Science & Technology

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 25 nov 2024

India is often termed as 'Pharmacy of the World' due to its provision of low-cost generic medicines. But according to the 2024 Access to Medicine Index, published biennially by the non-profit Access to Medicine Foundation and supported by UK and Dutch governments, Indian pharma sector is seeing a slowdown in voluntary licensing and technology transfers - mechanisms essential for improving access to medicines in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Voluntary licensing allows pharma companies to permit other manufacturers to produce generics of patented drugs while technology transfer involves sharing the knowledge needed for local medicine production. Claudia Martinez, Director of Research at the Access to Medicine Foundation, says, 'There are some very clear opportunities for companies to scale up access and promote health equity, but more deliberate action is needed. Developing inclusive business models for low-income countries, engaging in voluntary licensing and technology transfers, and diversifying clinical trial locations are shown to be effective mechanisms for improving access. Real progress will require companies to reassess and adapt their policies to meet access equity goals.' Read on...

Business Today: India's pharma industry faces slowdown in licensing and technology transfers, says report
Author: Neetu Chandra Sharma

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 14 oct 2024

With the rise of digitalization various shifts are observed in marketing jobs and functions that go beyond the traditional areas such as sales, advertising, market research etc. As India continues to advance considerably digitally, the need for new fields of study and technologically skilled marketing talent is a necessity. Prof. Rajarshi Debnath of FORE School of Management, explores and analyzes India's educational and talent landscape in the field of marketing and how it has been impacted with digital evolution. She says, 'The marketing field of study has grown to be one of the most pursued professional career choices because of the abundance of opportunities it offers...People are more connected than ever, thanks to the spread of smart devices, the rise of social media, and the easier access to the internet...Generation Z are drawn to digital marketing because of its allure, which emphasizes data analytics, social media management, SEO, and content marketing. They see marketing as a dynamic, ever-evolving field that offers countless chances for ingenuity and originality.' Some statistics she cites - Average pay for a marketing manager in India is approximately Rs 719796 (Payscale); Placement trends from leading B-schools in India show 38% in 2022 and 45% in 2023, students accepted jobs in marketing field; India has third-largest startup ecosystem with 112718 DPIIT (Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade, Govt. of India) recognized startups spread over 763 districts emphasizing the growing requirement for marketing talent. Read on...

The Financial Express: How student's interest in marketing jobs has grown in India
Author: Rajarshi Debnath

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 26 sep 2024

William Arthur Lewis, Nobel Laureate economist, in 1954, emphasized the need for migration from agriculture to manufacturing and services, and from rural to urban areas, for economic development and growth. Recently, Gita Gopinath, Deputy Managing Director of International Monetary Fund (IMF), said that India needs 60-148 million additional jobs cumulatively between now and 2030 to make the workforce shift from agriculture to other areas. Prof. Bina Agarwal of University of Manchester, argues that Mr. Lewis proposed the shift when agriculture was low-tech and subsistence-oriented subsistence-oriented, but now this is not the case and agriculture can be a growth engine through advancements in science and technology and by effectively applying digital and productivity tools. She says, 'Today, farming in many countries is high-tech and highly productive. We can get there too if we give agriculture its rightful place and rethink the way we farm. Although Indian agriculture has had a five-year average growth rate of 4%, it contributes 18% to the GDP. Its growth is erratic and environmentally costly. It employs 46% of all workers and 60% of rural workers, but incomes remain low, and educated youth don't wish to farm. For agriculture to be an engine of growth and attractive to youth, we need to overcome ecological, technological, institutional challenges; reconnect with allied sectors; and create synergy with rural non-farm sector.' She has following recommendations - Effectively regenerate water and soils and tackle climate change; To expand irrigation a combination of groundwater regulation, rainwater harvesting and micro-irrigation is neded; Efficiency in water use is essential, with measures ranging from drip irrigation to less water-guzzling crops; Technological shift from cereal monocultures to crop diversity and agro-ecological farming is required. This would revive soils, save costs, raise yields, create jobs, and increase profits; Technology is also key to tackle climate change, especially heat-resistant crops and efficient extension of new farming techniques; There is need for institutional innovation, such as encouraging smallholders to cooperate and farm in groups; Livestock, fisheries and forests also offer huge growth and job potential. She finally adds, 'Since 61% of rural incomes come from the non-farm sector, expanding and synergising farm-nonfarm linkages in agro-processing, machine tools, eco-tourism, etc can raise incomes and jobs.' Read on...

The Indian Express: How agriculture can be an engine for growth
Author: Bina Agarwal

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 27 jul 2024

Prof. Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay, Director of the Indian Statistical Institute, while speaking at 12th convocation of IIITDM (Indian Institute of Information Technology, Design and Manufacturing) Kancheepuram (Tamil Nadu, India), said that India needs multifaceted strategies to improve and enhance science and technology research. He also emphasized the need for increased women participation in STEM fields to achieve inclusive growth. He also highlighted India's rise in Global Innovation Index (40th in 2022 while 81st in 2015) with the help of frugal innovation. But he pointed out the challenges in producing high-quality products on a large scale at low costs. Read on...

Devdiscourse: Boosting Science and Technology: Multifaceted Strategies for India's Future
Author: NA

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 29 apr 2024

India needs to work upon scientific and technological research and development to become an advanced nation. In an interview with Amitabh Sinha, Deputay Editor of The Indian Express, Indian government's Principal Scientific Advisor Ajay Kumar Sood explains the building of a vision and roadmap to become a developed nation by 2047 driven by science and technology. He says, 'We have fairly good scientific traditions and a fairly strong base. But if you look at any of the commonly used indicators to measure the scientific strength of a country, we are far behind, way below the global average. That is because our contribution in science is not proportional to our size or potential. This has to change.' According to him India should work and improve upon indicators like GERD (General Expenditure on Research and Development), the number of researchers per million population, women in science, number of patents etc. There is need for quality in research publications. Moreover, deployment of breakthrough technologies will provide 8-10% economic growth, an essential component to become a developed nation by 2047. He says, 'A Viksit Bharat will have to be a leader in science. There is no other way...The National Research Foundation (NRF) is one big decision that the government is banking heavily on.' Read on...

The Indian Express: In 2047, in terms of science, India should be in top 3 or 5: PSA Ajay Kumar Sood
Author: Amitabh Sinha

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 31 aug 2023

According to S&P Global Market Intelligence, in 2022 India ranked 4th most popular destination for startups and attracted 4.2% of global venture capital (USA - 41%, China - 18%, UK - 6%). Moreover, it is estimated that the global venture capital share of India will double by 2030. Sampath Sharma Nariyanuri, CFA Fintech Research Analyst at S&P Global Intelligence and Shankar Krishnamurthy, Head of Essential Tech Center of Excellence & Innovation at S&P Global, looking forward into 2030 answer 3 questions regarding Indian startups and their impact on the economy - (1) Will venture capital (VC) interest in Indian startups continue?: As India is expected to be 3rd largest economy there is huge scope of growth in startup ecosystem. In 2022, starup funding surpassed amount raised by public companies. Growth in mobile internet and government supported digital stack will give a boost to startups. India saw a record 26542 startup registrations in 2022, even amid a global funding slowdown. India had more than 92000 startups recognized by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) as of 28 feb 2023. (2) Which startup sectors will be resilient in India?: The fintech sector has topped the funding charts in India in recent years, attracting a cumulative US$ 9.7 billion in 2021 and 2022. ndia's digital commerce and on-demand services space won more than US$ 10 billion of VC investments over the last two years. Online B2B marketplaces in manufacturing and retail raised US$ 2.76 billion in aggregate in the last two years. Government sponsored initiatives like Account Aggregator (AA) network and the Open Credit Enablement Network (OCEN), will boost and streamline online lending workflows and can be integrated with e-commerce, fintech and marketplace apps. While Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) will bring interoperability across the widely fragmented digital commerce space. Other main sectors that attracted substantial VC funding include E-commerce (US$ 7.320 billion), Edtech (US$ 4.256 billion), Food and Grocery Delivery (US$ 3.462 billion), Media and Entertainment Tech (US$ 3.013 billion), Healthcare Tech (US$ 2.206 billion) etc. (3) What are the emerging sectors for startups in India?: Emerging sectors that got VC funding in 2021 and 2022 combined include AgTech (US$ 1.112 billion), Electric Vehicles (US$ 1.065 billion), Automation (US$ 0.591 billion), Clean Technology (US$ 0.193 billion). Artifical Intelligence, Space Technology and Drones are other significant emerging sectors. Electric vehicles sector will need about US$ 266 billion of investment this decade to meet government targets. In the long-term, India's open APIs and public digital stack will likely act as enablers for new startups. Read on...

S&P Global: Startups Riding Digital Infrastructure Could Transform Indian Economy
Authors: Sampath Sharma Nariyanuri, Shankar Krishnamurthy

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 31 jul 2023

The research study, 'Leveraging Multi-tier Healthcare Facility Network Simulations for Capacity Planning in a Pandemic' (Authors: Varun Ramamohan, of Indian Institute of Technology Delhi; Navonil Mustafee of University of Exeter Business School; Karan Madan of All India Institute of Medical Sciences - AIIMS; Shoaib Mohd of IIT Delhi), published in the journal Socio-Economic Planning Sciences (Aug 2023), demonstrates how a network-based modelling and simulation approach utilising generic modelling principles can - (1) Quantify the extent to which the existing facilities in the PHS (Public Health System) can effectively cope with the forecasted COVID-19 caseload; (2) Inform decisions on capacity at makeshift COVID-19 Care Centres (CCC) to handle patient overflows. Moreover, the research demonstrates how multi-tier healthcare facility network simulations can be leveraged for capacity planning in health crises. The simulation tool developed by researchers analyses emergency handling capacity of a particular region's health infrastructure, and provides details like number of health centres in an area, bed availability, ICU facility, ventilators, oxygen, medicine supply and available number of healthcare workers. Prof. Varun Ramamohan, the lead researcher of the study, says, 'In Delhi there are often shortages of beds during peak of dengue, so our tool can be used for effective planning of operational responses.' Read on...

The Times of India: Researchers develop tool for health emergencies
Author: Shreya Ghosh

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 30 jun 2023

India's ecommerce market is projected to grow to US$ 150-170 billion by 2027. The growth is driven by increasing internet and mobile usage, booming millennial consumer base, and rise in digital payments. Bain & Company’s 'How India Shops Report' indicates that India's online seller base has grown by 35% annually, with approximately 40% of new sellers emerging from tier-2 or smaller cities. Moreover, Indian government's Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) initiative is poised to democratize the ecommerce industry, providing a level playing field for all sellers in terms of product, pricing, reach, and sales. Narinder Mahajan, CEO & cofounder of ODN, says that to gain a competitive advantage in this new environment, sellers from across India will need to think differently and one of the ways to do this is to better understand their customers by leveraging consumer insights and data analytics. Small businesses can utilize analytics and big data to gain valuable insights about consumers that can equip them to tailor strategies effectivcely to reach customers and expand their businesses. This will also help them to compete in better ways with large businesses. As small businesses work with smaller budgets they can't do extensive market research but utlizing many low-cost data analytics solutions they can identify trends and opportunities in the market, allowing them to create new products or services that meet the needs and demands of their customers. Mr. Mahajan suggests other benefits of data analytics for improving ecommerce business - (1) Enhanced inventory planning (2) Personalized customer experiences (3) Targeted promotions (4) Optimal product pricing (5) New market/platform entry (6) Churn reduction. Read on...

