on LinkedIn.

If you carefully spend time to build a network of the most relevant and valuable people around you, it increases the probability of your message reaching out to the most relevant people who could be your potential customers or the audience that you intend to engage with. LinkedIn is a powerful platform for SMEs and startups. When combined with great quality content marketing it can help SMEs establish great relationships and grow faster.

Free tools in Digital Marketing

Every small business owner is well aware that, it is expensive to build an online business without the help of digital marketing tools. They also know that these various digital marketing tools greatly help them with their everyday tasks. SMEs and startups entrepreneurs can easily learn to master these free digital marketing tools and it will only boost their productivity.

Google Analytics – Launched in 2005, Google Analytics is undoubtedly the world’s most recognized free web analytics service. It has been setting industry standards by combining multiple analytical features for mobile as well as traditional user. Google Analytics must be the very first feature that you ought to install on your site. It will record just about everything, the moment that you go live and will track for you what is working and what isn’t. What make it unique are its tracking codes. The number of metrics that you get is incredible and to think that you get all of this for free.

Keyword Planner – It is a focused version of a combination of the Google Adwords. It is one of the best research tools available and is ideal for SEO purposes. There is multiple pertaining to keywords, but the tools focus is on a keyword’s traffic volume and competitiveness. You can search for relevant ideas pertaining to your keyword, assess the performance of a keyword, or try creating a combination of new keywords and a variety of options. It also has a free Adwords tool, for which the keyword planner helps in selecting competitive bids to use with your Adwords Campaigns.

BuzzSumo – It helps to provide more information to digital marketers through valuable content. Obvious that content marketing is not only essential to SEO, but to digital marketing as well. Just input the key phrase or long-tail keyword that you wish to promote and you get a list of the most popular posts that are currently trending. All you now have to do is to draft a suitable marketing strategy.

Hootsuite – It is one of those early multi-social networking clients, which integrated most of the popular Social Media platforms. This helps businesses, SMEs and startups to execute amazing Social Media strategies across their organizations so that their message is converted into relationships that matter. Hootsuite is an excellent SEO analysis tool for your Social Media accounts. In short, it is almost a necessary marketing tool for SMEs and startups in this digital age.

SimilarWeb – It is an online digital market intelligence tool that provides traffic and in-depth marketing insights for any website. With a single click, users can not only get a quick overview of a site’s ranking and reach but also its user engagement. By entering a specific website URL, or doing a category search by industry or country users get access to data from the top 50 websites. This will help users discover their market position by comparing key digital metrics, with direct competitors and leading companies and also craft suitable marketing strategies.

Boomerang – It is one of the more unique and good email marketing services that allow you to monitor your full email campaigns with ease. Boomerang, an effective plugin for Gmail, will schedule outgoing emails to hit consumer inboxes at an optimum time. You can also set up the “boomerang” effect where you can have the outgoing email send back to you when you haven’t gotten a reply from the original recipient thus making it an effective email follow up reminder. Boomerang not only allows you to create and monitor your email campaigns with ease, but is also easy to integrate with your Social Media accounts.

SEMrush – It helps to research your competitor’s keywords and helps you dominate your niche in search rankings. Most digital marketers have indicated that SEMrush as one of the best SEO and competition analysis tool out there. Developed by SEOQuake, SEMrush tool is an awesome tool to analyze your competitor website traffic, check their backlinks, find better if not suitable keywords and also helps you fix any website issues.

Hotjar – It is a powerful marketing tool that has been designed specifically for webmasters to analyze and study their traffic better. It is a complete website and mobile analytics tool that enables web developers, analysts, digital marketers and UI developers etc. to optimize the usability and conversion rate of their sites. Hotjar combines both feedback and analysis tool to give users understandings into how visitors interact with their website, how they could enhance that visitor experience and finally what they can do to increase conversion rates.

Canva – It is a free simple graphic design tool for non-designers to create info-graphics as well as other presentations, visuals and graphics. Canva has a huge range of info-graphics, images, visuals, layouts, and templates for your Social Media, Content Marketing, Blogging and at times even advertising needs. It is a much needed free tool that simplifies the design process. 

