Seasonal Magazine - Cover Story - SOA University

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THE POLYCRISIS THE WORLD WALKED INTO, AND HOW TO GET OUT OF IT

Until now, more often than not, economic crises were all singular and well defined. The world will either have slowing down demand with its side effect of lower inflation, or the world will have high inflation with its side effect of a surge in demand.

But this time around, things are slightly different. Confusing even many economists, the world is witnessing high inflation but with a slowdown in demand. Now, this is something not only pretty strange, but something that leaves not many levers for the governments and central banks to act upon.

This is one reason why many thought leaders are citing that the world is in a polycrisis. To add fuel to this fire, are the various global developments like the unprecedented war by Russia in Ukraine, the equally unprecedented economic slump in China, the very much anticipated but unprepared-for population degrowth in Europe, and the disruptive advent of generative AI like ChatGPT, to cite just a few.

While many factors are behind all these diverse challenges, for the highly observant mind, it can easily be seen that one social trend is behind it all. In fact, it is not just a social trend, but something that runs deeper, with its roots in the human psyche itself. It is nothing but the human tendency to deliver excesses, in both committing an act and in later correcting that act.

For those who know human physiology in some depth, parallels can easily be seen in how the cells and systems of our body

react to various stimuli. For instance, the much discussed dopamine cycle. There is a baseline dopamine level, but achievement, rewards or euphoria spikes dopamine, but it cannot stay there forever.

Soon it will be time for a fall, and when dopamine levels fall, it will not stop at the baseline level, but plummet sharply below it. In fact, higher the rise above baseline, higher will be the fall below it, sending happy and euphoric people to sudden gloom and doom, within a matter of hours. People who don’t realise this mechanism, often go after reward-seeking behaviour again and again, be it partying or drugs, to get a new high, only to fall even more deeper, and thus maintaining this vicious cycle of addiction.

Eerily, almost the same thing is happening in global economics too. The world went through a sudden demand slump due to Covid, and central banks responded with easy liquidity by way of lower and lower interest rates. And the otherwise smart companies like the tech majors started thinking that this will remain the new normal forever, and invested more and more into a digital future and in the engineers needed to run that future.

And tech majors alone were not to blame. Some of the otherwise most prudent investors and lenders, like the PE and VC funds, imagined that profits in their funded startups are not important anymore - in this new normal - but that valuations or marketcaps are enough to sustain operations forever.

But inevitably, like the dopamine slump, everything has to correct deeply for the

economy to find itself in a stable ground again. Take the recent failure of Silicon Valley Bank in the US that started the most recent leg of the ongoing contagion. SVB was the lender of choice for startups, and the collateral was often the share pledges by promoters of these startups.

Even more seriously, these young millionaire and billionaire promoters also parked much of their funds in SVB. But when the inevitable correction in the markets came, and the mass layoffs started, the outlook turned suddenly dark, the value of the pledged stocks became only a fraction of their peak values, and the promoters couldn’t take back their deposits in time, and everything came crashing down like a castle of cards.

The world had seen this coming, yet walked into it, mainly because everyone else was doing it. Yet, there have been notable exceptions to this trend across the world. Quite a few companies stood their ground and focused on growing their bottomline along with their topline, paid generous but prudent dividends, and kept aside much for a challenging phase that they saw coming.

There are quite a few measures that governments and companies can take to avoid such excessive behaviours. Firstly, it is important to realise that valuations can never substitute for profits. Secondly, it is important not to over anticipate the durability of an ongoing trend, especially if it feels too good to be true. Such a timely realisation would have been enough to avoid the kind of mass layoffs being witnessed now.

Last but not least comes an objective called sustainable and inclusive development. Governments should realise that the per capita income of their people is way more important than the GDP. Companies should realise that a mindless hiring and firing culture would gradually result in top talents not willing to work at all in their sectors. It doesn’t make sense for the companies themselves to always aim for aggressive valuation growth or even profit growth, but to always choose inclusive and sustainable growth for all stakeholders.

John Antony

CONTENTS

SOA’S EDGE IN PLACEMENTS AND STARTUP INCUBATION

The Odisha based SOA deemed-to-be-university has been excelling in placements year after year, moving up the rungs by way of both quantity and quality of job offers from leading corporates, as well.. as.. achieving big in incubating admirable student startups.

ICFAI FOUNDATION FOR HIGHER EDUCATION SOARING HIGHER ON ACADEMICS AND RESEARCH

From international tie-ups to poverty alleviation, and from business case studies to multidisciplinary research, IFHE is making its presence felt across higher education and research in business..

TRUE INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLING FINALLY ARRIVES IN KOCHI

Cochin International School has opened its doors recently for students to experience IB & Cambridge schooling in the city, with premium features including over 2 lakh sq ft of built-up area,

NEW CHALLENGES & OPPORTUNITIES FROM AI FOR INDIA’S PRIVATE & DEEMED UNIVERSITIES

Once again, a new academic year is fast approaching and the Indian higher education scene is buzzing with admission activities. Private and deemed universities have been playing an ever increasing role in the country’s

JSSAHER IS FORGING AHEAD IN ALL KEY DOMAINS THAT MATTER

For Mysuru headquartered JSS Academy of Higher Education & Research, each academic year is a quest to outdo itself, as there are not many private sector peers that are far ahead of it. And this deemed-to-be university is doing it with elan year after..

SOLUTIONS TO NATIONAL CHALLENGES THROUGH RESEARCH & ACADEMICS

SRMIST, the flagship of SRM Group of Universities, led by its Founder & Chancellor and sitting Lok Sabha MP Dr. TR Paarivendhar, is emerging as a powerhouse in research.

SATHYABAMA IS THE PLACE TO STUDY AI, ROBOTICS, BLOCKCHAIN, IOT & MORE

Chennai based deemed university Sathyabama Institute of Science & Technology is fast emerging as one of the leading destinations to study futuristic domains including AI, Robotics, Blockchain, Internet of..

KARUNYA’S SOLUTIONS FOR GLOBAL WELLBEING

Coimbatore based deemed-tobe university, Karunya Institute of Technology & Sciences (KITS) is fast emerging as a powerhouse in both academics and research with the highest NAAC A++ accreditation, and with funded projects worth Rs 25 crore..

HOW GALGOTIAS UNIVERSITY IS GROOMING EXCEPTIONAL ACHIEVERS

What have the StockPe cofounder Shubham Rawal, E&Y Partner Dr. Avantika Tomar and Aaj Tak Anchor Shubhankar Mishra have in common? Many things may be, as they are all young high achievers, but mainly they are all alumni of Galgotias..