Express Computer: Small Retailers in India: How Consumer Insights and Data Analytics are levelling the Playing Field for Ecommerce Success
Author: Narinder Mahajan

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 25 jan 2023

India continues to face many challenges in its agricultural sector. As the population continues to grow, food security becomes a prominent issue. In addition to this India has to take care of risks like climate change, supply chain inefficiencies etc. India has to make effective use of technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) among others to mitigate risks in agricultural sector. World Economic Forum has an initiative called Artificial Intelligence for Agriculture Innovation (AI4AI) that is directed to do just that. The initiative led by Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (C4IR) India and the Platform for Shaping the Future of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, encourages collaboration between government, academia and businesses to develop and implement innovative technological solutions. 'Saagu Bagu' pilot was launched with Government of the Indian state of Telangana to implement a framework for scaling up emerging technologies to improve productivity, efficiency and sustainability in the agriculture sector. The C4IR India developed the AI for Agriculture framework for public-private partnership in 2021. The framework includes Intelligent Crop Planning, Smart Farming, Farm-gate to Fork, Data-driven Agriculture. About 7000 farmers are now using the technologies to monitor the health of their crops, perform quality control and test soil. Read on...

World Economic Forum: AI for agriculture: How Indian farmers are harnessing emerging technologies to sustainably increase productivity
Author: NA

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 27 nov 2022

In a panel discussion in TechSparks 2022 titled 'STEM Education: Key to a future-ready India' experts talked about the importance of experiential learning, particularly in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) subjects, for India to have a sustainable and future-ready workforce. Amit Chatterjee, Startup Program and Strategic Business Initiatives at Intel India, says, 'We have more than 1.4 lakh schools in the country...National Education Policy 2020, which says we need to be more activity-oriented, have more experiential and practical-oriented education. And what we want to do today is to have the conversation on how exactly we can enable that.' Harish Rawlani, Co-founder and Director of MakerInMe Technologies, says, '...How to create something which will allow students to learn technology - is one of the key challenges when it comes to the technology aspect of STEM education. We have to abstract out technology so that students can learn and find it engaging.' Manila Carvalho, Principal of Delhi Public School(Bangalore East), says, 'In schools across rural and urban areas, most of us [teachers] do not belong to the digital era. We are learning and we are trying, but the pace in which we are doing it is very slow compared to the children who are in the school. So they definitely require support — maybe external support if teachers are not equipped enough...Teachers need to be trained for whatever changes, whatever new things we will bring to the schools. If they are convinced, the product will work well...' Pooja Goyal, Co-founder and COO of Avishkaar, says, 'The customer acquisition cost is so high, that you end up raising lots of money from venture capital...I think in education, you do need a little bit of patience to build a solid business over a period of time. And the current model of funding is not completely attuned to that pace at which it needs to be built...Children must learn important skills like tech literacy and problem solving skills...So for some of these skills, it is more about teaching computational thinking skills, the vocabulary, how it is applicable to solutions, building real solutions, and that's a very challenging job.' Read on...

YourStory: Why India needs to focus on STEM education and creative learning methods
Author: Christopher Isaac

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 27 oct 2022

India's large talent pool has exacerbated the growth of Global Capability Centres (GCCs). Currently there are about 1300 of them set up by global corporations. Keerthi Kumar, partner at Deloitte, provides analysis of their evolution and how they are becoming value added research and innovation centres. He says, 'This shift has borne multi-faceted benefits not just for parent organisations but also for India. First, in India's journey towards digitalisation, GCCs have provided a considerable push in skilling and developing a highquality and tech-savvy workforce. Further, the sector has acted as a channel of support for India’s social and environmental objectives. GCCs spend ~US$ 100 million on CSR, of which, 40% is relegated for educational initiatives, and save between 190 and 200K tonnes of GHG emissions through green initiatives. The sector makes a considerable and holistic impact across the economic, human capital, innovation, social, and environmental dimensions of India. Currently, the sector contributes ~US$ 103 billion to India in direct, indirect, and induced output-amounting to ~1 percent of the country’s GDP. Additionally, GCCs also bring forth investment opportunities, with global parent organisations having invested ~US$ 1.5 billion in India, while also directly contributing ~US$ 15 billion to start-up revenue annually.' The main focus is now towards Engineering Research & Development (ER&D). According to the 2022 Global Engineering R&D Pulse Survey by Deloitte and NASSCOM, 85% organisations indicated using a GCC for their ER&D activities. Further, ~75 percent of those were already based in India, while many more are expected to come in. HIGHLIGHTS OF THE SURVEY - The GCC sector generates employment for close to 5.5 million Indians, directly employing 1.2–1.3 million Indians (~25% of the direct employment generated by the Indian IT sector); 85% companies' leadership indicating a positive experience with their India GCCs; 90% surveyed organisations intend to maintain or increase their spend on India GCCs in the immediate future. Half of these organisations intend to increase their spend by more than 10% this year, a higher percentage than the global increase in the R&D budget; There is a growing propensity amongst India GCCs to forge partnerships with start-ups, academia, and Engineering Service Providers (ESPs); Co-creation is thus, quickly emerging as the model of choice with ~70% companies exploring or already being involved with start-ups and ESPs in co-creating; ER&D GCCs in India are likely to drive front-line innovation for their parent organisations and oversee end-to-end product development over the next three years; Upward trend to set in over the next three years in terms of volume of tasks migrated to GCCs in India, making India both a 'volume' and a 'value' creator. To maintain its lead India has to ensure that the talent pool remains competitive and future ready, start-up ecosystem continues to grow and ER&D strengthens. Read on...

DATAQUEST: Engineering innovation: India's opportunity to emerge as the world's engine room
Author: Keerthi Kumar

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 20 sep 2022

India's healthcare challenge is to be taken seriously at all levels - policy, public, private etc. Considering the large population size, an estimated 1.4 billion, it requires consistent and unfaltering efforts to standardize healthcare across all regions, both urban and rural. Within many challenges facing India's healthcare, the two important ones are affordability and accessability. Indian government spends only 2.1% of GDP on healthcare compared to 9.7% across OECD countries. This is one of the main reasons for the large portion of healthcare burden going to Indian people's pockets, which amounts to more than 55%. Another statistics that is disturbing in India's healthcare is vast divide between rural and urban health delivery. India's urban population is 28% while they have access to 66% of the hospital beds. Moreover, 67% of the doctors work in urban areas. One aspect of the solution related to India's many healthcare challenges is collaboration and partnership between public and private entities. The recent COVID-19 challenge highlighted the value of public-private partnerships (PPP) in healthcare. Collaborative public and private efforts in diagnostics, technology and treatment, helped India take the challenge of saving lives during the pandemic. The CoWin portal for vaccination is one such example. There are many instances of such public-private collaborations during the pandemic that provide evidence for the success of PPP model. This model can be taken further to improve and enhance the quality, affordability and accessability of the overall healthcare system in India. In the last few years PPP focused policy initiatives have led to increased investments in PPP projects. India received US$ 7.7 billion of committed investments across 25 projects in 2021, the largest in the South Asia Region. The three ways the PPP projects can help overcome affordability and accessability challenge in India's healthcare are - (1) Expertise: Private sector with urban focus have 58% hospitals and 81% doctors while public sector have most infrastructure in rural areas. Collaboration between urban and rural health by making the private sector services and expertise available in rural public health facilities can become a transformative strategy for improving India's healthcare. (2) Technology: Can be fully utilized to improve affordability and accessability in rural areas. Telemedicine is one such strategy. eSanjeevani, the national teleconsultation service, is an example. (3) Efficiency: The existing healthcare infrastructure can be uplifted through ehnanced efficiencies by implementing PPP model. Read on...

World Economic Forum: How public-private partnerships could be the booster dose for India's healthcare ecosystem
Authors: Neelima Dwivedi, Ruma Bhargava

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 26 jul 2022

According to the study, 'Analysis of future wind and solar potential over India using climate models' (Authors: T. S. Anandh from Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM); Deepak Gopalakrishnan from IITM and Center for Prototype Climate Modeling (NYU, UAE); Parthasarathi Mukhopadhyay from IITM), recently published in the Current Science, 'changing climate patterns over the next 50 years are likely to reduce the generation of solar power in India and affect the major wind power plants in certain regions... the renewable energy sector should work on improving the efficiency of solar farms given that radiation is likely to dip by 10 to 15 watts per square metre (sqm) across all seasons.' The team utilized three projection models - CORDEX-SA, CMIP5, and CMIP6 - to analyse solar and wind potential in India. Parthasarathi Mukhopadhyay of IITM, says, 'We have tried to show the difference between historical climates and the future scenario. All the models show an overall decrease in wind and solar power generation potential in India. Every model has its own uncertainty, but we have used three sets of models to analyse solar and wind potential over the peninsular region.' SOME HIGHLIGHTS OF THE STUDY: Both wind and solar potential are decreasing in some regions e.g. western India; Central and south-central India must be considered for the sector during pre-monsoon months, as the potential loss was minimum in these regions; North-western India - the biggest solar energy hub - is likely to see a loss in its energy capacity; Global warming would result in a drop in wind potential in some regions, and a rise in others; The southern coast of Odisha and the southern states of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu show promising potential for wind energy in the climate change scenario. Researchers predict that the deficits in solar and wind potential in India could be overcome by including more farms and using highly efficient power generators. Read on...

ThePrint: Bad news for renewable sector - study says climate change will hit solar & wind energy in India
Authors: Mohana Basu, Tony Rai

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 21 feb 2022

Healthcare in rural India is a challenge that needs to be taken seriously and sincerely. The infrastructure is in dismal condition. India's rural population is substantial, was about 903 million in 2021, and is expected to increase to 905 million in 2022. Priyadarshi Mohapatra, founder of CureBay, provides overview of India's rural healthcare sector and the challenges. He also explores the startup ecosystem and suggests how proper use of techology can be a game changer to improve accessibility and affordability of healthcare. Accessibility of quality healthcare is major issue in rural areas. The growing chronic diseases is also a cause of concern. Government run schemes, like Ayushman Bharat Health, Infrastructure Mission and Jan Arogya Yojana, when implemented effectively, can boost rural healthcare infrastructure. According to Invest India's study, 100% FDI has been allowed by the government under the automatic route to invest in developing hospitals. Moreover, 100% FDI is also permissible under automatic routes in medical device manufacturing. Health-tech entrepreneurial and startup ecosystem can play an important role in filling the gaps through innovation. The size of the market that is expected to reach Rs. 485.4 billion by 2024. According to Invest India's report, there has been a 45.06% increase in total investments in health-tech startups. A report by London & Partners and Dealroom.co published last year says that Indian health-tech startups have raised US$ 1.9 billion alone in 2021 from VCs. This ranks India just behind the US, China, and the UK. Currently, there are over 3000 health-tech startups in India and it is further growing. The investment will also provide employment opportunities to the sector. Government's healthcare infrastructure schemes, health-tech startup ecosystem and substantial investment can provide an upgrade to rural healthcare resulting in accessibility and affordability in healthcare delivery to rural population. Read on...