SimplyMeasured – It is a marketing tool that is used by SMEs, startups as well as large corporations. It provides them social media analytics and metrics to measure their online media campaigns, social media performance etc. and also assist them in the monitoring of online mentions of specific keywords which triggers for specific instances.

Charlieapp.com – Charlie is must have tool. Just before a meeting, it compiles just about all the important info about the people that you are scheduled to meet, and stores them in your organizer or diary. You will have most of their personal info, such as common hobbies that you share, personal preferences, and their professional history, and much more which breaks the ice in any meeting.

SocioBoard – Social Media platforms have also played an important part in digital marketing. Likewise businesses manage multiple Social Media platforms and their activities. The SocioBoard platform being an open source tool makes it very easy for digital marketers, SMEs and startups.

Wistia – It provides online professional video hosting services for businesses, individuals, SEMs and startups. It is very much a pro-business oriented service, and helps SMEs to grow their brand and business. It tracks marketing performances through its built in metrics, analytics, and video marketing tools. Wistia also has tools for customizing videos, building brand awareness, increasing traffic via video SEO, and generating new leads.

SlideShare – The quiet giant of content marketing, SlideShare is the biggest, albeit simple photo slideshow software, that provides professional results. SlideShare gets over 130 million page views and over 60 Million visits every month. It is among the 200 most visited websites and is also the largest community for sharing presentations. Apart from presentations, SlideShare also supports PDF’s, documents, webinars and videos. It offers a variety of input and output choices as well as editing tools with images, effects, transitions and music.

Rapportive – It shows just about everything connected with the contacts in your Gmail Inbox. It will put up the Social Media details of the email sender. This is a free blogging tool and is blessings in disguise for those who receive tons of Gmail from you don’t know. Rapportive helps you get a peep into who is behind the email address. It also allows you connect with Social Media profiles of these emailers. In addition, it is the perfect tool if you are contemplating to bring LinkedIn functionality to your Gmail Inbox.

Know about Budget 2017

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley presented the Union Budget 2017-18 in the Lok Sabha. Here are the highlights of the Union Budget.

If you are a Salaried Employee – Government will slash the basic rate of income tax from 10 percent to five percent. The basic rate applies to those with annual incomes of between Rs. 250,000 rupees and Rs 500,000 rupees.

If you are into farming – Farm sector will grow at 4.1% this fiscal and government will double income of farmers in five years. For imparting new skills to people in rural areas, mason training will be provided to five lakh persons by 2022. Farm credit budget for next fiscal is at Rs 10 Lakh cr. Fasal Bima Yojana increased to 40% of crop area, raised to Rs 1.41 lakh cr. in Kharif 2017 season. Infrastructure investment pegged at Rs 3.96 lakh cr. Dairy processing fund with Rs 2000cr corpus to be set up and to double irrigation fund corpus to Rs 40,000 cr.

If you are a business person – Scope of domestic transfer pricing restricted to only if one of the entities involved in related party transaction enjoys specified profit linked deduction. Threshold limit for audit of business entities that opt for presumptive income scheme increased from Rs 1 cr. to Rs 2 cr. Similarly, the threshold for maintenance of books for individuals and HUF increased from turnover of Rs 10 lakhs to Rs 25 lakhs or income from Rs 1.2 lakh to Rs 2.5 lakh.

If you live in Rural India - The government aims to bring 1 cr. households out of poverty by 2019. They will take steps to ensure participation of women in MGNREGA up to 55%. For imparting new skills to people in rural areas, mason training will be provided to five lakh persons by 2022. The government proposes to complete 1 cr. houses for those without homes. Government will allocate Rs 19,000 cr. for Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana in 2017-18. The country is set to achieve 100% rural electrification by March 2018. With a progress of Swachh Bharat mission, sanitation coverage has gone up from 42% in Oct 13 to 60% now.

If you are into Real Estate – Finance minister has granted infrastructure status to affordable housing, a long-time demand from the industry. Owing to surplus liquidity, banks have started reducing lending rates for housing.