UP CM YOGI ADITYANATH ENTERS 7th

YEAR OF STELLAR

LEADERSHIP

India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh has completed six years under the leadership of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, and the state has grown leaps and bounds in various sectors including

THE MANY MIRACLES OF SLEEP

New research has discovered why sleep is so important to the brain: It not only flushes away the brain's waste products, sleep also consolidates your memory and protects you against the risk of Alzheimer's disease among other benefits. Here’s what actually happens in your brain if you get a good night’s sleep – and if you ..

PURVA BACK ON A RAPID GROWTH TRACK

Bengaluru headquartered real estate development major Puravankara Group has had several firsts to its credit in its chequered history since its inception in 1975. Starting from the first ever multi-storey project in Bengaluru, Founder & Chairman Ravi Puravankara led the group’s flagship firm..

THE JOBS LEAST LIKELY TO BE TAKEN OVER BY ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, FOR NOW

Amid the talk of artificial intelligence replacing workers, experts say there are some jobs computers aren’t taking – at least for a while.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

One of the many recent mysteries is why hundreds of extremely intelligent and rich people think that a moratorium on further development of artificial intelligence is feasible, or that a ..

SATHYABAMA IS THE PLACE TO STUDY AI, ROBOTICS, BLOCKCHAIN, IOT & MORE

Chennai based deemed university Sathyabama Institute of Science & Technology is fast emerging as one of the leading destinations to study futuristic domains including AI, Robotics, Blockchain,

KIA'S TESLA KILLER

NVIDIA IS SUDDENLY AN ‘AI CHIP MAKER’: ENTERS BIG LEAGUE AS A $1 TRILLION FIRM

The chipmaker originally known for its Graphic Processing Units (GPUs) used in gaming computers, later reinvented itself as the blockchain posterboy as its GPUs were heavily used for

PROSPECTS UP FOR PRESTIGE AS HEADWINDS TURN TO TAILWINDS

What sets apart a leader in any sector is how it performs during downturns rather than in good times. The first three quarters of this fiscal delivered serious headwinds for the entire real estate sector, as it witnessed..

Kia's new three-row electric SUV is a surprising contender to emerge as the biggest threat to Tesla.

STRATEGIES FOR STRONGER BONES

YOUR BONES DO AMAZING THINGS AND WORK HARD FOR YOU EVERY DAY. THEY ALLOW YOU TO MOVE, THEY PROTECT YOUR BRAIN AND VITAL ORGANS AND THEY STORE NECESSARY MINERALS. BUT AS YOU AGE, YOUR BONE DENSITY CAN DIMINISH — CAUSING WEAK, BRITTLE BONES — WHICH CAN LEAD TO INJURY. FORTUNATELY, YOU CAN PRESERVE AND EVEN IMPROVE THE HEALTH OF YOUR BONES BY ADDING A FEW THINGS TO YOUR MORNING ROUTINE.

have seen the importance of bone health firsthand," says Christopher Sforzo, MD, a board-certified orthopedic surgeon based in Sarasota, Florida. "It's never too early or too late to start taking care of your bones." Here are seven things you can do each morning to start your day off right, according to bone health professionals.

1.START YOUR DAY WITH A GLASS OF WATER

Whether you like it cold or room temperature, drinking a glass of water first thing in the morning is an important part of not just your overall health, but your bone health, too. Turns out, your bones are partially made up of water, and they need water to do specific jobs, like storing minerals and making red blood cells inside the bone marrow. In fact, without proper hydration, you could end up with bone loss or osteoporosis, per a June 2022 review in Bone Reports. What's more, water transports 99 percent of the calcium in foods you eat to your bones, per the National Library of Medicine (NLM), so good hydration equals stronger bones. Aim to start your day with a glass of water, and remember to drink even more throughout the day. You should get about 11.5 to 15.5 cups of water per day, through drinking or water-rich foods, per the Mayo Clinic.

2. EAT A CALCIUM-RICH BREAKFAST

Calcium is one of the most important nutrients for bone health — it's the mineral that makes bones hard and

strong, and it helps bones repair, per the Cleveland Clinic. And, nearly all of your body's calcium is stored in your bones, according to the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. This is why getting calcium every day is important, ideally through eating calcium-rich foods or by taking a calcium supplement if necessary. You can find calcium in dairy products like milk, cheese and yogurt. Other sources of calcium include fortified orange juice, leafy greens, almonds and fatty fish like salmon. For a calcium-rich breakfast, then, go for cereal with milk and a glass of orange juice, yogurt topped with almonds and fruit or toast with lox and cream cheese. Many dairy products are typically fortified with vitamin D, which is an essential nutrient your body needs in order to absorb calcium.

3. DO SOME BONESTRENGTHENING EXERCISES

We all know exercise is good for more than just your bones, but specific exercises will actually strengthen your bones and stimulate growth. In particular, weight-bearing exercise and weightlifting can help strengthen your bones, help you maintain bone density and lower your risk for osteoporosis, per the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This can include walking, running, playing tennis, dancing or any exercise where you're on your feet, as well as using free weights, weight machines or doing bodyweight exercises. "The key for all ages and conditions is to get some weight-bearing exercise, which also signals your endocrine system to secrete appropriate enzymes that can ensure

Christopher Sforzo

proper bone health," says Mark Slabaugh, MD, a board-certified orthopedic surgeon in Baltimore, Maryland. The Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans recommend adults get at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity cardio (like walking or biking) or 75 minutes of vigorousintensity cardio (like running or hiking) each week, along with two full-body strength-training sessions.

4. GET A LITTLE SUNSHINE

Soaking up the sun is not just good for your mental health — it's also good for your bones. It's true: When your skin is exposed to sunlight, chemical reactions in your skin produce vitamin D, per the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Without enough vitamin D, your body does a poor job absorbing calcium from your food and instead takes it from your bone mineral stores. This weakens

your bones and prevents the formation of new bone cells. While too much sun exposure can be dangerous for your skin, getting a little morning sunlight (which typically has a lower UV index) without protective clothing or sunscreen can have a positive effect, per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. So for more vitamin D (and stronger bones), try to get out into the morning sun every day, whether you're walking the dog, taking a stroll or sitting on your balcony. Talk to your doctor if you are unsure about the amount of sun exposure you should be getting every day. They can help recommend safe sunscreens and other products to use instead of sun, like a sunlight lamp.

5. PRACTICE GOOD POSTURE

Practicing good posture does great things for your bones. It cuts down on the wear and tear of your bones and joints and reduces stress on your muscles and ligaments — all things that support healthy bones, according to the Cleveland Clinic. "Maintaining good posture throughout the day can help reduce the risk of developing posturalrelated bone and joint problems," says Lalitha McSorley, a physiotherapist at Sports Physiotherapy in Calgary, Canada. "Sitting and standing up straight with shoulders back and spine aligned can help support healthy bones," she adds. Try to focus on your posture when walking, but also when

sitting in a chair, especially if you sit for long periods for your job.

