Author: City Today News (City today.media)

In association with Good Karma, the virtual session dealt with anxiety and fear amid the COVID-19

New Delhi, 28^th April 2020: Popcorn Furniture, India’s largest educational furniture manufacturing company, held a webinar on combating anxiety and fear amid the COVID-19 pandemic in adolescents, children and adults. The online seminar was part of the company’s month-long campaign to spread awareness about mental wellbeing.

The session was hosted by Ms Deepika Goyal, Founder and Director, Popcorn Furniture, and Dr Ranjan Ghosh, Good Karma Clinic. Dr Ameeta Mulla Wattal, Principal, Springdales School, was the moderator.

Students, principals and faculties of different schools from all over the nation like Springdales School, (Delhi), Springdales School, (Jaipur), DPS (Bhagalpur), Sunbeam School (Varanasi) and Ramjas School (Delhi) participated in the session. There were around 600 registrations and 300 participants including students, principals, parents and faculties. The one-hour webinar was followed by an interactive session.

Ms Deepika Goyal, Founder and Director, Popcorn Furniture, said, “Popcorn Furniture is India’s largest school furniture provider and we have over 5 million students who have been our happy customers. We wanted to serve our customers – children and their parents – in this crisis. The outbreak of COVID-19 has led to high anxiety levels and fear in the minds of adults as well as children. Each person has a different coping mechanism in stressful situations. Some people are more impacted than others. So, we at Popcorn Furniture built a campaign to help parents and children. We partnered with Dr Ranjan Ghosh of the Good Karma clinic, who is an experienced adult and child psychiatrist from America. The campaign has been running for about three weeks with tips about the 5 w’s of wellness. We have had contests, articles and advice on how to combat fear and anxiety in this difficult time to ensure the mental well-being of kids.”

Dr Ranjan Ghosh, MD Psychiatrist, Good Karma, said, “We are in an unprecedented time in history with regard to school and education. I have spent the better half of my career fighting for inclusion for all in education and not homeschooling. This considering the social-emotional well-being of children. Now we must adapt and teach this to teachers who will be giving lessons online and to parents at home.”

Dr Ameeta Mulla Wattal, Principal, Springdales School, said, “Feelings of self-doubt, stress and uncertainty, have overwhelmed adolescents, parents, young and old. Schools and colleges are shut, our places of worship have been closed, and comforting social gatherings, festivals, movie halls, restaurants, family get-togethers, that filled our lives in the weekends and holidays have been declared off-limits.”

For more details, visit- https://www.popcornfurniture.com/

City Today News

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–          Whitefield, Sarjapur Road, Bellary Road and Electronic city among top 4 micro markets

–          Strong demand for smaller size 1 & 2BHK and ready-to-move in apartments

–          Under-construction segment witnesses price increase over Ready-to-Move

Bengaluru April 28: At the outset of the COVID-19, Bengaluru’s residential prices witnessed a YOY increase of 2.9% in the first quarter of 2020, fuelled by development in infrastructure and existence of numerous IT and ITES establishments, revealed the latest edition of Magicbricks’ PropIndex (Q1, 2020).

While the global outbreak of COVID0-19 and the ensuing lockdown did impact India’s real estate, Bengaluru witnessed a 4.7% rise in demand for residential real estate during the Jan-Feb-March period of 2020. As an end user driven market, Bengaluru’s residential segment has continued to beat the overall market trends by witnessing steady demand and price increase.

In both the Under Construction (UC) and Ready-to-Move (RM) property categories, positive demand patterns were observed with 1.8% and 0. 8% increase in prices, respectively.  The under-construction segment surprisingly witnessed more increase in prices for almost all brackets, in comparison to ready to move properties, showing trust on builders. The city reported a noticeable increase in demand for the luxury budget segment by 1.9% during the first quarter of 2020. Nevertheless, most demand now lies in the segment of the property less than Rs.5000/sqft.

While Bengaluru has traditionally grown on the back of strong commercial development, the city is expected to grow with government’s attempt to promote industrial ventures in the outskirts, by making amendments in Article 109 of the Land Reform Act, 1961.  Additionally, reduction of stamp duty from 5% to 2% for new homes costing less than Rs.20 lakhs is expected to have a positive impact on demand in the city’s outskirts.

Commenting on the PropIndex, Sudhir Pai, CEO, Magicbricks, said, “The Government is taking stringent measures to contain the Covid-19 outbreak, but the long-term impact on property market is uncertain, and yet to be assessed. But it seems that the consumer interest has not tapered off. There is a pent-up demand for ready-to-move in properties as our data suggests that the 80% of searches are happening in this segment and the rest for under-construction.”

Owing to the employment opportunities, affordability and airport connectivity, Whitefield, Sarjapur Road, Bellary Road and Electronic City continue to be the top-4 micro markets in the city. Posh localities such as Indira Nagar and Malleshwaram experienced a dip in consumer preferences that fall in the segment higher than Rs.7,000/sqft.