The Times of India: How the changing dynamics of healthcare industry are making rural India healthy?
Author: Priyadarshi Mohapatra

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 05 jan 2022

COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the challenges to the already struggling India's overall education delivery system. The school closures had not only affected the learning process but has led many students to drop out completely citing diverse reasons. Sudden transition from in-school learning to online learning took many by surprise - both teachers and students. This has been the case particularly with government-run and low budget private schools in small towns and rural areas, and students belonging to low socio-economic status (SES) households. Children had been deprived of mid-day meals that they use to get in schools, leading to a further challenge of malnutrition. Even though India has been undergoing digital transformation and evolving as a digital society, but the pandemic disrupted the gradual process. Many students, as well as a large number of teachers, found adapting to the technology-enabled learning difficult to handle efficiently and the process lacked effective learning outcomes. According to the School Children's Online and Offline Learning (SCHOOL) survey overseen by economists such as Jean Dreze, Reetika Khera etc, 77% of families in urban areas and 51% in villages have access to smartphones, a healthy number. But, only 31% of children in cities and 15% in villages are able to make use of smartphones for academic purposes. This shows how challenging it had been for children to use phones as an educational device. The Ministry of Education (Govt. of India) reported to the Parliamentary Committee of Women's Empowerment that about 320 million children got affected due to school closures and out of this 49.37% were girls. The Ministry of Education told the panel, 'Post pandemic, this can lead to a higher risk of girls permanently dropping out of school and reversing the gains made over recent years. One cannot also ignore the fact that there is a gender dimension in digital access to learning. In families which possess a single smartphone, it is likely that sons will be given the preference to access online classes, followed by girls, if time permits.' According to the report 'State of the Global Education Crisis: A Path to Recovery' prepared by World Bank in cooperation with UNESCO and UNICEF (The Indian Express, 13 dec 2021), Jaime Saavedra, World Bank Global Director for Education, says, 'The COVID-19 crisis brought education systems across the world to a halt. Now, 21 months later, schools remain closed for millions of children, and others may never return to school. The loss of learning that many children are experiencing is morally unacceptable. And the potential increase of learning poverty might have a devastating impact on future productivity, earnings, and wellbeing for this generation of children and youth, their families and the world's economies.' The challenges remain as new variants of the COVID-19 like Delta and Omicron keep arising and pushing governments to implement measures like curfews, lock-downs, school closures etc. So, the online education will continue to remain the mode of learning in these times. Governments, nonprofits, technology companies, etc have to make sure that the process is able to provide optimal outcomes as it is a question of the country's and the world's future. Read on...

The Siasat Daily: The chaos of online education in India's pandemic times
Author: Manogna Chandrika Matta

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 23 oct 2021

India's changing socio-economic scenario is urging corporates, entrepreneurs and individuals to focus on solving social problems and creating a positive social impact in lives of those who are at the bottom of the pyramid, a concept that was first propagated by C. K. Prahalad and Stuart L. Hart in their article 'The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid' (Strategy+Business, 2002). It proposed that companies should innovate and also focus on the needs of those at the bottom of the pyramid. By doing so they will not only expand their markets but will also serve the marginalized communites and uplift their socio-economic conditions. According to the article 'Budget 2014: Tapping the aspirational class of India' (Shuchi Bansal; Mint, 11 Jul 2014), while presenting the budget in 2014 Late Mr. Arun Jaitley, the then Finance Minister, referred to aspirational Indians and what he called the 'neo middle class'. He said, 'India unhesitatingly desires to grow...those who have got an opportunity to emerge from the difficult challenges have become aspirational. They now want to be part of the neo middle class.' In the same article, a research study by Quantum Consumer Consulting, finds that 34% of these strata are aged between 10 and 25 years and aspires for a better life. Ravi Narayan, CEO at T-Hub, explains how this aspirational class can be an opportunity for social entrepreneurs to focus on and make a real difference in the innovation ecosystem. He says, 'It is about time social changemakers start tapping into India's aspirational class, who are tomorrow's neo-middle class. Understanding this under-served stratum is key to unlocking the potential of the Indian economy.' He provides examples of organizations from India's impact ecosystem that are making a difference. According to Mr. Narayan, 'India's strong digital infrastructure has been a gamechanger for those who want to leverage the power of technology to create a social impact on a larger scale. The growing smartphone penetration and high-speed internet connectivity in rural areas have empowered social entrepreneurs and innovators to create new models for change to accelerate social impact.' EdTech, AgriTech, healthcare and microcredit finance are critical areas where social entrepreneurs and incubators are offering inclusive and sustainable solutions to ensure the upward mobility of the marginalized class. Mentioning the best practices in social innovation in India's context, Mr. Narayan says, 'Speaking from experience, I am convinced that social innovation in the Indian context is not clearly defined by an evidence-based approach. Perhaps therein lies one of its bigger challenges. Social entrepreneurs working to create an impact on the scale have to contend with operational challenges, such as a lack of market access, besides inadequate investor connect and mentoring opportunities. Also, technologically and in terms of scale, it is difficult to solve problems in this sector as the risk factor is high for social entrepreneurs. Besides, the educated class with its worldview isn't contributing enough to the growth of this sector. Such pain points highlight the need for open innovation to solve India's most complex social problems.' He also says that maximizing inclusion is key and this cannot be attained by merely leveraging technology. There has to be a larger objective of creating a holistic inclusive social impact ecosystem. A fragmented innovation ecosystem cannot thrive in the absence of a comprehensive social innovation policy. He concludes, 'I believe that social innovators - be it individuals, social incubators, governments, corporates, academia, or startups - who put people first will help create new and exciting markets and facilitate a synergistic innovation ecosystem.' Read on...

Entrepreneur: How to Address the Yawning Gap in India's Social Impact Sector
Author: Ravi Narayan

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 22 sep 2021

Healthcare infrastructure, both public and private, in small towns and rural areas of India is still rudimentary and lacks quality and efficiency. COVID-19 pandemic has further demonstrated the sorry state of healthcare delivery. Moreover, during pandemic times healthcare facilities became out of reach for non-COVID patients with other diseases and healthcare issues. Fear of COVID infection was one of the major factor that made healthcare delivery situation worse. Most OPD's and in-patient treatment in big hospitals, both public and private, was restricted. Technology-enabled healthcare and telemedicine came to the rescue during this time. Many healthcare facilities even tested advanced digital technologies to fill the gap and to keep themselves afloat businesswise and manage revenue streams. Technology also helped healthcare to expand reach to rural and remote areas. Keeping this in mind, last year the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW), NITI Aayog, and the Board of Governors (BoG) Medical Council of India (MCI) released the initial formal guidelines to regulate practices across India leading to democratization of healthcare delivery, especially telemedicine. Remote healthcare delivery also hastened during this time. Concept of remote or smart ICUs also became prevalent considering the shortage of critical care staff in hospitals. Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) devices came handy in remote and digital healthcare. With AI, predictive analytics, electronic health records etc medical consultation has become more efficient. This particularly helped during pandemic and is very relevant for areas where physical healthcare delivery is limited or unavailable. The scope of remote healthcare in India is promising. According to the latest McKinsey report telehealth is projected as a quarter trillion-dollar industry post-COVID. The report states that telehealth use has increased 38 times from the pre-COVID-19 baseline. The industry is projected to reach a size of US$ 10.6 billion by 2025 in India. The healthcare delivery for rural and remote areas has to combine both digital and physical modes, the evolved 'Phygital Model'. As India's rural population is sizeable, about 65% of total population, the healthcare efforts would require contribution from both public and private sectors. Currently, patients from rural areas and small towns have to travel to larger cities to avail better healthcare facilities, increasing the load on already burdened healthcare infrastructure there. Moreover, it also increases the cost of healthcare for those who travel. Use of phygital model will reduce the cost of healthcare and lessen the burden on large cities. Innovative startups and entrepreneurial spirit of India's youth can help bring this healthcare transformation with support from government and investors. Read on...

Businessworld: How Are Advances In Digital Technology Making Healthcare Delivery In Rural India More Efficient?
Author: Col Hemraj Singh Parmar

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 28 jun 2021

COVID-19 has brought about a massive online education transformation in India. There are many challenges that the traditional education system already faces and with the advent of the new tech-enabled education at such a large scale the challenges have multiplied. Dr. K. Kasturirangan, former chairman of the Indian Space Research Orgnisation (ISRO) and chairman of the committee that drafted the National Education Policy 2020 (NEP), voiced out his concerns while speaking at the 'Development Dialogue', a virtual interaction hosted by the International Centre Goa. He said, 'This is the beginning of online learning. Certainly, there is a digital divide. Whether it is internet connectivity, internet-enabled devices or a quiet study environment, these are all grossly underestimated in their complexity to be integrated into an Indian educational system. Quite a lot of research is going on but to have a system that can be adopted in an operational, scalable and affordable sense, I think we still have to wait.' He also emphasized the need for children to learn regional languages as recommened in the new NEP. He also talked about the importance of learning foreign language, particularly English, and mentioned that the new education policy will provide more opportunities to learn foreign languages. Read on...

The Indian Express: 'Digital divide in online education does exist, research on to find operational solution'
Author: NA

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 29 mar 2021

India's healthcare ecosystem is continuously evolving with changes in health policies, advancement in technologies, financial innovations etc. But, what is most critical is patient centricity, that should be at the core of all products and services development. Digital transformation is enabling this patient focus in healthcare. According to the World Economic Forum Report 2016 (weforum.org) titled 'Building the Healthcare System of the Future', the future of healthcare will be 'consumer-centric' and there are four digital themes that will be critical for digital transformation of healthcare over the next decade - (1) Smart Care (2) Care Anywhere (3) Empowered Care (4) Intelligent Healthcare Enterprise. The new structure for the healthcare system will include - Continuous Monitoring; Retail Clinics; Connected Home; Auto Paitent Access; Virtual Care Circles; Omni-channel Experience; Intelligent Treatments; Me, My Data and I; Augmented Wayfinding; Seamless Financing; Intelligent Machines; Virtual Care Team; Connected Care; Coordinated Ecosystem. Rehan A. Khan, Managing Director of MSD (India Region), explains how the patient-centered digitally-led healthcare ecosystem is developing in India driven by disease management, prevention and focus on wellness. He says, 'By leveraging disruptive innovations, we are personalizing patient and physician experience, and transforming healthcare access. We are around a close corner from a future where personalized medicines, curative therapies, digital therapeutics and precision intervention through robotic surgery, nanotechnology, 3D printing etc. will redefine healthcare across the globe and in our country.' Healthcare policies focused on digitalization are already in place and the initiatives are beginning to shape the future. There are now over 1 million registered Health IDs, 2900 verified 'digi doctors', a robust Health Facility Registry with over 1400 approved health facilities and a Live NDHM (National Digital Health Mission) application available on Android store. National Policy on Security of Health Systems and Privacy of Personal Health Records developed in accordance with the Personal Data Protection Bill 2019, will enable swift implementation of big data analytics. Mr. Khan suggests, 'Developing innovation hubs, forging strong Public Private Partnerships and driving patientcare digitally are critical pillars for driving Health For All.' Read on...