6. MODERATE YOUR CAFFEINE INTAKE

Coffee is an essential part of many people's morning routine. However, too much of a good thing is not always good. Numerous scientific studies have looked at the effect of caffeine use on bone health and the results have been mixed. According to the Mayo Clinic, drinking caffeine is associated with a slight increase in calcium lost through the urine, but this effect is usually seen in people who drink excess coffee or soda over healthier beverages. Drinking anywhere from 2 to 3 cups daily likely won't interfere with calcium absorption as long as your diet is rich in calcium, per the Mayo Clinic. Sometimes, people are advised to delay drinking coffee until after eating because of worries about caffeine interfering with calcium absorption, but other experts disagree. "There is no specific need to delay caffeine consumption until after eating calcium-rich foods," McSorley says. "However, it's important to note that excessive caffeine intake may interfere with calcium absorption, so it's best to consume caffeine in moderation and ensure an adequate intake of calcium from food sources or supplements throughout the day," she adds. You may want to delay drinking coffee in the morning until after breakfast if you experience other side effects of drinking coffee on an empty stomach, like stomach pain or acid reflux.

7.START YOUR DAY WITH STRETCHING

There's a reason it feels good to stretch as soon as you get out of bed in the morning. "Stretching in the morning can be beneficial for bone health," McSorley says. In fact, stretching exercises like yoga or tai chi can improve flexibility and balance, reducing the risk of falls and bone fractures or bruises, she adds. In addition to morning stretching, remember to stretch before and after a workout, and any time you've been sitting for a while.

NECKLACE WITH MEGALODON'S TOOTH FOUND IN 111-YR-OLD TITANIC WRECK

A turquoise and gold necklace which features the tooth of a Megalodon shark, which lived approximately 20 million years ago, has been found in the 111-year-old Titanic wreck. The necklace was found during Magellan's underwater scans, which produced seven lakh images of the wreck. Magellan is now hoping to use an AI-driven tool to identify the necklace's owners.

MAN JOINS VIP CONVOY, HUGS GERMAN CHANCELLOR SCHOLZ; PROBE ON

A man was able to slip into a VIP convoy for German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and then gave him a hug as he prepared to board a plane at Frankfurt Airport. German police said the man was detained but they declined to provide further details "for tactical reasons". An investigation into the security breach has been launched, police added.

FRENCH TYRE MAKER MICHELIN SELLS ITS ACTIVITIES IN RUSSIA

French tyre maker Michelin said it was selling its Russia Tyre Manufacturing Company and Camso CIS in Russia to Power International Tires, a tyre distributor in the country. The deal will keep 250 jobs, mainly based at Michelin's sole Russian plant in Davydovo. Michelin said those employees who wished to leave would be allowed to do so "under good conditions".

KIA'S TESLA KILLER KIA'S TESLA KILLER

KIA'S NEW THREE-ROW ELECTRIC SUV IS A SURPRISING CONTENDER TO EMERGE AS THE BIGGEST THREAT TO TESLA.

the Kia Telluride or the Hyundai Palisade. That's because it basically is a Kia Telluride with a big battery. Yes, there is some aerodynamic styling, but it mostly looks like a vehicle that would be at home hauling kids or boxes, or whatever you haul around in an SUV.

or more than a decade, if you wanted to drive an electric vehicle (EV), your choice was one of a small handful of quirky underpowered options from traditional carmakers or a Tesla. Even in the past few years as more companies have started offering options, Tesla has still accounted for the vast majority of EVs sold in the U.S. It's as though no one could come up with a serious competitor--until now.

Let's be clear--Tesla makes very good cars. I know, because I drive one every day. Also, Tesla deserves credit for almost single-handedly making EVs a thing consumers will buy. It sells premium cars that people actually want to drive.

The thing is, there are a lot of people who will never buy a Tesla. Whether that's because they don't care for the styling, they don't like Elon Musk, or they just think they're too expensive, for as much as Tesla has done to make electric vehicles a viable product there's a lot of opportunity to reach those people. The problem, until the past few years anyway, was that it seemed like no one was trying. Sure, the Porsche Taycan, Lucid Air, and the Rivian R1T and R1S are very nice vehicles, but they will also all set you back somewhere around $100,000 or more.

Now, however, there's a real competitor from, of all places, Kia. Its new EV9 just might be the most serious threat to Tesla yet, and also the one no one saw coming. Look, the fact that Kia has become some version of "cool" is as surprising to me as it is to anyone. Don't get me wrong; Kia makes good cars. In fact, we also own a Palisade, which is made by Kia's parent company, Hyundai, and we love it. I don't have anything bad to say about Kia. I just don't think anyone would have expected the company to be the one to build a fully electric SUV this good. Until now, the best electric SUVs you could buy were the Tesla Model X and Model Y and the Rivian R1S, though the last one is almost impossible to come by. The thing is, there are a lot of people who would very much like to drive a threerow SUV that does not look like an egg, and that does not cost $100,000. Technically, the Model Y is less than that, but it still definitely looks like an egg. The EV9, on the other hand, looks like a three-row SUV. It looks very much like

A lot of people have stuck "biggest threat to Tesla" labels on a lot of EVs to come before the EV9. The problem is, most of them are niche products for a very small market with big wallets. The Kia EV9 is not that. While the company hasn't yet released pricing, it's expected to start around $55,000, which is a reasonable price for a three-row SUV, let alone one powered by an electric motor.

The EV9 comes with a 99.8 kWh battery, which means it should get between 260 and 300 miles on a full charge. Those aren't huge numbers compared with a Lucid, for example, but you're paying about a third of the price.

More important, however, KIA says that the EV9 can charge from 10 percent to 80 percent in 24 minutes. That's a big deal for anyone seriously considering buying an electric SUV to haul a family on road trips, or for a long commute. To be clear, I don't think Kia is going to put Tesla out of business. I do think that it could very well be the automaker that finally loosens Tesla's grip on the market-especially for fully electric SUVs. The Model Y is incredibly popular, so popular that it outsells almost all other EVs combined, with the exception of its smaller sibling, the Model 3.

Kia makes and sells about three million vehicles a year. It knows how to design, build, and sell cars. And it seems to be all in on building them with large batteries and electric motors. Now, it's getting ready to sell a car that even people who haven't previously been persuaded to get an EV will be willing to consider. That might be the best strategy yet for taking on Tesla, even if no one saw it coming.

(By Jason Aten for Inc.)

The EV9 comes with a 99.8 kWh battery, which means it should get between 260 and 300 miles on a full charge.

THE ONE THING THAT DETERMINES SUCCESS, ACCORDING TO STEVE JOBS

Results also show that class attendance explains large amounts of unique variance in college grades because of its ... weak relationship with student characteristics such as conscien tiousness and motivation.

leader; that's who you are, and you act accordingly.