According to Magicbricks’ PropIndex, the residential sector was primarily being driven by three critical factors:

·         Residential market was positively impacted by the robust commercial real estate growth in the city

·         The construction of Phase II and Phase III metro stations has increased the development of plots in the peripheral localities of Bengaluru

·         Upcoming Peripheral Ring Road connecting Tumkur Road and Hosur Road through Kempegowda International Airport and Old Madras Road to support residential development in the surrounding localities

However, it will be interesting to see how these factors play out as the market recovers from the outbreak of COVID-19 and the ensuing national lockdown.

As things return to normalcy, Magicbricks Research foresees the next two years to be crucial for the residential segment, as most of the stuck projects are likely to get completed with the help of the Rs.250 billion bailout fund. At the same time, completion of major metro lines should ease connectivity between peripheral and commercial areas, opening the next phase of growth. At last, it’s imperative for the sector to withstand these testing times and come out more robust and well prepared, once the COVID-19 situation gets better.

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Six students from Manipal Institute of Technology were awarded the second prize of $5,000 for enabling a system for remote diagnosis of suspected Covid19 patients

Bangalore / April 27, 2020 – Six engineering students from the Manipal Institute of Technology – Jithin Sunny, Joel Jogy George, Rohan Rout, Rakshit Naidu, Megha Baid and Shivangi Shukla – have bagged the Second Prize of $5,000 at the recently concluded CODE19 online hackathon against coronavirus in India. Their winning entry, named TeleVital, enables remote diagnosis of suspected Covid19 patients by capturing their vital statistics remotely through a Webcam and browser. Such contact-less health assessment of patients drastically reduces the risk of infection for healthcare workers from Coronavirus.

The 72-hour online hackathon was hosted by the US-based Motwani Jadeja Family Foundation. It saw thousands of innovators and developers from India and abroad compete online from the comfort of their homes to create open-source solutions against the Coronavirus crisis facing the nation.

Said 20-year-old Jithin Sunny: “We wanted to reduce overcrowding at hospitals and the attendant risk of infection for healthcare professionals by devising a way to analyze the health of patients right at their homes. After consulting a few doctors treating COVID19 patients, we realized that vital statistics play a major role in deciding if a patient needs hospitalization or not. We decided to create a solution to record a patient’s heart rate, respiratory rate, body temperature, etc. without any contact-based measurement tool. We also built a system to check if any individual was at the risk of getting infected or of being a carrier of the virus through our Artificial Intelligence-based chatbot to check their travel history and map other symptoms.”

Added 22-year-old Megha Baid: “Since mobiles and laptops are readily available at many people’s homes today, we decided to capture vitals and other health parameters of a person through a Web browser and Web camera, and establish online communication between the patient and the doctor. We have implemented an algorithm that we believe is superior to the existing ones out there. We now intend to improve the accuracy and efficiency of TeleVital and add more features to enhance the overall user experience.”

Said well-known entrepreneur, investor, philanthropist, and change agent Ms. Asha Jadeja Motwani, the Founder of Motwani Jadeja Family Foundation which hosted the CODE19 online hackathon:“We were overwhelmed by the high quality of entries received and the deep enthusiasm shown by all the participants. A community of hackers and mentors, especially young students from all parts of the country, came together to enable India’s fight against Coronavirus. I believe the qualitative, open-source projects created at this hackathon would help mitigate the impending Corona-inflicted challenges in India. I am hopeful that the total prize money of $34,000 awarded to winning teams will enable them to realize their solutions and bring them to market.”

The first prize of $10,000 was bagged Abhinand C and Shilpa Rajeev, two students from the Government College of Engineering in Kannur, Kerala. Their winning entry, called iClassroom, involved a modern virtual classroom for the millennial generation. It connects students with teachers through a social media-type interface for uninterrupted learning in the time of the pandemic.

The third position was divided into three categories, with each of the three winning teams awarded $3,000 as prize money. The winners included SoloCoin which gamifies social distancing by allowing people to earn “solo coins” by staying at home and redeeming them for rewards from various merchants; the Covid19 Fact Checker, a fake news checker that leverages authentic government, scientific, and public health information to bust misinformation about the Covid19 pandemic; and Grape Community, an open platform that connects people with their neighborhood shopkeepers and suppliers.

In addition, 10 best innovative solutions were awarded $1,000 each at the hackathon.

CODE19 was organized by the Motwani Jadeja Family Foundation in collaboration with partners such as TIE Mumbai, IAMAI Startup Foundation, Mumbai Angels Network, Association of Designers of India, Stumagz and GirlScript. The event had three leading academic institutions as partners – National Institute of Design (Ahmedabad), IIT Kharagpur, and Centre for Entrepreneurship – Ashoka University.

For more information about CODE19, please visit: www.code19.in

City Today News

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