The Economic Times: Reimagining healthcare in India
Author: Rehan A. Khan

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 29 jan 2021

According to the World Bank's most recent statistics - India's rural population is 66% of the total population (2019); 41% of the total employment is involved in agriculture and farming (2020); Agriculture, forestry, and fishing, value added, contribute 16% to India's GDP (2019). Moreover, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations (fao.org) says , 'Agriculture, with its allied sectors, is the largest source of livelihoods in India. 70% of its rural households still depend primarily on agriculture for their livelihood, with 82% of farmers being small and marginal.' Considering these statistics it is evident that India is substantially dependant on agrarian economy. The sector is looking for transition from an inefficient, unorganized and archaic one, that pushes farmers to commit suicide, to more modern with incorporation of technology and scientific methodologies, to make it profitable and sustainable to the agricultural community. The recent protest of the farmers at such a large scale has also brought the need of handling any transformation in the sector with caution and is to be carried out in a peaceful and democratic way by taking into confidence those who are affected the most with any policy change. The need for consultation and understanding is the only way to bring the needed evolution of the agricultural sector and make it thrive. Digitization and varied use of technology is a step that pushes agricultural economy towards this goal. NITI Aayog's report on Artificial Intelligence (AI) says that to maintain annual growth rate of 8-10%, agriculture must grow at 4% or higher. Technologies that can be applied include those on the farming side like sensor-assisted soil assessment, automated monitoring of free-ranging animals on pastures, targeted control of agricultural machinery, use of high quality seeds, optimum and measured use of fertilizers and pesticides, modern farming equipment and methods, scientific approach to agriculture etc, and there are technologies that need to be applied post-production, from farm to the market, like digitization in farm product management, supply chain management, logistics, Mandis and retail selling etc. This will lead to better produce with agri-waste reduction and efficiency in cost optimization. The three most essential elements that would lay the foundation of digitization in agriculture would include - Internet of Things (IoT); Nanotechnology; Digital Education. There are two most important technology related concepts in farming - 'Precision Farming' involves creating new production and management techniques that make intensive and efficient use of data regarding a specific location and crop; 'Smart Farming' or 'Farming 4.0' is the application of information and data technologies for optimising complex farming systems. To implement these concepts at a large scale in India's massive agriculture sector comes up with many challenges that need to be overcome - Digital divide; Lack of farmer literacy; Lack of financial resources particularly in case of small and medium farmers; Interruptions in rural power supply. Even though government and private sector knows the potential of digitization and technological transformation, major challenge is to involve farmers in the process by creating proper awareness and showcasing the benefits of technology-enabled agriculture. Government and private sector have already initiated the various projects in this regard like for example Microsoft has developed an 'AI-Sowing App', in collaboration with International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-arid Tropics (ICRISAT), that sends advisory to the farmers regarding the optimal date of seed-sowing; NITI Aayog has partnered with IBM to develop a crop yield prediction model backed by AI to provide real-time data and communicate the required advisory to farmers; 'Blue River' project has designed and integrated computer vision with machine learning technology that will help cultivators to reduce the use of fertilisers and herbicides by spraying only where and when needed. Government projects in digitization include - Kisan Suvidha, Pusa Krishi, Farm-o-pedia App, Crop Insurance Android App, Agri-Market, M-Kisan Application, Shetkari Masik Android App etc. Read on...

Businessworld: Digitisation In Agriculture: A Necessity For India
Author: Urvi Shrivastav

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 31 dec 2020

Social enterprises have been part of the Indian social sector ecosystem for a long time, albeit not in the theoretically and legally defined framework that exists now. According to the study, 'The State of Social Enterprise in Bangladesh, Ghana, India and Pakistan' (British Council, 2016), led by Emily Darko, Director of Research at Social Enterprise UK (SEUK), there are roughly 2 million social enterprises operating in India. The study based on a survey of 258 social enterprises found a young social enterprise scene with 57% being 5 years old or younger. Moreover, these social enterprises work in many sectors - skills development (53%); education (30%); agriculture/fisheries/dairy (28%); financial services (26%); energy and clean technology (26%). From the surveyed social enterprises, 80% reinvest to further social or environmental goals, and they have supported a total of 150 million beneficiaries over their lifetime. The report found a total of 39 central government policies relevant to social enterprise and entrepreneurship. A notable policy with a specific mention of social enterprises was the 'National Skill and Entrepreneurship Policy' announced on 15 July 2015 by the Ministry of Skills and Entrepreneurship. The policy includes a section on social enterprises that aims to foster social entrepreneurship and grassroots innovation. The research study, 'Social Enterprises in the Indian Context: Conceptualizing through Qualitative Lens' (Journal of Global Entrepreneurship Research, Springer Open, 15 jan 2018) (Authors: Subhanjan Sengupta of Birla Institute of Management Technology, Arunaditya Sahay of Birla Institute of Management Technology), researches the meaning of the 'social enterprise' construct in the Indian context, and develops a conceptual framework that represents the construct. The purpose of this empirical study is to develop orientation needed for aspiring social entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurship researchers to familiarize with 'social enterprise' phenomenon in India. Authors explains, 'India is a country with socio-economic and cultural diversity, and a very high population. The country offers no legal definition for social enterprises. The ecosystem of social entrepreneurship in India is created by different organizations and universities/institutes advocating, promoting, and supporting social enterprises. Multiple stakeholders such as these have formulated their own meaning of social entrepreneurship in India; their work being influenced by the social, economic, and cultural diversity across the geographical length and breadth of the country, and the regulatory frameworks of the state and central governments...The key constructs that emerged to be clustering together to form the concept of social entrepreneurship in the Indian context are social value creation, market orientation, social entrepreneur, and balanced impact.' Recently, an India focused book on social enterpreneurship, 'Social Entrepreneurship in India: Quarter Idealism and a Pound of Pragmatism', is authored by Madhukar Shukla who is a Professor of Strategic Management at XLRI Jamshedpur. The book documents rise of the social innovation movement in India, along with profiles and roadmaps. ON COVID-19 - Prof. Shukla says, 'The pandemic, and the subsequent abrupt lockdown, create an unprecedented humanitarian crisis which has still not ended...In many ways, it was also a watershed event in the civil society and social entrepreneurial space - particularly for many social entrepreneurs, who, with reference to the typology in my book, I would describe as 'Public Goods Providers'. For instance, many of the established social ventures...which were already working in the space of relief and with migrant informal sector workers, spurred up their efforts to meet this challenge. There were also many other innovative initiatives from other ventures. At a smaller and localised level, there were many initiatives taken by individuals, citizen groups, and small organizations such as helping the migrants in their journey back home, providing basic subsistence necessities like rations and sanitary pads to marginalised communities, and so on. Why I used the term 'watershed' is because what I see is that many of these efforts, which started as a response to a crisis, also brought in new talent in the sector, and many are now evolving as viable and sustainable social ventures.' ON ROLE OF ACADEMICS - Prof. Shukla says, 'Academics can and does play a useful role in the social entrepreneurship field by identifying and documenting trends, principles, and models from practice. These can help the entrepreneurs to make more informed decisions.' ON SCALING UP CHALLENGES - Prof. Shukla says, 'When organizations scale-up and try to replicate the model which has succeeded in one place, they have to deal with a new set of problems and challenges. They need to consider and plan for three critical challenges...One, scaling up into other locations also increases the complexity of operations...Secondly, scaling up would also need hiring new talent to manage increasingly complex operations of the venture...Lastly, there is the danger of 'mission drift'.' ON DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY - Prof. Shukla says, 'Over the last decade or so, with the increasing affordability of and access to digital technology, it has become a part of the models that are used by many social entrepreneurs. In my experience, three important ways in which it helps creating social change are Access, Aggregation, and Democratisation.' Read on...

YourStory: From start to scale: Tips for social enterprises from Madhukar Shukla, Author of 'Social Entrepreneurship in India'
Authors: Madanmohan Rao, Suman Singh

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 22 dec 2020

Access and affordability, along with innovation and sound regulatory mechanism and government policies, are the essential components of developed and modern healthcare system. India has to pursue consolidated strategies to become a better healthcare system and leverage its R&D human resources to become a design hub for medical devices with a focus on global markets. Pavan Choudary, Chairman and Director General of Medical Technology Association of India (MTaI), in conversation with Viveka Roychowdhury, Editor of Express Pharma and Express Healthcare, explains his views on India's healthcare sector, medical devices and medtech industry, COVID-19 pandemic and post-pandemic challenges, government policies, investments in the sector and the way forward. EXCERPTS FROM THE INTERVIEW - (1) ON HEALTHCARE SYSTEM: • 'Value-based healthcare will bring together all modalities of care delivery to create a well-coordinated 'continuum of care'. It is important for government to devise incentive systems to work for patients by encouraging companies and healthcare systems to deliver quality and better outcomes.' • 'India can take learning from countries like Philippines and Turkey who have over the time strengthened their health care infrastructure, but this has been done by making a conscious effort to increase their healthcare spend. At 1.29% of GDP spent on healthcare, India needs to considerably increase its healthcare budget to at least four per cent of the total GDP; by doing so, we will have started our journey towards last mile healthcare delivery.' • 'Telemedicine is another avenue that the government can facilitate to improve access to healthcare. The sheer size of India's 1.3 billion demographic means that the applications for telemedicine are immense. Telemedicine will also enable India to address its poor doctor-patient ratio of 0.85 which means barely one physician per 1000 people as compared to four physicians per 1000 people in Europe. A 2019 report by McKinsey Global Institute, 'Digital India: Technology to Transform a Connected Nation', states that India can save up to US$ 10 billion by 2025 if telemedicine services could replace 30 to 40% of in-person consultations.' (2) ON MEDTECH, MEDICAL DEVICES, INVESTMENTS & COVID-19: • 'Instead of implementing price caps on medtech products, the government should adopt a mechanism to rationalise trade margins which will achieve the objective of reducing high MRPs as well as allow medtech industry to continue bringing the latest technology in healthcare to India, increase affordable access to quality care and support skilling and training of health care workers.' • 'India also reduced custom duties on a few essential medical devices used in the treatment of COVID-19, however for the rest of the products it did not lighten the load of the 5% cess ad valorem imposed in April earlier this year. This, coupled with the INR depreciating by almost 7-8% in March 2020 against the EUR and the USD, meant a very significant hit for the medical technology industry where more than 80% of the products are imported.' • 'To be ATMANIRBHAR (self-reliant) in medtech, we should also be able to design in India medical devices for the world by utilising India's rich talent in R&D. India is the third largest medtech R&D employer of the world, next to only US and Germany.' • 'We must also be cognizant of the financial challenges that the pandemic has brought. There are some other aspects which the government needs to closely evaluate and consider to reassure the industry, these aspects include creating policies which provide a level playing field to all players, agnostic of their country of origin and a stable regulatory climate for the industry. Addressing these will move the make in India needle, steadily forward. The global companies hope to be eventually and once again, the main movers of this needle.' ATMANIRBHAR BHARAT is the Prime Minister's vision to make India a self-reliant nation. Read on...