I'm convinced that about half of what separates successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance. It is so hard. You pour so much of your life into this thing. There are such rough moments ... that most people give up. I don't blame them. It's really tough," said Jobs.

While he was referring to startup founders, the premise is broadly applicable. Whatever intelligence I possess is from reading at least two books a week. My fitness level is due to the fact I work out nearly every day. My writing ability, such as it is, is due to the fact I write every day. In any pursuit, any success I've enjoyed is because I show up, even when I don't want to. While that might sound too simplistic -perseverance is just one factor in achieving any worthwhile pursuit -- just showing up carries outsize importance. For example, a meta-analysis published in Review of Educational Research found that college students who consistently go to class get (surprise, surprise) better grades. While that might sound more like correlation than causation -- maybe the smartest people tend to go to class more regularly -there's more to it.

"Class attendance (better predicts) college grades than any other known predictor of academic performance, including scores on standardized admissions tests such as the SAT, high school GPA, study habits and study skills," says this research.

Not particularly smart? Not particularly motivated? Not a great student? As long as you show up, and keep showing up, you'll likely do well.

That's true for most things. Say your goal is to make 10 sales cold calls a day, but today you just aren't feeling it. Just make two calls. Something is always better than nothing, and sticking to your plan, at least in part, will help you maintain the routine. (Habits: really hard to establish, incredibly easy to follow.)

Plus, those two calls could break you out of your unmotivated funk. "If you don't want to do something," Instagram founder Kevin Systrom says, "make a deal with yourself to do at least five minutes of it. After five minutes, you'll end up doing the whole thing." Even if you don't, that's OK: Showing up every day allows you to put at least a partial X in your calendar.

And then there's this. Do something regularly helps you, as odd as it might sound, become that thing. Say you want to start a business. At first, you're checking off to-do lists. You're following advice from others. You're finding your way. But in time, you no longer see yourself as a person who is starting and running a business. You're an entrepreneur; that's who you are, and you act accordingly.

Or say you hire employees. At first, you manage them -- but when you show up every day, in time you start to think of yourself as a manager. Leading is no longer something you do. You're a

The same is true for any pursuit. When you show up consistently, over time you become the thing you do. If you've just started jogging, you would never call yourself a runner -- but by showing up, time after time after time, one day you'll wake up one day and see yourself not as someone who runs, but as a runner. Sound too simple? Science says otherwise. A study published in Child Development found that students were 30 percent more likely to clean up when teachers said, "Can you be a helper in cleanup?" instead of "Can you help clean up?"

That small shift isn't just effective with kids. A study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that people who received a letter encouraging them to be a voter rather than simply to vote were 15 percent more likely to register to vote.

That's why Steve Jobs put so much emphasis on perseverance. Clearly staying the course matters: While showing up won't guarantee success, giving up does guarantee you'll fail. Don't have a talent for sales? If you show up, sales skills can be learned. Don't have a talent for leading people? If you show up, most leadership skills -- giving feedback, building teams, setting expectations, showing consideration for others, seeking input, focusing on meaningful priorities, etc. -- can be learned.

Success in most pursuits doesn't require talent. Success simply requires skill. And skill you can gain -- as long as you're willing to show up.

(By Jeff Haden for Inc.)

I'M NOT PARTICULARLY SMART. I'M NOT PARTICULARLY ATHLETIC. I DON'T HAVE ANY REAL TALENTS (WHEN TALENT IS THE ABILITY TO LEARN A SUBJECT OR GAIN A SKILL MORE QUICKLY THAN MOST). I'M THE POSTER CHILD FOR AVERAGE. MAYBE THAT'S WHY, OUT OF ALL THE GREAT THINGS THE APPLE CO-FOUNDER SAID, THIS IS MY FAVORITE STEVE JOBS QUOTE:

NEW CHALLENGES &

OPPORTUNITIES FROM AI

FOR INDIA’S PRIVATE & DEEMED UNIVERSITIES

NEW CHALLENGES & OPPORTUNITIES FROM AI FOR INDIA’S PRIVATE & DEEMED UNIVERSITIES

ONCE AGAIN, A NEW ACADEMIC YEAR IS FAST APPROACHING AND THE INDIAN HIGHER EDUCATION SCENE IS BUZZING WITH ADMISSION ACTIVITIES. PRIVATE AND DEEMED UNIVERSITIES HAVE BEEN PLAYING AN EVER INCREASING ROLE IN THE COUNTRY’S HIGHER EDUCATION, AS THE NATION RELIES ON THEM TO ENHANCE THE GROSS ENROLLMENT RATIO (GER) TO ACCEPTABLE LEVELS.

Though the clouds of Covid have reemerged and are lingering on the horizon, nobody expects it to play spoilsport this year to the extent of lockdowns and such extreme measures. But a new kind of challenge has reared its head in the form of Artificial Intelligence (AI), or more specifically, Generative AI or Large Language Models (LLMs) whose first and most flamboyant example has been ChatGPT.

College essays used to be a benchmark that separated the talented students from the rest of the class. Similar was the case with mathematical problem solving. It was something that calculators or even the usual computer programs couldn’t help a student with. And in recent years, yet another of such benchmarks had emerged, which was writing software programs to solve challenging problems in different domains.

But, in one stroke, ChatGPT and its likes have made it all history. This seemingly revolutionary software system from a startup named OpenAI has stormed the classrooms with the power of artificial intelligence. It can write college level essays that fetch A grades, it can solve complex maths problems, and it can not only write software programs but even debug your programs before you finish reading this sentence.

Its proponents, and much of the tech world, are saying that this technological advancement is not to be feared, but embraced. Their logic

is that just like how calculators, personal computers and the internet didn’t destroy education, but only enhanced it, the likes of ChatGPT will only add great value to education.

There are however two major flaws to this argument. The first flaw is whether calculators, computers & the world wide web have really enhanced education. For sure, they have had positive effects, but to ignore their negatives would be grossly untruthful.

The ubiquitous presence of calculators in everything from computers to phones and even smartwatches now, have taken students’ arithmetical skills to abysmally low levels like it has never happened in modern human history. Doing mental maths is not only joyous, but it gives a powerful conceptual framework about how numbers in different proportions can be made to work together to reveal the meaning of various operations in real world settings.

When it comes to computers and the internet, some may think it is more difficult to find the negatives, but this is absolutely not true. For one, they have redefined - for the worsewhat is truth. Truth has forever been tinted with subjective opinions masquerading as information. What is the source for truth today? Google it? Or read its Wikipedia entry? Anyone who knows the basics of digital tech realizes that such things can be gamed.