If you own a start-up – The three year tax holiday available to start-ups has been extended from the existing period of first 5 years of operation to 7 years. Removal of embargo on carry forward of losses if there’s a change in share-holding beyond 51% of promoter share.

If you are a student – Government has proposed to introduce a system of measuring annual learning. Science to be given focus, Quality Education will energize our youth. Skill centres will be set up across the country to help youth seeking opportunities outside the country.

How Robots will take over Jobs in coming Years?

We have already started talking about robots and have been floated many pilot projects where robots are acting as assistants to help customers in trivial matters. Industry experts have already mulled loss of jobs in BPO sector because of introduction to chatbots. We have just scratched the tip of AI and as we make strides in technology and make advancements, it is likely the far-fetched prophecy comes true. This is how Robots are likely to affect our society in next 10-15 years.

Today, Robots are doing human work in a wide range of places. Best of all, they are doing the jobs that are unhealthy or impractical for people. This frees up workers to do the more skilled jobs, including programming, maintenance and operation of robots. Robots that work on cars and trucks are welding and assembling parts or lifting overwhelming parts – the type of jobs that include risks like injury or they work in situations loaded with hazards like excessive heat, noise or fumes-perilous places for people.

Rather than mindlessly doing chores for you, robots will perceive outward appearances, non-verbal communication and verbal cues to give a more human-like interaction. These robots will read these clues and hold individual, life-like conversations.

High quality products can prompt to higher sales, which implies the organization that uses technology like robots will probably remain alive and virtual, which is good for the economy. Notwithstanding enhancing quality, robots enhance profitability, another key element to economic wellbeing. The AI today is in no way like the gloomy, glowing cyborg we once imagined – it’s more unusual, all more fascinating and more astounding. It’s superior to anything we imagined. 

Free Wifi? Not really free

You’ve heard that you shouldn’t open your bank account and potentially ever your email while using public Wifi. Be that as it may, what are the actual risks? All things considered, your home Wifi is encrypted, the Wi-Fi at the coffee shop isn’t. This implies you’re at risk of people monitoring your online activity, or more awful – unless you know how to protect yourself. Here are a couple of attacks.

Man-in-the-middle attacks are the place attackers are putting together their own particular network and standing between your computer and the computer you’re trying to access and all the information is routed through their device. Malware is significantly more risky, in light of the fact that it potentially gives a hacker access to everything on your device. They can take your files or photos, and even turn on cameras or microphones to eavesdrop.

Most perilously, the hotspot you connect to – might be malicious. This might be on the grounds that the businesses hotspot was infected, however it might likewise be on account that you’re connected to a honeypot network. For instance, if you connect to “Public Wi-Fi” in a public place, you can’t be entirely certain that the network is actually a true public Wi-Fi network and not one set up by an assailant in an attempt to trick people into connecting.

If you use public Wi-Fi connections consistently, you might want to invest in a VPN. As a bonus, a VPN will allow you to bypass any filtering and site blocking in place on the public Wi-Fi network, allowing you to browse whatever you want.

Five Corporate Deals of 2016

Mergers and Acquisitions promote growth and diversification in new markets. This growth is earned by acquiring a share of an existing player and venturing into a market which is new for the buyer. The year 2016 saw several M&A deals in different sectors, signaling India Inc. moves to stay afloat in a yet to revive market.

Myntra – Jabong

Myntra, an online fashion app which was acquired by Flipkart in 2014, acquired Jabong for a whopping $70 Million. The all-cash deal was only sealed after Global Fashion Group decided that Jabong had to tie up with a local player to succeed. Jabong has managed to minimize losses after reducing discounts.

HDFC Life – Max Life Merger

Under the three-step merger process. Max Life will first combine with its parent Max Financial Services Ltd. In the next stage, the insurance unit will be demerged from this entity into HDFC Life. Finally, the non-insurance businesses of Max Financial will merge into group company Max India Ltd. The valuation of the merged life insurance entity will be around Rs 65,000 crore and will be called HDFC Life.