Express Healthcare: To be Atmanirbhar in medtech, we should also be able to design in India medical devices for the world: Pavan Choudary
Author: Viveka Roychowdhury

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 10 sep 2020

According to Wikipedia, Ibn Sina or Avicenna (b.23 aug 980 - d.22 jun 1037), a Persian polymath, is regarded as one of the most significant physicians of Islamic Golden Age. His two most influential works are Al-Qanun fi al-Tibb (The Canon of Medicine), a medical encyclopedia, and Kitab al-Shifa (The Book of Healing), a philosophical and scientific encyclopedia. 'The Canon of Medicine' was a standard medical text at many medieval universities and remained in use as late as 1650. In the article, 'The Vast Influence of Ibn Sina, Pioneer of Medicine' (JSTOR Daily, 29 jan 2020), writer Liz Tracey, explains, 'The sections of the Canon dealing with applied (rather than theoretical) medicine seem modern - cataract surgery, the use of forceps during difficult infant deliveries, and an approach to scientifically testing drugs for efficacy and dosage, in effect creating the framework for clinical trials.' In an article, 'How Ibn Sina's work became a guiding light for scientists facing contagions' (TRTWorld, 15 apr 2020), writer Ufuk Necat Taşçi, searches the work of Avicenna to find out his scientific discoveries regarding contagions. In 'The Canon of Medicine', published in 1025, Ibn Sina argued that a 40-day period of quarantine was essential to weaken the spread of contagious infections. Of the 450 works Ibn Sina is believed to have written, 240 have survived. And out of these at least 40 of his manuscripts are about medicine. Recently a book based on Avicenna's 1000 year-old manuscript, 'Risalah al-Adwiya al-Qalbiyah' (The Treatise on Cardiac Drugs), is published and released at Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College (JNMC), Aligarh Muslim University (AMU). The book 'Pharmacology of Avicennian Cardiac Drugs' is authored by Prof. Syed Ziaur Rahman of the Department of Pharmacology at JNMC, AMU and is a useful resource material for scholars who want to make a thorough assessment of the Avicennian Cardiac drugs that have cardioprotective activity and indirect improvement of blood supply to all body organs. Prof. Rahman says, 'Avicenna had given descriptions on heart and psychological diseases that affect the cardiovascular organs' physiology. Avicenna mentioned simple and compound natural cardiovascular remedies and it is imperative that the modern medicine practitioners go through all these methods and remedies for cardiovascular diseases with modern perspectives.' Prof. M. U. Rabbani, Chairman of the Department of Cardiology at JNMC, says, 'This book is a precious source of hypothesis for further researches on psychosomatic aspects of cardiovascular diseases as well as phytopharmacological studies on cardioactive medicinal plants.' Prof. K. M. Yusuf Amin, a medical pharmacologist and professor at the Department of Ilmul Advia (Unani Pharmacology & Pharmaceutical Sciences) of Ajmal Khan Tibbiya College at AMU, says, 'The author has attempted to correlate the fundamentals of cardiology and psychology, integrated by the Ruh (Pneuma) as described by Avicenna in the light of present research.' Read on...

Aligarh Muslim University News: Modern take on Avicennian manuscript in new book
Author: Omar Saleem Peerzada

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 29 jul 2020

India has developed expertise in chip design and microchip design related services and its R&D centers are world renowned. On the contrary, it lacks sunbstantially in chip fabrication and manufacturing facilities. Over the years not much investment has been made in this regard and India lags far behind countries like Taiwan, China and the US. Experts suggest that building chip fabrication facilities and ecosystem require huge investments and takes time along with conducive government policies. Moreover, manufacturing is expensive unless it can achieve economies of scale like in Taiwan and China. To reduce its dependancy on China and finding an opportunity to become an alternative destination for chip manufacturing, Indian policy makers and businesses have to consider long-term strategic planning in this regard. Aditya Narayan Mishra, Director and CEO of CIEL HR Services, says, 'Chip design and manufacturing is a highly capital-intensive business...We need access to capital, favourable policies and investment on the ecosystem from design to application engineering...The government has to decide if this is an industry which needs to be promoted.' Dr. Satya Gupta, Chairman of India Electronics and Semiconductor Association (IESA), says, 'A fabrication facility for chip manufacturing requires on an average US$ 8-to-10 billion of investment...Most chip designers outsource to third-party manufacturers who have the expertise and scale in developing such chips.' Ganesh Suryanarayanan, CTO of Myelin Foundry Pvt. Ltd., says, 'Companies in China and Taiwan have had a lot of government support over the last couple of decades to foster such an ecosystem, which consists of materials, machinery, manufacturing, testing, packaging, and sales...Indian government tried one initiative called the Hindustan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (HSMC)...which did not take off-based on the need for heavy initial investment and delayed return on investment.' Read on...

THE WEEK: Why India is good at designing chips, but not at manufacturing them
Author: Abhinav Singh

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 22 jul 2020

A crisis like COVID-19 pandemic brings challenges and causes disruptions that in turn creates new opportunities and invigorates entrepreneurial activity to search for innovative solutions. Startup companies are a normal progression of this entrepreneurial activity. In the context of India, studies have shown that around 90% of startups fail within the first five years because of various reasons including lack of innovation and guidance. Now Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IIT-K) is partnering with Entrepreneurship First (EF) of UK to support and fund entrepreneurial talent and early-stage startups. EF will help to build co-founder teams, offer mentorship, strengthen the business model and provide pre-seed investment to the startups. IIT-K will provide the business incubator facility as the next step to build a network of expert advisors, access to prototyping facilities and grants. Amitabha Bandyopadhyay, faculty head of IIT-K Incubator, says, 'While India has a huge pool of talented tech-enthusiasts, they are not necessarily knowledgeable about setting up and expanding an enterprise. Industry partnerships can help boost the success rate of early-stage startups in India...The post-COVID-19 world will have a different way of life and technology will become an extension of every process, transaction or interaction.' Esha Tiwary, general manager of Entrepreneur First (India), says, 'Most often, successful enterprises are formed during the times of crisis...The concept of investing in individuals before they have a registered company is in its nascent stage in India as well as across the world. To improve India's startup ecosystem, it is crucial to invest in individuals with unique ideas and early-stage startups.' Read on...

The Times of India: Covid-19 to boost tech entrepreneurship in India
Author: Sheetal Banchariya

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 14 may 2020

Covid-19 pandemic is affecting all aspects of human life, and even when the immediate severity of the crisis has subsided and nations start to ease lockdowns in hope of bringing their economies and people's lives back on track, the world will continue to see the after effects for a long time ahead. Experts share their views on pandemic's impact on future of design and how it will change the built environment in healthcare, hospitality, residential living etc - (1) Impact on Healthcare (Rahul Kadri, partner and principal Architect, IMK Architects): New generation of hospitals will be designed; Integrate tech-driven solutions; Better natural ventilation to minimize cross-infection; Segregation of general, semi-sterile and sterile zones; Net zero designing; Demarcation and separation of service and maintenance areas from the procedure areas; Rapid time to build and construct; Medical hub model. (2) Impact on Hospitality (Amit Khanna, design principal, Amit Khanna Design Associates): Screenings will become a part of entrance design in hotels; Use of automation to avoid human contact; Automated sliding or revolving glass door; Rethink on facilities like swimming pools, salons and health clubs; Top-end hospitality projects may prefer to redesign their communal facilities. (3) Impact on Urban Design (Mitu Mathur, director, GPM Architects and Planners): Towns need to be designed for all classes of society; Ensure housing-for-all; Promote affordable housing; Special design focus on migrant workers. (4) Using AI for Construction (Anand Sharma, founder partner, Design Forum International): Architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry will have more use of artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing etc; Building Information Management (BIM) Development promotes workers of industry to be collaborative, connected and transparent; Future of construction will innovate like utilising the Internet of Things and leveraging 3D imaging to replicate the experience of a site. (5) Impact on Housing Design (L. C. Mittal, director, Motia Group): Adoption of advanced technology in elevators and entrances, like voice-enabled elevators and key card entry systems respectively, to eliminate human contact; Sanitisation of common areas would become a mandatory exercise for societies; Daily needs shopping store will become an integral part of housing societies. Read on...

India Today: A post-pandemic design revolution
Author: Ridhi Kale

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 20 apr 2020

Fake news at the time of crisis like the current COVID-19 pandemic is a double whammy that further adds to confusion and creates panic. Propagation of false and misleading information through social media and other tech platforms has multiplied. It not only exploits the emotional vulnerability of common public but also impedes and hinders the efforts to collectively and scientifically fight the pandemic and minimize its socio-ecomic effects. But an evergrowing group of Indian scientists have come together to create 'Indian Scientists' Response to COVID-19 (ISRC)' that is working to fight false information. It is a pan-India voluntary effort with more than 400 scientists across more than twenty scientific and research institutes in the country. It counts among its volunteers astrophysicists, animal behaviourists, computer scientists, mathematicians, engineers, chemists, biologist, doctors, social scientists and others. The purpose of the group includes analysing all available data and support national, state and local governments for evidence-based action, in addition to verifying and communicating information. There are sub-groups working on - mathematical modelling of disease spread and transmission, outreach and communication in simple terms for the public and media, translating basic resources in local languages, developing hardware solutions and apps. Aniket Sule, a science communicator with the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education in Mumbai, says, 'Since science communication is my area of interest, I volunteered to be a part of this effort. In this crisis, everyone has a role and each person can contribute by doing what they know best.' R. Ramanujam, a theoretical computer science professor at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMSc) in Chennai, says, 'While people in the medical and healthcare community are doing their work, we thought, what about others like us, what can we do?' Rahul Siddharthan, a computational biologist at the IMSc, says, 'How an individual gets infected is definitely a biology problem, but what we are looking at is how an infection spreads in society, and we are dealing with large numbers of people. Physicists have a lot of experience in dealing with dynamical systems modelling, differential equations, and computer/data scientists can analyse the data that is available. It has to be an interdisciplinary approach and we need people to be talking and on the same platform.' T. V. Venkateshwaran, senior scientist at Vigyan Prasar, says, 'In a situation like this it's important to do two things, one is communicating to people that they need to be alert, not alarmed...The other thing is falling for wrongly circulated remedies and rumours. We need to counter all the misinformation going around so people feel at ease.' The group is putting together links, videos and articles in Indian languages and also working on translating others. Anindita Bhadra, an animal behaviourist and associate professor at IISER Kolkata, says, 'I am not an expert in virology or epidemiology or modelling, but I am interested in science communication so I thought I should help with that as well as translation. You need people who can transmit all this to the public.' Read on...