So the first fallacy to counter is that

calculators, computers and the internet were choke full of positives, with no negatives involved. It can be clearly seen that while they have made humanity more productive, it was at the cost of making it dumber. People today have no passion or energy to find out the truth from real world encounters, but just take the easy way out of parroting the digital version of truth that is readily available at a click.

However, the second reason why the likes of ChatGPT will not end up only adding value to education, but will have serious negative impacts too, has got to do with how critically different this innovation is compared with earlier ones like calculators, computers or the internet.

But to understand that we have to first understand how ChatGPT works. Though it is touted as a piece of true artificial intelligence, in reality it is only a kind of machine learning system called Large Language Model (LLM). A rudimentary model of such

a system is the auto-complete seen in email and chat editors, in which based on your earlier responses (as well as other similar responses from other people) the system guesses a probable set of suggestions from which you can choose from.

LLMs take this core idea to an exponential level, by training the system on a massive amount of data, like the internet, publicly available books, news, periodicals, public chats, forum discussions, social media, published research studies, code repositories and the likes to detect millions of patterns about how pieces of information correlate to each other, and even more importantly how human beings communicate about such data.

So, what are the pitfalls about using such a system in education? One is the truthfulness of its output, or more precisely the lack of absolute truthfulness of the text it generates. Just like how its sources like websites, user edited encyclopaedias like Wikipedia, public books, partisan news outlets etc have false information, ChatGPT’s output will also be seriously imperfect, and therefore especially unsuitable for academic rigour.

But the real issue with ChatGPT is not this lack of absolute truth, but the fact that it presents this imperfect output as the perfect truth using human-like language constructs that make the text very much plausible and persuasive.

Renowned researchers in AI like Arvind Narayanan of Princeton have called out ChatGPT for this kind of dishonest behaviour, and have boldly stated that it is an example of a bullshitter program, based on what bullshitting is, in an academic perspective, which is pushing partial truths or subjective opinions as the absolute truth.

There are even greater dangers for the society from such LLMs like ChatGPT according to the ace computational linguist Emily Bender of University of Washington, which she says is

unnecessarily and dangerously mimicking human behaviour - with false or unreal emotions - for its mass appeal. She has called out LLMs as stochastic (probable but never precise) parrots and has decried efforts by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to pull down humanity to the level of stochastic parrots for the glorification of their ChatGPT product.

Another critical view of LLMs like ChatGPT, Microsoft Bing Chat, Google Bard etc has been about how these tech firms are seeking monopolistic and rent-seeking behaviour from the enormous software expertise and computing power they have amassed to gobble up all the public data without permission or regard for copyright, and then profiteering from it on a massive scale. Indeed, the swift rise of OpenAI to a $29 billion startup on the back of paid monthly subscriptions should be an eye opener for everyone.

Apart from its lack of truthfulness, mimicking of humanity, false or unreal emotions, and rent-seeking behaviour on public, proprietary or copyrighted data, the most disturbing facet of LLMs like ChatGPT is how much more dumber it will make our students and eventually humanity as a whole.

If calculators killed mental maths, and computers & internet killed real life learning through observation & experience, the likes of ChatGPT are destined to dumb down things to even deeper levels by offering readymade essays, machine solved maths theorems and machine debugged code that will invariably result in a lack of analytical, critical and problem solving skills in our young generations, which we increasingly need for solving humanity’s emerging problems.

However, the advent of Generative AI and programs like ChatGPT are not without opportunities too. Higher educational institutions in India can tame this beast and make it act as per their sector’s long term visions, if they are aware of the opportunities this opens up. To mention just one, new hot skillsets have emerged due to ChatGPT like prompt engineering, chain of thought prompting, and even security skills against malicious acts like prompt injection into LLMs.

And ChatGPT is just the beginning. Newer Generative AI models that achieve text-to-image like DALL-E 2, and 2D-to-3D renderers have already arrived, and the next horizon would be text-to-video. And the challenges it opens up (for instance, fake news) will be equal to the innovative uses (say, highly creative movies on shoestring budgets) it can be applied to. Universities would do well to keep their eyes and ears open to such opportunities and see how they can add value to their research projects as well as academic delivery.

BUT THE REAL ISSUE WITH CHATGPT IS NOT THIS LACK OF ABSOLUTE TRUTH, BUT THE FACT THAT IT PRESENTS THIS IMPERFECT OUTPUT AS THE PERFECT TRUTH USING HUMAN-LIKE LANGUAGE CONSTRUCTS THAT MAKE THE TEXT VERY MUCH PLAUSIBLE AND PERSUASIVE.

THE ODISHA BASED SOA DEEMED-TO-BE-UNIVERSITY HAS BEEN EXCELLING IN PLACEMENTS YEAR AFTER YEAR, MOVING UP THE RUNGS BY WAY OF BOTH QUANTITY AND QUALITY OF JOB OFFERS FROM LEADING CORPORATES, AS WELL AS ACHIEVING BIG IN INCUBATING ADMIRABLE STUDENT STARTUPS.

magine students impressing dignitaries like Dharmendra Pradhan, India’s Minister for Education, Subhas Sarkar, Minister of State for Education, and Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Minister of State for Skill Development & Entrepreneurship, with their startup projects. That is what four student groups of Odisha’s Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan (SOA) deemed-to-be university achieved recently. These teams belonging to SOA’s faculty of engineering, the Institute of Technical Education and Research (ITER), had created four startups - Wedmist Technology, Twinverse Technology, Let’s Drive & Extrava Study Tours - that won the appreciation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. The event was an elite one, the recent sixday Future of Work Exhibition held on the sidelines of the G20 Education Working Group meeting which was held at the CSIR Institute of Minerals and Materials Technology in Bhubaneswar. The first startup Wedmist Technology’s flagship product serves hyper-local service providers through Artificial Intelligence

(AI) while Twinverse Technology focuses on diverse areas including archaeology, tourism etc that are among Odisha’s strengths as well as in novel product designing. The third startup Let’s Drive is working on creating unique employment opportunities in the use of electric vehicles, while the fourth one Extrava Study Tours focuses on enhancing the workplace skills of people seeking

employment using innovative means. Apart from the Union Ministers, other top dignitaries who visited the SOA startups stall included Prof TG Sitharam, Chairman of AICTE, K Sanjaya Murthy, Secretary, Higher Education in the Ministry of Education, Prof Anil Sahasrabudhe, Chairman, EC, NAAC and Dr Nirmaljeet Singh Kalsi, Chairman, National Council for Vocational Education and Training. While student startups are inspiring for all, they directly empower and enable only a fewer number of students, and SOA has bigger initiatives that enable