Reliance Communications – Aircel

In the biggest consolidation deal in the telecom sector, Reliance Communications Ltd has agreed to merge its mobile phone services business with smaller rival Aircel to create Rs 65,000 crore entity. The RCom-Aircel combination will create a telecom operator ranked fourth by customer base and revenues. It will be No. 3 operator by revenues in 12 important circles. RCom will turn its wireless business into a special purpose vehicle in a slump sale, excluding the tower and overseas arms of the Ambani Company.

Quikr – CommonFloor

Quikr announced acquisition of the property search website for $200-million in an all-stock deal. The deal will give CommonFloor access to the online-classifieds firm's vast customer base. CommonFloor, which has built a robust technology platform for home hunters, was unable to raise fund or monetize its business model. The deal stitched by Tiger Global, main investor in both Quikr and CommonFloor, becomes the first major consolidation story in 2016. 

Blackstone – Mphasis

World's largest alternate asset manager, Blackstone Group acquires controlling 60.5 per cent stake in IT services firm Mphasis from Hewlett-Packard Enterprise. With $1-billion Mphasis buy, Blackstone makes its boldest bet in India. The all-cash deal reinforces the bulge-bracket investment firm's bullish outlook on the outsourcing business as more and more global client’s ship out IT jobs to emerging markets such as India and save costs. Following the acquisition, Mphasis will potentially get access to Blackstone entire PE portfolio of over 80 companies across the world for future outsourcing and technology contracts.

Startups that shut down in 2016

While 2015 saw launch of three to four startups a day, the second quarter of 2016 witnessed a lot of layoffs and shutdowns. Lack of funds, plummeting sales and rising competition were the major seasons for the shutdowns. Here are the startups that shut their shops in 2016.

TinyOwl – Food-ordering firm TinyOwl shut down its operations in May in all cities where it was operational except Mumbai. The move was, however, said to be temporary as the company wanted to re-brand itself and return with a better product.

Dazo – an app based service that curated and delivered meals, has suddenly shut down its operations in October this year. Several food delivery startups have taken a hit in 2016 primarily because they were struggling to raise fresh funds of funding and do not have money to sustain operations beyond a few months. 

PepperTap – On demand grocery delivery startup PepperTap rolled back its consumer centric app in April 2016. The move to shut down its operations came due to pressure from rivals including Grofers and BigBasket, which raised substantial funding. It had also acquired another budding hyperlocal grocery marketplace, Jiffstore, but all were in vain.

Fashionara – Bangalore based company closed its business in May 2016. It scaled business in apparel, accessories and footwear segment. Unsuccessful attempts to raise money or find buyers were forcing some of the fashion portals which had resorted to deep discounting to lure customers but were confronted with a cash crunch to close or scale back their operations.

Purple Squirrel – An EdTech financial startup, backed by Matrix, closed down business in 2016. The Mumbai based startup was launched to connect students with industry leaders and big companies for industrial exposure and training. However, it was forced to shut down due to continuously dipping sales and increasing cash burn.

AskMe – The consumer internet search platform shut down in August. The shutdown left about 4000 of its employees jobless. A variety of reasons, from weak technology to aggressive acquisitions, are said to be responsible for the online retailer’s failure.

Zupermeal – This startup allowed users to pre-order food from nearby restaurants. It closed its operations in May after just eight months of raising seed funds from the celebrity chief Sanjeev Kapoor. It had raised an undisclosed amount from overseas investors in October 2015.

AUTOnCAB – Gurgaon based autorickshaw booking app AUTOnCAB has shut down its operations owing to stiff competition from its heavily funded rivals. The company reportedly was in talks to raise fresh funding for a long time but failed to seal a deal.

GrocShop - The Mumbai based startup offered grocery shopping from the comfort of homes or offices at competitive costs. It reportedly failed to find a profitable growth model in a segment which was otherwise attracting investors in droves.

FranklyMe – It was a micro-blogging website launched in 2014, with the premise of letting people expresses themselves through videos. It has raised $600k seed funding from Matrix partners. Despite the fact that it has been a well-funded company, it failed to capture the market attention and closed down all operations in February 2016.