World Economic Forum: How 300 Indian scientists are fighting fake news about COVID-19
Author: Bhavya Dore

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 19 apr 2020

Experts say that technology companies are now more inclined to hire people with background in humanities as they have better understanding of customer needs and have capacity to help design more relevant software. Scott Hartley, author and venture capitalist, in his book 'The Fuzzie and the Techie: Why the Liberal Arts', says, 'The best engineers are those who are also deeply versed in and passionate about philosophy, psychology, and ethics. They play music, are refined in culture and have a deep sense of their own values.' Kalika Bali, principal researcher at the Microsoft Research Lab in Bengaluru (India), says, 'As technology becomes more pervasive and human-centric, professionals with expertise in social sciences are needed to understand how it is best used by individuals and societies.' Here are the few of the many examples that highlight this trend globally - Bess Yount of Facebook (communications and sociology); Stewart Butterfield of Slack (philosophy); Jack Ma of Alibaba (english); Brian Chesky of Airbnb (fine arts); Susan Wojcicki of YouTube (history and literature). Sean O'Brien, vice president of education and training at SAS, says, 'Many liberal arts degrees require extensive research and writing. And good writing requires precise expression of thinking. So liberal arts majors often have the most training in how to think and how to communicate their ideas in spoken and written form. Few engineers get that kind of writing experience. In an age of 280 characters, IM and Slack, clear communication skills have atrophied. The technology values speed and compression over precision and completeness. This communications scarcity is a gap that liberal arts graduates are ideally fit for.' Ashok Srivastava, chief data officer of Intuit, emphasises the idea of breaking up a problem into smaller pieces and tracing the history behind the decisions made. He also says, 'I have found that teams that have varied backgrounds function better as they have a better understanding of the customer needs.' Richard Lobo, head of human resources at Infosys, says, 'By building a new hybrid talent pool, which draws on broad-based liberal arts foundations and promotes cognitive diversity, we can leverage the liberal arts and technological know-how required to create complex and advanced technology solutions.' Kaushik Banerjee, business head at staffing firm TeamLease, says, 'An education in liberal arts is broad and diverse, rather than narrow and specialised. Most of the successful UI/UX designers are from creative arts.' An average tech company hires about 20% from liberal arts, and a combination of liberal arts with STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) subjects or an MBA is a huge plus. Kamal Karanth, CEO of staffing company Xpheno, says that between the two ends of software industry (tech end and user's end), there's now a critical layer of non-tech talent and skillsets that operates close to both ends. Read on...

The Times of India: Why tech companies are hiring people with humanities degrees
Authors: Avik Das, Arpita Misra, Swati Rathor

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 19 jan 2020

Father of Artificial Intelligence, John McCarthy, said, 'Artificial intelligence is the science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent computer programs.' AI is a growing field of technology globally and India is also making strides to stay ahead in this space. According to the 2018 PwC report, 'Artificial Intelligence in India - Hype or Reality' (Authors: Sudipta Ghosh, Indranil Mitra, Prasun Nandy, Udayan Bhattacharya, Deboprio Dutta, Shruti Kakar), 71% of respondents (business decision-makers and employees) believe AI will help humans solve complex problems & live richer lives; 67% would prefer AI assistance over humans as office assistants; 43% agree that the government will apply AI to improve global climate, health and education; 60% would prefer AI assistance over humans as financial advisors or tax preparers; 72% believe that AI can provide a better experience of one-to-one personalisation. The report also finds out that nearly all (93%) have major concerns regarding data privacy. Indian researchers are also influencing and contributing to the development of AI field. Here is the list of top AI researchers and influencers in India - (1) Sankar Kumar Pal (Scientist and former Director of the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata): Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning; Image/Video Processing; Data Mining; Soft Computing; Granular Computing; Fuzzy-Rough Computing; Neural Nets; Web Intelligence; Bioinformatics; Social Networks; Machine-Mind Development. (2) Krothapalli Sreenivasa Rao (Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur): Signal Processing and Machine Learning in Speech Applications; Robust speech interfaces in the context of Indian languages; Signal processing and machine learning paradigms for automatic processing of Hindustani music; Big Data Analytics for speech, music, audio and video document representation, indexing, and retrieval tasks. (3) Bidyut Baran Chaudhari (Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata): Digital Document Processing; Optical Character Recognition; Natural Language Processing; Statistical and Fuzzy Pattern Recognition; Computer Vision and Image Processing; Cognitive Science. (4) Pushpak Bhattacharyya (IIT Bombay): Natural Language Processing; Machine Learning; AI. (5) Sriparna Saha (IIT Patna): Text Mining Pattern Recognition; Natural Language Processing; Multi-Objective Optimization; Biomedical Information Extraction. (6) Sunita Sarawagi (IIT Bombay): Neural Models for Sequence Prediction with applications to dialog generation, translation, grammar correction, and time series forecasting; Domain Adaptation and Domain Generalization; Continuous, Reusable, Human intervenable and Modular Learning; Machine Learning models for reliable aggregate statistics over predicted variables; Graphical models for selective node labeling in social networks; Structure extraction from tables and lists on the web; Inference algorithms for graphical models in information extraction task. (7) Anush Sankaran (IBM Research): Applications of Machine Learning and Deep Learning with applications to computer vision and natural language processing. (8) Anuprriya Gogna (GE Healthcare): Optimization algorithms and learning architectures for various applications in the domain of healthcare, recommendation engines, and signal/image processing; Sparse Recovery; Matrix Factorization/Completion; Deep Learning; Recommender System Design. (9) Balaraman Ravindran (IIT Madras): Machine Learning; Spatio-temporal Abstractions in Reinforcement Learning; Social Network Analysis; Data Mining. (10) VP Subramanyam Rallabandi (National Brain Research Centre, Gurgaon): Mathematical Modeling; Neuroimaging; Machine Learning; Computational Biology; Knowledge-based Image Retrieval; Artificial Neural Networks; Fuzzy Logic; Soft Computing. Read on...

Analytics Insight: THE 10 REMARKABLE AI INFLUENCERS AND RESEARCHERS IN INDIA
Author: Smriti Srivastava

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 17 jan 2020

Team of researchers led by Prof. Saptarshi Ghosh of Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur have developed an AI-based (Artificial Intelligence) system to automate reading of legal case judgements. Although in countries like US, Britain, Japan, Singapore and Australia, AI is utlilized for legal research, review documents during litigation and conduct due diligence, analyse contracts to determine whether they meet pre-determined criteria, and to even predict case outcomes. But this research can become pioneering in Indian context as AI use in legal field is just taking off. India follows a Common Law system that prioritises the doctrine of legal precedent over statutory law, and where legal documents are often written in an unstructured way. The paper, 'Identification of Rhetorical Roles of Sentences in Indian Legal Judgments', based on the research received 'Best Paper Award' at JURIX 2019, the International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems, at Madrid. Other researchers in the project are - Paheli Bhattacharya (IIT Kharagpur), Kripabandhu Ghosh (Tata Research Development and Design Centre, Pune), Shounak Paul (IIT Kharagpur), Adam Wyner (Swansea University, UK). Prof. Ghosh says, 'Taking 50 judgments from the Supreme Court of India, we segmented these by first labelling sentences...then performing extensive analysis of the human-assigned labels and developing a high quality gold standard corpus to train the machine to carry out the task. We are trying to build an AI system which can give guidance to the common man about which laws are being violated in a given situation, or if there is merit in taking a particular situation to court, so that legal costs can be minimised.' The neural methods used by the team enables automatic learning of the features, given sufficient amount of data, and can be used across multiple legal domains. This method can help in several downstream tasks such as summarization of legal judgments, legal search, case law analysis, and other functions. Read on...

Outlook: IIT Kharagpur develops AI-powered tech for reading legal cases
Author: NA

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 08 oct 2019

Agriculture is one of the critical sectors of Indian economy as it employs about 50% of the working population and contributes 15-16% to GDP. Even though government policies are designed to make the sector benficial for those engaged in it, but the media is full of news describing the ailing condition of India's agriculture at the ground. Can entrepreneurs, full of ideas and working zeal, coupled with effectiveness and efficiencies of technology, become harbingers of change and transform the condition of not only the farms and their produce, but also the farmers and all other hard working people employed in the sector. Abhishek Agarwal, co-founder of TechnifyBiz, suggests that agri-tech entrepreneurs can tackle some of the problems of Indian agriculture and help grow the sector. He cites following issues - Depleted ground-water, low-quality seeds and ravaged soil quality due to over-use of chemicals; Lack of market linkage creates a considerable gap in the industry; Inadeguate transporation and storage; Scarcity of credit and high lending rates. He suggests that agri-startups can assist in standardization of agri-market practices through technology, aggregation and organized marketing. According to NASSCOM, sector had secured a funding of US$ 73 million in 2018. The agri-tech industry has been able to raise financing of over US$ 248 million till June 2019. Accenture says that digital agricultural services market is set to touch US$ 4.55 billion by 2020. Mr. Agarwal explains, 'Market linkage, farmer markets in the digital space, superior database management, digital agriculture and micro-financing are gaining in popularity, making the sector conducive to attract funding.' Agri-startups are encompassing both the production and after-harvest side of agriculture. He says, 'The various areas of improvement, like the reduction of input costs, better nutritional value in food crops, better quality seeds that drive crop production and improving soil quality. Using technology to predict weather patterns, irrigation cycles and soil quality are the focus of some startups. This enhances the quality of production...The use of smart technology and superior logistics infrastructure has created a new eco-system of agri-marketing. New-age startups are leveraging technology to tap the retail as well as B2B marketplaces through digital agronomy startups.' Read on...

India Today: Agri-tech: The emerging field for an Indian entrepreneur to grab more opportunities
Author: Abhishek Agarwal

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 22 sep 2019

Project-based work is resulting in the rise of flexi or contractual staff hiring in India, partcularly in the IT-ITeS (Information Technology and IT-enabled Services) industry. According to the Talent Radar 2019 report by Infosys, the top 5 technical skills in demand for digital projects are - analytics, user experience, automation, IT architecture and artificial intelligence. Indian Staffing Federation (ISF) says that IT-ITeS sector tops flexi-staff adoption with around 12 out of every 100 employees being contractual or flexi staff and, this workforces is expected to grow to 720000 by 2021 from 500000 in 2018. Pankaj Khanna, VP of talent acquisition at Mindtree, says, 'The first advantage of flexi hiring is that demand can be fulfilled faster...Secondly, for requirements that are short term, it makes business sense to leverage the subcontracting/flexi hiring models without increasing the headcount.' U. B. Pravin Rao, COO of Infosys, says, 'As enterprises progress in their digital journeys, the winners will be those who utilize multiple hiring sources and reskill workers in a culture of lifelong learning.' According to Broadband India Forum, the IoT and AI-based applications will create over 2.8 million jobs in rural India over the next 8-10 years generating Rs. 60000 crore every year. Rituparna Chakraborty, President of ISF and co-founder of Teamlease, says, 'With emerging technologies such as AI and big data, new skill requirements are in demand. Flexi staffing is a solution to find out the right skills, based on project requirement.' Sivaram S., engagement manager at Zinnov, says, 'The focus on flexi-staffing is to quickly deploy talent for new-age areas such as AI, Machine Learning, and IoT, and drive velocity/agility in transformative engagements. It can be viewed as a means to augment existing digital engineering workforce in an organization, as there are challenges associated with hiring for specific skillsets.' Siddharth Pai, IT consultant and venture capitalist, says, 'The reason for the proliferation of project-based work, as opposed to long-term contracts is the global slowdown that is leading companies to hire for one-off projects so that they can easily let people off when there is no requirement.' According to Nomura Research, subcontractors are typically 15-20% (more) expensive than employees and are a margin headwind going into FY20F. Apurva Prasad, Research Analyst (IT) at HDFC Securities, says, 'Increase in sub-contracting resulted from a combination of surge in demand and staffing challenges on account of tech supply crunch.' Read on...