Prof. Pradipta Kumar Nanda. Vice Chancellor

almost all of its 15,000 strong student community. One such recent event was an industrial interactive workshop conducted by SOA in Bhubaneswar on the topic ‘Recent Developments and Challenges in Core Industries’. The workshop focused on subjects like emerging areas of renewable energy, future challenges of work, workforce and workplace in manufacturing industries, challenges which obstruct the improvement of core industries, and opportunities for smart manufacturing and application of data science, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) in Industries. The workshop was organised by the Department of

Mechanical Engineering of the SOA’s Institute of Technical Education and Research (ITER), and featured industry experts from Brahmani River Pellets Ltd, CTTC, Sunstone Solar Solutions, Sree Metaliks, and GMR Power Plant as the resource persons who discussed the dynamically changing career prospects of engineering students. The experts detailed the need for preparing graduates in the field of science and technology by inculcating various emerging skill sets required by the industry. With such empowering programs it is no wonder really that SOA has not only ended the need for Odisha based students to go outside the state for higher education, but is also attracting students from all over India and some pockets of the world. This deemed university has been excelling in placements year after year, moving up the rungs by way of both quantity and quality of job offers from leading corporates. SOA is accredited by NAAC with ‘A++’ grade and is in its 3rd cycle, and is ranked Internationally by QS and THE World University Rankings. In MHRD’s NIRF India Rankings 2022, it is 16th in the University Category, 27th in the

Engineering Category, 18th in the Medical Category, 10th in the Dental Category, 9th in the Law Category and 45th in the Research Category. SOA has also been granted the Category-I Graded Autonomy Status by UGC, Government of India. The sprawling SOA campus in the capital city of Odisha is ranked 3rd nationally for being most clean under the Government’s Swachh Campus initiative. The brainchild of Prof. (Dr.) Manojranjan Nayak, who serves as the President of SOA, this deemed university follows national and international standards in pedagogy and the quality of its teaching learning systems and processes. For instance, SOA follows the Outcome Based Education (OBE) framework and has several NBA and ICAR accredited programs. SOA is also home to the NABH accredited SUM Hospital and an NABL accredited Diagnostics Laboratory. SOA is professionally led by a team of academicians led by Prof. (Dr) Amit Banerjee as Chancellor; Prof. (Dr.) Pradipta Kumar Nanda as Vice Chancellor; Prof. (Dr.) Bibhuti Bhusan Pradhan as Pro Vice-Chancellor; and Prof. (Dr.) Sitikantha Mishra also as Pro Vice-Chancellor.

Prof. Amit Banerjee - Chancellor

SATHYABAMA IS THE PLACE TO STUDY AI, ROBOTICS, BLOCKCHAIN, IOT & MORE

CHENNAI BASED DEEMED UNIVERSITY SATHYABAMA INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY IS FAST EMERGING AS ONE OF THE LEADING DESTINATIONS TO STUDY FUTURISTIC DOMAINS INCLUDING AI, ROBOTICS, BLOCKCHAIN, INTERNET OF THINGS ETC, AS WELL AS CURRENTLY BUZZING DOMAINS LIKE CLOUD COMPUTING AND SAAS VIA A TIE-UP WITH INDUSTRY LEADER SERVICENOW OF THE USA. SATHYABAMA HAS ALSO EMERGED AS A LEADER IN ACADEMICS WITH ITS BREADTH OF DOMAINS AND INNOVATIVE PEDAGOGY, AND AS A LEADER IN FUNDED RESEARCH PROJECTS AND STARTUP INCUBATION. FOUNDED BY THE MULTIFACETED LEADER AND ENTREPRENEUR HON.COL.DR. JEPPIAAR, AS ITS FOUNDER CHANCELLOR, THE INSTITUTION HAS SCALED GREATER HEIGHTS AS A HIGHEST GRADE INSTITUTION WITH NAAC A++ ACCREDITATION, UNDER THE DYNAMIC LEADERSHIP OF DR.MARIAZEENA JOHNSON AS CHANCELLOR AND DR.MARIE JOHNSON AS PRESIDENT.

ver since ChatGPT burst into the scene last November, this giant initiative in Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been transforming sectors including education. While there are great concerns about ChatGPT’s potential to corrupt students by way of delivering complete answers for challenges in essay writing, maths problem solving and software coding, it also holds great opportunities in creating a new breed of jobs.

For instance, prompt engineering is fast emerging as a domain that can employ thousands of skilled engineers, and it involves training the Generative AI or Large Language Models (LLM) like ChatGPT with systematic sets of questions, data and follow up questions. And with Generative AI moving past text-based solutions like ChatGPT into image generators like DALL-E and video generators, prompt engineering is going to be a hot field to be in, in the years to come.

But for students considering such futuristic domains, it is always a

question as to which university to go for while pursuing such subjects. Chennai based deemed university Sathyabama Institute of Science & Technology is fast emerging as one of the leading destinations to study all such tech-related domains including Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Robotics, Blockchain / Crypto, Internet of Things (IoT), Data Science, Cyber Security and more. And future watchers are predicting that there will be several new opportunities to emerge in these

domains as their adoption becomes fast paced. For example, prompt injection is a malicious strategy to manipulate LLMs like ChatGPT to produce realistic fake news and fake profiles and hence cyber security experts are also expected to be in high demand, provided they upgrade their skills to combat these new challenges. While Sathyabama has heavily invested in these futuristic domains, it has also set its eyes firmly on the current trends in IT and IT enabled services, which is mainly revolving around cloud computing and Software as a Service (SaaS) domains. The majority of jobs in the technology sector are expected to be in these sectors in the immediate future, and to tap this effectively for their students, Sathyabama, under the visionary leadership of its Chancellor Dr. Mariazeena Johnson, has tied up with a world leader in this segment, the USA based and NYSE listed tech major ServiceNow.

ServiceNow has developed an innovative cloud computing platform to help companies manage digital workflows for enterprise operations. Ranked number one by Forbes in its list of the world’s most innovative companies, the Santa Clara, California based ServiceNow is witnessing rapid adoption by large corporations across the world and

is today seen as a top competitor for Microsoft, SAP, SalesForce and other leaders in this space.

Under its recent tie-up with ServiceNow’s RiseUp program, Sathyabama has integrated their modules like ServiceNow Advanced Fundamentals, IT Service Management, Scripting and Application Development etc into the curriculum so that text-book knowledge is merged with practical applications right while the students are in the university, making them uniquely industry ready to take up high paying jobs in the digital enterprise workplace as soon as they pass out.

With such initiatives, Sathyabama Institute of Science and Technology (Deemed to be University) has emerged as one of India's premier Academic and Research universities that offers multi-disciplinary academic programmes in various fields of Engineering, Science, Technology, Architecture, Law, Pharmacy, Dental, Nursing, Management, Arts, Science , Physiotherapy, Allied health sciences and Hotel Management.

