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ENGLISH LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY APP- ELSA ANNOUNCESA SUBSCRIPTION GRANT WORTH Rs.56 Crores FOR STUDENTS IN INDIA

Posted on April 8, 2020 by City Today News (City today.media)

India, April 2020: ELSA, (English Language Speech Assistant Corporation) a Digital App which uses speech recognition technology and artificial intelligence to help language learners improve their English pronunciation, announces a subscription grant worth Rs. 56 Crores for the student communities across India. Pandemic situation has caused a major disruption in the education system and ELSA believes it’s their responsibility to support and encourage students to utilize this valuable time.

Mr. Manit Parikh, Country Head India, ELSA Corp said, “We believe it’s our duty to stand beside the students and encourage to utilize this valuable time. Students from tier-2 & 3 cities always look for easily accessible and affordable opportunities to be fluent in English. For every student pan India it’s a great opportunity to utilize the current situation to improve their English speaking pronunciation. Our mobile app ELSA Speak will help students across India to continue learning even when schools and colleges are closed. ELSA will always support Indian students to reach their point goal and excel in their career.”

ELSA (English Language Speech Assistant) is an AI-powered app for the 1.5B language learners in the world to learn to speak English more fluently, thereby changing their careers and lives. ELSA uses proprietary speech technology with deep learning and AI to detect people’s pronunciation mistakes with 95%+ accuracy. ELSA Speak listens to the way language learners pronounce words, sentences or conversations to pinpoint exact errors and provide real-time feedback on pronunciation mistakes with specific suggestions on how to improve. ELSA is used by many universities, professional English training programs and secondary schools in India and internationally. ELSA is the first startup in Asia to be funded by Google’s Gradient Ventures.

School and college students with any valid email address can register for access to an ELSA PRO 3 month subscription, registration closes on 15 April 2020.

All free ELSA PRO accounts include:

· Comprehensive assessment of all your phonetic challenges, including feedback on individual sounds, rhythm and intonations

· Personalized curriculum that tailors to your specific pronunciation challenges

· Access to 1,600+ English lessons and conversations covering 40+ different topics

· Ability to keep track of your progress and improvement over time

For more information and to enroll for free ELSA PRO access, please visit: bit.ly/elsacovid

If you are an educator and would like access to ELSA PRO for your school or your class, please contact us at support@elsanow.io.

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Hyundai ‘Click to Buy’ Platform Offers Future Retail Experience across India

Posted on April 8, 2020 by City Today News (City today.media)

‘India’s First Automobile End to End Online Platform for Car Purchase
Pan India integration of over 500 dealerships under Click to Buy platform
New models including All New CRETA and Spirited New VERNA available on Click to Buy
Customer Queries addressed in real time by dealerships across India
Fastest Loan approval for existing bank customers

New Delhi, April 08, 2020: Hyundai Motor India Limited (HMIL), country’s first smart mobility solutions provider and the largest exporter since inception, announced pan India coverage of its ‘Click to Buy’ Online Sales platform, incorporating over 500 dealerships. The end to end online car purchase platform offers a seamless, convenient and safe retail experience for Customers interested in purchasing Hyundai Cars.

‘Click to Buy’ is a first-of-its kind online sales platform that offers a simple and transparent process for purchase of Hyundai cars. Hyundai had launched a Pilot Phase of ‘Click to Buy’ with few Dealers of Delhi NCR Region in January 2020 and has now expanded its program to offer pan India coverage. All Hyundai models including the All New CRETA and Spirited New VERNA are available on ‘Click to Buy’ website that acts as an additional sales channel for Hyundai Dealerships. The platform is connected in real time with all the Dealerships across India for the convenience and need of new age digital customers.

Commenting on the Pan India Integration of Car Retail Platform, Mr. SS Kim, MD & CEO, Hyundai Motor India, said,“Hyundai has pioneered the digital sales arena in India with ‘Click to Buy’ that is India’s first online sales platform offering the new-age digital customer a seamless and convenient option to remotely purchase new Hyundai cars from the safety of their homes. Over the last decade, retail sales has been witness to a paradigm shift with new-age customers heavily inclined to online purchase of products. With pan India integration of Dealerships under ‘Click to Buy’, Hyundai is offering its tech-savvy customers a transparent and easy way of purchasing their favourite Hyundai cars.”