Livemint: Increase in flexi-staff hiring may eat into IT industry's margins
Author: Ayushman Baruah

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 05 sep 2019

Healthcare technologies enhance efficiencies, improve access and create informed patient-doctor relationships. Around the globe there is fast-paced adoption of these technologies. India too is undergoing health-tech transformation. According to a 15-country Future Health Index (FHI) 2019 report by Royal Philips, about 76% of healthcare professionals in India are already using digital health records (DHRs) in their practice. Moreover, 80% of healthcare professionals have shared patient information with other professionals inside their health facility, which is equal to 15-country average. India also meets the 15-country average when it comes to the usage of artificial intelligence (AI) within healthcare at 46%. Report also finds that a majority of Indian healthcare professionals who use DHRs in their practice report that DHRs have a positive impact on quality of care (90%), healthcare professional satisfaction (89%), and patient outcomes (70%) when compared to the 15-country average of 69%, 64% and 59% respectively. Rohit Sathe, President of Philips Healthcare (Indian Subcontinent), says, 'The report confirms that digital health technology is a pivotal pillar in delivering value-based care across the healthcare continuum in India. Tools including telehealth and adaptive intelligence solutions can help lower the barriers between hospitals and patients, thereby improving access to care and enhancing overall patient satisfaction, particularity in tier II & III cities in India.' Read on...

Livemint: Digital Health Technology can revolutionise healthcare in India: Report
Author: Nandita Mathur

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 27 aug 2019

Researchers from IIT-Madras (Tamil Nadu, India), Prof. Asokan Thondiyath and research scholar Nagamanikandan Govindan, have designed and developed a multimodal robotic system, termed as 'Grasp Man', that has good grasping, manipulation and locomotion abilities. Their research, 'Design and Analysis of a Multimodal Grasper Having Shape Conformity and Within-Hand Manipulation With Adjustable Contact Forces', is recently published in ASME Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics. The robot is fitted with a pair of graspers that provide morphological adaptation, enabling it to conform to the geometry of the object being grasped, and allowing it to hold objects securely and manipulate them much like the human hand. The two graspers are equipped with a robotic platform that provides behavioural adaptation. The robot will have various industrial applications such as pipe inspection, search-and-rescue operations, and others that involve climbing, holding, and assembling. Prof. Asokan says, 'The motivation behind this research is to realise a robot with a minimalistic design that can overcome the need for task-specific robots that are capable of navigating and manipulating across different environments without increasing the system complexity.' Read on...

YourStory: IIT-Madras researchers design robot with graspers that function like the human hand
Author: Teja Lele Desai

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 18 aug 2019

Startups are enabling tech-based transformation of India's retail sector through Android-based smart PoS (Point of Sale) devices. The promise of these devices goes beyond payments and makes supply chain more efficient with data analytics and potential credit scoring. Vicky Bindra, CEO of Pine Labs, says, 'Retailers and merchants from diverse sectors such as electronics, food and beverage, fashion, pharmacy, telecom, and airlines are adopting the new smart PoS machines to improve their efficiencies and enhance consumer's shopping experience.' Praveen Hari of industry association iSPIRT says, 'Today a smart PoS device is not just accepting cards, but they can also provide UPI (unified payments interface) pull transactions, QR codes (displayed on screens), NFC (near-field communication) transactions, wallet transactions, or basically, any payment mode that is available in India.' Ashish Jhina, co-founder of Jumbotail, says, 'Today smart PoS machines can do four key business functions: payment, billing, inventory management, wholesale procurement.' Smart PoS data is also valuable for credit scoring. Mr. Hari explains, 'The GST data itself is good enough for a lender to make a lending decision and the shopkeeper or his FMCG distributor now has an incentive to report all the transactions. The transaction data itself can help a lender make a lending decision.' Manish Patel, CEO of Mswipe, says, 'We have engineered a credit model where when our merchants can borrow money (to make wholesale purchases) from any of our NBFC partners, based on data we provide...In terms of recollection, the merchant can opt to pay back in daily and monthly instalments.' Read on...

Livemint: Wireless, smart PoS devices revamping India's retail landscape
Author: Salman S. H.

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 05 aug 2019

People with the twin passion of design and development of new products can transform into design entrepreneurs. They are able to control both the design and business processes. Vijayant Bansal, founder of World University of Design (India), explains what it takes to be a design entrepreneur and explores the shifting landscape of design entrepreneurship in India. He says, 'We are in the midst of a design revolution and increasingly design is gaining a lot of focus...But it's not easy starting from ground zero and working yourself towards achieving credibility, recognition and last but not the least, generating demand. This involves having to create a balance between what we want to create with what the customer wants; what is possible technically and how much of a resource pull will it involve.' Contemporary design entrepreneurship includes new product development, restoring crafts, innovating existing products and providing design services based on new & emerging technologies. Explaining the design revolution, he says, 'Designing is undergoing a metamorphosis, aided by new technologies and digital transformation of today. New and disruptive technologies like Artificial intelligence, IoT, Machine learning etc., are the biggest enablers, disrupting traditional processes and systems, enabling out of the box thinking and new ideas, which in turn reshape the entire user experience.' Universities can play an important role in guiding and mentoring students to pursue design entrepreneurship. Industry experts can also play a role in this and enable students to participate in hands-on training. Virtual products have also expanded the scope of design entrepreneurship with designers engaged in designing and developing games and apps. Design entrepreneurship is the new career paradigm. Mr. Bansal suggests, 'Today the scenario has undergone a sea change, with almost every industry, be it apparel, automobiles, film making, animation, product design or gaming, with design playing an intrinsic role in the entire process from an idea to the end product. It's worth the challenge if financial security and stability are not foremost on your mind and you have the patience and inclination to see through the entire process of making the design-centric idea into a successful venture.' Read on...

Entrepreneur: The Rise of the Contemporary Indian Design Entrepreneur
Author: Vijayant Bansal

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 16 may 2019

The research, 'Development of a pathological healthcare system for early detection of neurological gait abnormalities', by Prof. Anup Nandy of National Institute of Technology (Rourkela, India) in collaboration with Prof. Gentiane Venture of Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology (TUAT, Japan), aims to address human aging utilizing low-cost software solutions to early diagnose neurological gait abnormalities. Anomalies and abnormalities found in a person's walking style are termed as gait abnormalities. As human beings have different anatomical structure depending on age, gender and body-weight, they are prone to various gait abnormalities. Due to lack of awareness of such diseases and problems, the abnormalities get unnoticed at the initial stages. Moreover, the assessment becomes a little less credible without proper software and automation that uses data analysis. Scientists applied high level Machine Learning Algorithms for detection and periodic assessment of abnormalities. The software with the techniques of deep learning detects the various gait (walking) patterns, assess the collected data on specific parameters and the identified data is used in the detection or observing patient's improvements in various abnormalities like Cerebral Palsy, Parkinson's Disease and Equinus gait. Prof. Nandy says, 'As computer science enthusiasts and researchers, it's our responsibility to serve society and contribute to the betterment. This noble approach bridges the gap between Computer Science and Medical Science and is instrumental in the detection and assessment of various diseases. The low-cost software becomes affordable to everyone and can be beneficial to many in general.' Read on...

Monday Morning - NIT Rourkela: IMPACTING LIVES AND BEYOND: PROF. ANUP NANDY'S RESEARCH ON GAIT ABNORMALITIES
Author: Animesh Pradhan

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 09 apr 2019

According to the recent report 'India Digital Ad-fraud Market 2018' by techARC, the total size of digital ad-fraud in India stood at staggering US$ 1.63 Billion, which is 8.7% of the global size. The report projects 23% increase in digital ad-fraud in 2019. Digital Commerce contributed more than half 51% of the total ad-fraud in India. While, Leisure & Travel (26%), Entertainment & Gaming (13%), Banking & Finance (8%), Healthcare & Pharma (1%) and Others (1%). Although, App Fraud contributes to over 85% of the total digital ad-fraud, the organizations should not ignore the web platforms. Web platforms are more susceptible to frauds as in several organizations the digital teams are primarily focusing on the app, leaving the web space vulnerable. As video is increasingly becoming the preferred medium of content, it is also attracting fraudsters to exploit this advertising channel. The report finds that businesses who have an ad-fraud solution in place are better equipped to have higher levels of customer engagements. Faisal Kawoosa, Founder & Chief Analyst at techARC, says, 'Digital ad-fraud is getting increased attention from the C-level leadership of evolved organisations, where it is no longer an agenda of a CDO or CMO. The impact of digital ad-fraud now goes beyond diminishing the returns on marketing spends and can jeopardize the entire digital transformation journey hampering Brand Equity, Relevance and Positioning among other ramifications.' Read on...

techARC: At $1.63 Billion, India's share in global digital ad-fraud stood at 8.7% in 2018
Author: NA

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 07 apr 2019

Biotechnology is expected to be the next big thing for the Indian economy, just like the IT industry has been, explains Amit Kapoor, President & CEO of India Council on Competitiveness and Honorary Chairman at Institute for Competitiveness. According to him, '...biotechnology industry seemed poised to take over the mantle. In the span of a decade beginning in 2007, the industry has grown exponentially in size from about US$ 2 billion to over US$ 11 billion in terms of revenue. By 2025, it is targeted to touch US$ 100 billion.' In the past, both Green Revolution (agricultural transformation) and White Revolution (dairy sector transformation) became successful because of the contributions from biotechnology. At present India's rising competitiveness in pharmaceuticals is also the result of biotechnological advancements and research. Moreover, energy needs of rural areas are also met by biomass fuel, produced through application of biotechnology. Mr. Kapoor explains evolution of biotechnology in India, 'As early as 1986, Rajiv Gandhi, recognising the potential of biotechnology in the country's development, set up the Department of Biotechnology...Department of Biotechnology has set up 17 Centres of Excellence at higher education institutions across the country and has supported the establishment of eight biotechnology parks across different cities...Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC) in 2012, which has successfully supported 316 start-ups in its six years of existence...As of 2016, India had over a thousand biotechnology start-ups.' According to Mr. Kapoor, the sector faces many challenges and they need to be addressed effectively and promptly - (1) India's research and development expenditure is quite low at 0.67% of GDP, not only compared to mature biotechnology economies such as Japan and the US (around 3%) but also in comparison to emerging economies like China (around 2%). (2) Specific to the biotech pharmaceutical sector, there are a few India-specific challenges with the country's IP regime. There are two main areas of contention for the industry in India's approach to intellectual property. The first issue lies in Section 3(d) of the Patents (Amendment) Act, 2005, which sets a higher standard for patentability than mandated by TRIPS. The industry argues that India's stricter standards for patents discourages innovation and dampens foreign investment. The second issue is that of compulsory licensing, which gives the government power to suspend a patent in times of health emergencies. Although India has used this option only once, the industry feels that such regulations keep investors clear of Indian markets. (3) Another challenge lies in the risk involved in the Valley of Death, that is, the risk of failure in the transition of innovative products and services from discovery to marketisation. Most of the early research funding, often provided by universities or the government, runs out before the marketisation phase, the funding for which is mostly provided by venture capitalists. It becomes difficult to attract further capital between these two stages because a developing technology may seem promising, but it is often too early to validate its commercial potential. This gap has a huge impact in commercialisation of innovative ideas. Read on...