The institution was established in 1987 by multifaceted leader and entrepreneur Hon.Col.Dr. Jeppiaar, as its Founder Chancellor. It was established under Sec.3 of UGC Act, 1956 and is accredited with “A++” the Highest Grade by National

Dr. MARIAZEENA JOHNSON, Chancellor

Dr. MARIE JOHNSON, President

Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) and is also recognized by AICTE.

Sathyabama reached greater heights under the dynamic leadership of Dr.Mariazeena Johnson as Chancellor and Dr.Marie Johnson as President. They are assisted in the daunting task of administration by Vice Presidents ArulSelvan, Maria Bernadette Tamilarasi, Maria Catherine Jayapriya, and a team of outstanding faculty, who follows innovative pedagogical practices backed by state-of-the-art academic and research facilities.

Sathyabama’s stands tall in ratings and rankings at both the national and international level. The Institution has been ranked one among the top 50 Universities for the last seven consecutive years in NIRF ranking by India’s Ministry of Education, which is an impressive feat achieved only by the most excellent higher education institutions in the country. This deemed university today offers 49 Undergraduate Programmes, 25 Postgraduate programmes and Ph.D programmes in all major disciplines.

Sathyabama is also a leading hub for Research, Technology Incubation and Product innovation in Science and Technology. There are 40+ technical and non-technical clubs contributing to students’ overall and co-curricular development under Student

Development Cell of the institution.

The Sathyabama Centre for Advanced Studies is one of its kind among peers and delivers the unique synergy between the academic and research fields. This state-of-the-art establishment is in an impressive area of 60,000 sq.ft within a total built up space of 2,40,000 sq.ft, having 360 feet facade with two courtyards, with one representing the academic block and the other the advanced research facility.

Over the years, Sathyabama has become a high ranking destination by offering world class academic and research ambience, and has succeeded in attracting students from different parts of the globe.The International Research Centre and Col.Dr.Jeppiaar Research Park housing the advanced research facilities, have globally recognized research and scientific talent. There are 15 centres of excellence in research, which are working in close coordination with these impressive research facilities.

Reflecting the quality and quantity of the research in the campus are 10+ Technology Transfers, 100+ patents and 19000+ reputed publications. The institute also has 228 funded projects, 50 + startups and 11 NBA accredited programmes. Sathyabama also has QS World University Ranking between

1001 – 1200 and Times Impact Ranking between 601 – 800.

Sathyabama has signed more than 250 MoUs for research collaborations, faculty and student exchange, and internship programs, with international universities and industries. This includes collaborations with 51 international and 25 national institutions. The institution distinguished itself in receiving grants from the major research funding initiatives by MHRD including SPARC, SPARSH & IMPRESS programs, NPDF, RTF, DST-OVDF, ICMR-RA and CSIRSRF, besides Korean research fellowship, for various projects.

Also to its credit is the first successful Student Satellite ‘SATHYABAMASAT’ which was designed and developed by the staff & students of Sathyabama, and launched in 2016 by ISRO. The team behind this had an interaction with the honourable Prime Minister Narendra Modi who was highly appreciative of this achievement.

Sathyabama’s placement record has been consistent with around 93% of placements every year, with 300+ companies involved in the recruitment process that includes dream companies and super dream companies’ providing lucrative offers to the students. In the current year the placements have crossed 2900 offers and are still going on.

MARIA BERNADETTE TAMILARASI, Vice President

J. ARUL SELVAN Vice President

MARIA CATHERINE JAYAPRIYA Vice President

SEASONAL MAGAZINE

A PSYCHOLOGIST SHARES THE HABITS OF HAPPY PEOPLE

WHAT MAKES YOU HAPPY? MAYBE IT’S GETTING UP EARLY TO SEE THE SUNRISE, HANGING OUT WITH FAMILY AND FRIENDS ON A WEEKEND, OR GOING FOR A DIP IN THE SEA. BUT WHAT DOES SCIENCE SAY ABOUT THE THINGS HAPPY PEOPLE DO?

e know that happy people tend to have strong relationships, good physical health and contribute regularly to their communities. I have experimented over the past seven years with a number of happiness and wellbeing interventions in a bid to improve my own mental health and to understand how to best help others. Some strategies have stuck while others haven’t worked for me. But here’s what I’ve learnt along the way.

The reality is that there’ll be times we manage to engage with happiness habits and feel positive. Then there’ll be occasions when life throws a curve ball and our happiness is affected. But the good news is that we can all improve our levels of happiness with daily practice.

1. MOVE YOUR BODY

My body needs to move regularly throughout the day. Sitting for long periods of time does not make my body or mind happy. At the very least I will walk briskly for an hour every day. I also like to swim, dance and do yoga. Regular physical activity and exercise are high on the list for happiness as studies consistently demonstrate a link between being physically active and increased subjective wellbeing, aka happiness. Research shows that walking for 30 minutes a day can improve your health. But studies on happiness show that people benefit more when they engage in moderate and highintensity exercise, which increases the heart rate. Moderate exercise is anything that makes you slightly out of breath – you can still talk but probably couldn’t sing a song. Prioritise exercise, your body (and brain) will thank you for it.

2P. R I OR I T I S CEONNCT I ON

The most recent happiness research shows that our social connections are important in terms of overall wellbeing and life satisfaction. Indeed, making time to talk, listen, share and have fun with friends and family is a habit I try to prioritise. But a recent study has found that we generally engage more with friends and family when we feel unhappy and less so when we are happy. This may be because we naturally seek out comfort and support to feel happier and pursue other activities when our happiness is stable. It seems to come down to a question of balance, too much time alone can lead to negative emotions and so seeking out others is a natural way to alleviate this and boost our mood. On the flip side when we feel positive and happier we are more inclined to support others and provide a shoulder to cry on. Nonetheless spending time in the company of friends and family provides both short-term and long-term happiness gains. Look after your friendships and they’ll look after you.

3. PRACTICE GRATITUDE

Our outlook on life and how we evaluate things also plays a huge part in our happiness levels. Studies have found that having a more optimistic mindset and practising a sense of gratitude can buffer against negative emotions and increase happiness. Practising daily gratitude, such as counting my blessings or listing things throughout the day I am grateful for, helps me think more positively and feel happier. You can do this in a number of ways, for example, a daily gratitude journal, which can be handwritten or kept on your phone. The three good things intervention is a quick

and easy habit to adopt for increasing optimism. You simply write down three things that went well every day and reflect on what was good about these. There are many apps now that can prompt you and keep track of your gratitude. Other apps allow you to create vision boards and positive affirmations for your days. Although some may seem gimmicky it’s all about that gentle nudging towards positivity, which the science supports. Or in other words, practising and cultivating an attitude of gratitude and appreciation generally works, and helps you to feel more positive about your life. Gratitude also helps you to see the bigger picture and become more resilient in the face of adversity. You can also practice gratitude more naturally by giving thanks – telling someone what you are grateful for that day or sending thank-you messages. Indeed, it might sound trite but this is important as research shows daily feelings of gratitude are associated with higher levels of positive emotions and better social wellbeing. So give thanks, it might just lead to a happier life.