He also said, “The ‘Click to Buy’ platform will act as an additional sales channel for all our Dealerships across India thereby creating additional opportunities for remote interaction with customers and facilitation of sale even during periods when customers are unable to visit showrooms.”

The ‘Click to Buy’ is an easy to navigate platform where the customers can have a digital experience of car purchase by simply registering at the portal. Post registering, Customers can choose available Hyundai model line-up and configure the vehicle of their choice to select the exterior/interior colours. ‘Click to Buy’ offers customers a choice of financing options and existing bank customers that have pre-approved loan from their respective banks can avail fastest loan approval. The user will also have an option of a personalised assistant during the purchase cycle of the vehicle, and customer can get in touch with the allocated sales representative at any stage during the online purchase. Customers can even decide their preferred Delivery options- pick the vehicle from the selected dealer or get their vehicle delivered to their doorstep.

Digital Service Initiatives

To further enhance the comfort and convenience of new-age digital customers, services such as ‘Hyundai on WhatsApp’ provides updates to customer during the entire vehicle service process, starting from online service booking to post service feedback. Additionally, customers can also use Hyundai Care Application to navigate through features such as Book a Service, 360° View of Car, Book a Car, Request for Test Drive, monthly offer updates and much more. With all these initiatives Hyundai has enhanced the service commitment to its Valued Customers.

Click to Buy Website – https://clicktobuy.hyundai.co.in/

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Top tech entrepreneur and CMRIT Alumna Madhavi Shankar is Forbes Asia 30 under 30

Posted on April 8, 2020 by City Today News (City today.media)

Bangalore : Madhavi Shankar, one of the top tech entrepreneurs in social transformational applications, has been featured in Forbes Asia 30 under 30, Class of 2020. The distinguished alumna of CMR Institute of Technology, Bengaluru, is co-founder and CEO of SpaceBasic, a start-up entity. She holds co-patent for ‘Method & System for Dormitory/Hostel Management for Students using Cross-Platform Communication’.

Forbes Asia has listed young entrepreneurs, leaders and change makers across Asia, all under the age of 30. They have been honoured for challenging conventional wisdom and rewriting the rules.

NITI Aayog tweeted and congratulated Madhavi Shankar for featuring in Forbes Asia 30 under 30. Dr. Sanjay Jain, Principal, CMRIT also congratulated Madhavi for her achievements. All CMRITians shared this moment of pride and wished her greater success.

Since 2018, Bengaluru-based Madhavi has been in the list of Top 60 Women transforming India. This list was prepared by the United Nations and the Indian government.

Madhavi is also United Nations Youth Speaker and board member of Prathiharya Charitable Trust. The NGO focuses on healthcare for low socioeconomic communities. We are working towards providing families their fundamental right to quality healthcare.

SpaceBasic is India’s first technology forward, interactive networking platform, for day-to-day communication and task management within student housing & co-living communities. It addresses critical problems like safety checks, digital data management, open and improved communication channels.

Over 35 universities, colleges, and schools are registered with SpaceBasic. The digital hostel management facilitates seamless communication between management, students, and parent.

Madhavi says “we try to improve the whole experience of staying in a hostel with the use of technology. What we tried to do with the application is automate processes, reduce wastage and costly errors and streamline the entire communication process for easy access and collaboration.”

“Giving back is in our corporate philanthropy. We are part of the movement called Pledge 1% movement. We pledge 1% of our profits, time and software to invest back into our community and towards educating women each year,” the young CEO said.

For more information, please contact:
N. Vijay, Media Coordinator, CMRIT
M: 9986088183/ 9035088183

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StoreSe.in, A New Grocery Ordering Platform Launched for Apartment Communities in Bengaluru

Posted on April 8, 2020 by City Today News (City today.media)

Assured delivery within 24 hours with a 90% order fulfilment rate
Direct integration with major offline retailers Vishal Megamart, More & Metro ensures real-time inventory visibility, competitive pricing and reliable quality

Bengaluru, April 8, 2020 – StoreSe.in, a new grocery delivery platform targeted at apartment communities has been launched in Bengaluru. Residents of apartments across the city can now order essentials and groceries from their trusted brands through StoreSe and get it delivered, within 24 hours, and an order fulfillment rate of 90%. Major offline retailers like Vishal Megamart, More, Metro and others have integrated with the StoreSe platform to help people get assured delivery of essentials from the safety & comfort of their homes and at compelling prices. As a testament to its commitment in ensuring smooth supplies, MP Tejasvi Surya’s Bengaluru South Corona Task Force and StoreSe have entered into a partnership to enable apartments of South Bengaluru to order groceries.