The Economic Times: Why biotechnology can be Indian economy's next success story
Author: Amit Kapoor

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 06 apr 2019

India is a diverse economy with a large population size. The availability of correct data is a challenge. But there are reliable and free sources that contain datasets and data visualisations of the Indian economic scenario that can be utilized by data scientists - (1) NITI Aayog (Salary Expenditure): It is part of data.gov.in website. An expense or expenditure made to the employees for their work in terms of salary is known as Salary expenditure. It is an outflow of money from the Government for different services. The Data contains Actual, Pre-actual and Budgeted Expenditure for Salary expenditure, total expenditure, Revenue Expenditure, Salary expenditure as percentage of revenue expenditure (net of IP & Pension) and Salary expenditure as percentage of total expenditure of states & union territories. (2) Open Budgets India (openbudgetsindia.org): The portal provides budget information of different tiers of government in India (Union Budget, State Budgets, and Budgets of several Municipal Corporations across the country) in accessible and open (non-proprietary) formats. The four major features of the portal, as of now (in the beta version), are - Budget documents (i.e. the original PDF documents); Machine Readable Datasets (for those budget documents, where it was technically feasible to prepare machine readable datasets); Visualizations (or infographics) generated from the machine readable datasets; and Budget basics (for greater familiarity with budget concepts, processes and documents). The portal includes twelve broad sectors that represent Union and State Budget expenditure on both Economic Services and Social Services. It has 10.6k datasets from 509 budget sources. (3) Ministry Of Statistics (Indian Income Tax): It is part of data.gov.in website. The data refers to details on receipts under income tax from 2000-01 to 2011-12 in head of account such as Minor Head-Other Receipts, Minor Head-Surcharge, Penalties, Interest Recoveries, Primary Education Cess, Secondary and Higher Education Cess. (4) NITI Aayog (Manufacturing GDP): It is part of data.gov.in website. The data refers to information on contribution to manufacturing GDP in the 11th Five-Year Plan and employment in 2009-10 in different segments of the manufacturing sector. It projects employment in 2016-17 and 2024-25 in different segments of manufacturing in two different scenarios. (5) Ministry Of Finance (Statistical Appendix): It is part of the Economic Survey. Website is mofapp.nic.in:8080/economicsurvey. Includes Economic Survey 2017-18 and previous ones. The Statistical Appendix has following sections along with their sub-sections - National Income and Production; Budgetary Transactions; Employment; Monetary Trends; Prices; Balance of Payments; Foreign Trade; External Assistance; Human Development Indicators. Data files can be downloaded in Excel and PDF formats. (6) Ministry of Finance - Department Of Economic Affairs (Trade Balance Of India): It is part of data.gov.in website. The trade balance is the difference between the monetary value of exports and imports of output in an economy. It is one of the most important macroeconomic parameter. Data contains Exports, Imports and Trade Balance of India (in Rs Crore and US$ Million) from 1949-50. It also contains the percentage rate of change of exports as well as imports with respect to the previous year. The data has been provided by Department of Economic Affairs. (7) The World Bank (data.worldbank.org/country/india): Includes time series data on variety of topics like GDP, Population, School Enrolment, CO2 Emissions etc. DataBank is an analysis and visualization tool. (8) IMF DATA (data.imf.org): It provides access to macroeconomic and financial data. Asia and Pacific Regional Economic Outlook (APDREO) provides information on recent economic developments and prospects for countries in Asia and Pacific. India is included in this region. Read on...

Analytics India Magazine: 8 Free Resources On Indian Economy You Can Use For Your Data Science Projects
Author: Ram Sagar

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 18 mar 2019

According to the recent NASSCOM CEO survey of 100 participants from IT and ITES sector, majority agreed that 2019 will have large digital deals and to gain part of this they consider making investments into products and platforms and intend to co-innovate with start-ups to build digital capabilities as a priority. In 2018, 40 global capability centers were opened in India and the number of digitally skilled workers has increased to 6 lakh. Industry leaders discussed the emergence of India as a preferred hub of new age innovation in the digital era at NASSCOM's Technology and Leadership Forum. Whether it is creation, storage or analytics, data is the big thing along with artifical intelligence or machine learning. Nivruti Rai, Country Head of Intel India, says, 'The two most important technologies which are critical from Intel's perspective are artificial technology and 5G transmission technology.' Sashikumar Sreedharan, Managing Director of Microsoft India, says, 'The fundamentals of technology, like services innovation and supportability in an automatic and self sustainable manner over the full lifecycle are some of the areas where innovation is happening at Microsoft.' Chetan Garga, Managing Director and Country Head of All State Insurance India, says, 'Business is driving innovation but also technology is driving businesses to do things differently, it's a two-way flow.' Innovation is critical and most business leaders agree that meeting the expectations of customers in the real world and understanding their needs is where the convergence lies. India with 1 billion population, large data size along with its complexity can become a test lab for the world. Pankaj Phatarphod, Managing Director & Country Head of Services at Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), says, 'If it works in India It can work anywhere...I wish we had more applied research and smarter talent.' Read on...

Business Today: India emerges as a preferred hub of new-age innovation
Author: Rukmini Rao

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 08 jan 2019

According to the 'Global Highly-Cited Researchers 2018 List' by Clarivate Analytics, India has only 10 researchers among the world's 4000 most influential researchers. Even though India has many globally renowned institutions, but it lacks breakthrough research output. Top three countries in the list are - US (2639), UK (546), China (482). Prof. CNR Rao, world renowned chemist from Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Sciences and named in the list, says, 'About 15 years ago, China and India were at the same level, but China today contributes to 15-16% of the science output in the world, while we currently contribute only 4%.' Prof. Dinesh Mohan, environmental science academic at JNU and included in the list, says, 'Areas such as climate change, water and energy are areas where research is more relevant nowadays. Where you publish your work is also important for impact.' Dr. Avnish Agarwal, also named in the list, says, 'We need to improve our research ecosystem...There is a lack of focus on quality research in Indian academia. If teachers do not do high-quality research, they will not be updated with new developments.' Others in the list are - Dr. Rajeev Varshney (Agriculture researcher at International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics-ICRISAT); Dr. Ashok Pandey (Researcher at the Indian Institute of Toxicology Research); Dr. Alok Mittal and Dr. Jyoti Mittal (Researchers in environmental science, water treatment, green chemistry and chemical kinetics at the Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology); Dr. Rajnish Kumar (Researcher and professor at IIT Madras's Department of Chemical Engineering); Dr. Sanjeeb Sahoo (Researcher in nanotechnology at the Institute of Life Sciences); Dr. Sakthivel Rathinaswamy (Professor and researcher in Applied and Computational Mathematics at Bharathiar University). Read on...

Firstpost: ONLY 10 AMONG THE WORLD'S TOP 4000 INFLUENTIAL RESEARCHERS ARE INDIAN: REPORT
Author: NA

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 31 dec 2018

In India there are central government run healthcare institutions, public state run institutions and private medical colleges that provide modern healthcare education mainly the four year degree MBBS and after that post-graduate degrees of MS and MD. India also have a number of institutions that provide degrees in other healthcare systems like Ayurveda (BAMS), Unani-Greek (BUMS), Homoeopathy (BHMS), Naturopathy etc. Moreover, there are vocational training institutes that provide skills and courses to develop other medical staff like nurses, health assistants etc. There are also corporate run and other private medical colleges and universities and training institutes. India's healthcare facilities are generally concentrated in urban areas while rural areas are generally served by public hospitals and centers. Private clinics are also present in both rural and urban areas. They are generally run by a single doctor or doctor couple and provide basic healthcare. Diagnostic centers are spread all over due to technological advancements and compact and affordable equipments. Healthcare has major disparities between urban and rural areas when it comes to healthcare access. Healthcare has become one of India's largest sectors - both in terms of revenue and employment. The industry comprises public and private hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, pathology and diagnostics, medical devices industry, clinical trials, outsourcing, telemedicine, medical tourism, health insurance and medical equipment. The public sector constitutes primary health centers, central research centers and hospitals, state-run research institutes and hospitals etc. The private sector provides majority of secondary, tertiary and quaternary care institutions with a major concentration in metros, tier-I and tier-II cities. According to National Family Health Survey-3, the private medical sector remains the primary source of health care for 70% of households in urban areas and 63% of households in rural areas. Rise of technology is creating new business models in the healthcare industry. Healthcare through smart phones and fitness trackers is new trend. Information technology is automating and streamlining various healthcare processes. Big data is creating new ways of improving healthcare delivery. Startups in India are promising to provide best healthcare at affordable cost more effectively. Latest healthcare equipment is not only imported but also manufactured in India. Digital technologies are enhancing every aspect of healthcare. Technology solutions are able to modernise current medical practices, reduce costs, eliminate any duplication of tests as well as streamline processes and update medical records in real time. Modern technology has great potential to increase access of healthcare services in rural communities, especially the ones where there is serious shortage of doctors. India has demonstrated since long a commitment to offer comprehensive healthcare to all citizens. This has been reaffirmed in the 12th Five-year Plan, National Health Assurance Mission, and more recently through Ayushman Bharat Program. However, the challenges remain and this goal has not been achieved as of yet. There are two critical components of successful healthcare systems. One is the financial aspects whereby citizens are protected against any eventuality and don't get into penury due to health spending. Second is the provision and delivery of healthcare services. It is imperative to ensure that healthcare infrastructure is sufficiently equipped to provide effective healthcare when needed by its citizens. Technology, public-private partnerships, access and affordability are the critical component in the future of India's healthcare. Better healthcare with policy, financial and physical framework will bring long-term benefits to the nation. Develop effective mechanisms to improve general health, and disease prevention strategies through campaigns, advocacy etc. To make India's citizens more aware about their health, inculcate better sanitization and cleanliness habits will help to improve overall health of India. Prevention before cure becomes the key for the country with the size and demographic profile like India. Health aware citizens, trained, sensitive and caring medical staff, cutting edge technologies and modern infrastructure, are the golden elements for a healthy future of India. Read on...

ilmeps/read: Healthcare in India: An Overview (Part 2)
Author: Mohammad Anas Wahaj

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