To use StoreSe, residents can visit StoreSe.in, select their apartment, choose the items they need from the product catalogue and pay for their order. If the residents don’t find their apartment listed, they can create an entry for their apartment under the “List your Apartment” section and promote it within their apartments to generate upvotes. The StoreSe team will try to open up the service basis the demand and total upvotes from every apartment. The service is expanding rapidly and based on demand, new apartments are typically onboarded within 72 hours. StoreSe has partnered with cab drivers via leading cab aggregators to enable smooth and quick deliveries. After an order has been placed, StoreSe will get it delivered within 24 hours.

StoreSe has a product catalogue of more than 1200 itemsfeaturing groceries, fruits & vegetables, snacks, personal care, dairy, beverages and other household essentials.Launched in beta last week in Bengaluru, StoreSe has several apartments signed up on its platform and is able to deliver 90% of what consumers order. This is made possible with the support of the store partners and the underlying UltraPOS technology through which StoreSe is able to map real-time inventory of the stores on its online platform. In the next few weeks, StoreSe will expand into other cities such as Hyderabad, Pune, Gurgaon, Mumbai and a few tier 2 cities as well since the company is witnessing a huge demand from the residents of these cities.

For retailers, StoreSe helps establish an online presence and retain their loyal customer base who are fast adapting to shopping online. It is helping the brands run their stores with minimal staff, at a time when social distancing and lack of staff is posing many challenges for brands to run operations smoothly. With StoreSe, the retail stores are responsible for the supply and order preparation. Once a nearby store receives the order, they are allowed a maximum of 24 hours to keep the entire order ready. The payment by customers is made online. By deeply integrating with the UltraPOS platform, StoreSe ensures high fulfilment rates, helping maintain high customer satisfaction at all times.

The StoreSe platform has been built by retail tech startup, Perpule. The company is building solutions for Omni-channel retail which will enable the transformation of the Indian retail industry. The focus of the company is to launch products which enable retailers to provide seamless customer experience, both online and offline. The retail-tech startup was founded in October 2016 by Abhinav Pathak, Saketh BSV and Yogesh Ghaturle.

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A new study reveals the impact of leopards on livestock losses and human injuries in a human-use landscape in Maharashtra, India.

Posted on April 8, 2020 by City Today News (City today.media)

The impact of leopards (Panthera pardus) on livestock losses and human injuries in a human-use landscape in Maharashtra, India was undertaken by a team of researchers including Dr. Vidya Athreya (Wildlife Conservation Society-India), Dr. Kavita Isvaran (Centre for Ecological Sciences), Morten Odden (Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences), Dr. John D.C. Linnell (Norwegian Institute for Nature Research), Aritra Kshettry (Wildlife Conservation Society-India), Dr. Jagdish Krishnaswamy (Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology & the Environment), and Ullas K. Karanth (Centre for Wildlife Studies).

It is the final of a series of papers that emerged from this study site where a combination of methods including interviews, camera trapping and GPS-collaring were used to transform the way we understand leopard ecology in human dominated landscapes. This particular paper looks into the losses that leopards cause to human life and property in Akole taluka of Ahmednagar district, situated in the western part of Maharashtra. At the time of the study, Akole town had a human population of about 20,000, while the average population density of the Ahmednagar district was 266 people/km², and average livestock density of Ahmednagar was 162/km².

The study found that attacks on humans were not common and livestock losses were much less than one would expect especially considering the complete dependency of leopards on domestic animals as prey. Diseases and natural causes were contributed more to livestock mortality than predation by leopards. The impact of predators was thus, unexpectedly low considering the density of humans, their livestock and leopards in the region. It was also found that ineffective night time livestock protection and the presence of domestic dogs increased the probability of leopard predation on livestock. Given that protection of livestock by humans is very important in reducing losses, proactive measures such as effective livestock sheds would be more effective than reactive measures such as translocation of leopards.

The authors finally discuss the usage of the word “conflict” and argue that the word be used with a lot of care as it blames the species involved when in reality, livestock losses could occur because we as humans are not focussing on keeping the livestock secure and away from the reach of the predators that share space with humans.

Article link: https://peerj.com/articles/8405/

Media contact: vidya@wcsindia.org

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