4. SPENDING TIME WITH PETS HELPS TOO

My pets are part and parcel of our family routine and also support me in my daily happiness. I find going for walks easier to do because of my dogs. Research shows that dogs motivate their human companions to be more active and in turn, both dog and human have a shared pleasurable experience that boosts their happiness. I also enjoy sitting with my cats while drinking tea and reading a book. Studies have found that family pets provide many benefits towards health and happiness, as they not only provide companionship but also reduce incidents of depression and anxiety while helping to boost our happiness and self-esteem levels.

The main ingredients for happiness and what the research boils down to are social connections and activity – of both the mind and body. And finding a flow to life through our daily habits and intentions can lead to happier, more fulfilling lives.

(By Lowri Dowthwaite-Walsh, Senior Lecturer in Psychological Interventions, University of Central Lancashire)

NVIDIA IS SUDDENLY AN ‘AI CHIP MAKER’: ENTERS BIG LEAGUE AS A $1 TRILLION FIRM

NVIDIA IS SUDDENLY AN ‘AI CHIP MAKER’: ENTERS BIG LEAGUE AS A $1 TRILLION FIRM

THE CHIPMAKER ORIGINALLY KNOWN FOR ITS GRAPHIC PROCESSING UNITS (GPUS) USED IN GAMING COMPUTERS, LATER REINVENTED ITSELF AS THE BLOCKCHAIN POSTERBOY AS ITS GPUS WERE HEAVILY USED FOR THE MINING OF BITCOIN, ETHEREUM AND OTHER SUCH LEADING CRYPTOS. EVEN WHILE BOTH THE GAMING AND CRYPTO BUSINESSES HAVE SLOWED DOWN, NVIDIA HAS SUDDENLY TOOK THE MARKET BY SURPRISE BY REPORTING A QUARTERLY PROFIT OF MORE THAN $2 BILLION AND REVENUES OF $7 BILLION LAST WEEK, BOTH HIGHER THAN WALL STREET PROJECTIONS. NVIDIA’S SURGING FORTUNES NOW COMES ON THE BACK OF RISING DEMAND FOR ITS GPUS BEING USED FOR THE GENERATIVE AI PROGRAMS LIKE CHATGPT.

hares of Nvidia Corporation, a pioneering graphics chipmaker that is already one of the world’s most valuable companies, have been surging after the California company forecast a sharp jump in revenue last Thursday (May 25). Riding on its dominance in the gaming and artificial intelligence (AI) sectors, and the potential that the generative AI holds in reshaping the technology sector, Nvidia breached the $1 trillion market cap on May 30, making it the first US chipmaker to enter the trillion-dollar club and ahead of storied competitors such as Intel and AMD.

The company had reported a quarterly profit of more than $2 billion and revenues of $7 billion last week, both significantly higher than Wall Street projections. The surge in the demand for graphics processing units (GPUs) –advanced chips which Nvidia makes, that are put to specialised uses – is driven by artificial intelligence applications such as those being released by OpenAI and Google. Buoyant demand for chips in data centres is the primary reason why Nvidia has been surging, with the latest trigger being the generative AI rush. Apple Inc, Alphabet Inc, Microsoft Corp and Amazon.com Inc are the other US companies that are part of the trilliondollar club. While Facebook owner Meta Platforms Inc had touched this milestone in 2021, it has since slid down

to a market cap of around $650 billion. Traditionally, the CPU, or the central processing unit, has been the most important component in a computer or a server, a market dominated by Intel and AMD. GPUs are relatively new additions to the computer hardware market and were initially sold as cards that plug into a personal computer’s motherboard to basically add computing power to an AMD or Intel CPU.

Nvidia’s main pitch over the years has been that graphics chips can handle computation workload surge, such as what is required in high-end graphics for gaming or animation applications, way better than standard processors. AI applications too require a tremendous amount of computing power and, as a result, are progressively getting GPUheavy in terms of their backend hardware. Most of the advanced systems used for training generative AI tools now deploy as many as half a dozen GPUs to every one CPU used, completely changing the equation where GPUs were seen as just add-ons to CPUs. Nvidia completely dominates this global market for GPUs and is likely to maintain this lead well into the foreseeable future, the primary reason for the surge in stock valuations.

According to Jen-Hsun “Jensen” Huang, the Taiwanese-American electrical engineer who co-founded Nvidia and is the President and CEO of the company, the data centres of the past, which were largely CPUs for file

Jensen Huang

retrieval, are going to be, in the future, focussed on generative data. “Instead of retrieving data, you’re going to retrieve some data, but you’ve got to generate most of the data using AI … So instead of millions of CPUs, you’ll have a lot fewer CPUs, but they will be connected to millions of GPUs,” Huang, who is known for as much for his phenomenal business acumen as for his penchant for turning up in a trademark black leather jacket, told CNBC in an interview earlier this month.

Nvidia was co-founded in 1993 by Huang, Chris Malachowsky, a Sun Microsystems engineer, and Curtis Priem, a graphics chip designer at IBM and Sun Microsystems. The three men famously founded the company in a meeting at a roadside diner in San Jose, primarily looking to solve the computational challenge that video games posed, with some initial venture capital backing from Sequoia Capital

and others. Before it was formally christened, the co-founders had named all their files NV, short for “next version”. This moniker was subsequently combined with “invidia”, the Latin word for envy.

Today, if Taiwan-based foundry specialist TSMC is now unquestionably the most important backend player in the semiconductor chips business, Nvidia – alongside Intel, AMD, Samsung and Qualcomm – line up on the front end. For nearly three decades, Nvidia’s chips have been coveted by gamers shaping what’s possible in graphics and dominating much of the market since it first popularised the term graphics processing unit with its GForce 256 processor. Now the Nvidia GPU chips such as its new ‘RTX’ range are at the forefront of the generative AI boom based on large language models. What is really remarkable about Nvidia is the company’s dexterity at shrugging

off near bankruptcies (at least three times in the last 30 years) and Huang’s uncanny ability to catch new business waves. The company caught the gaming wave really early on, hitched on to the crypto wave and emerged as the most sought after chip for crypto mining hardware, tried riding on the metaverse wave too and has now latched on successfully to the AI wave. And all along, it has adapted its GPUs for each of these diverse requirements, edging out the traditional CPU makers.

Catching the latest AI wave has meant that Nvidia’s data centre business recorded a growth of nearly 15 per cent during the first quarter of this calendar year versus flat growth for AMD’s data centre unit and a sharp decline of nearly 40 per cent in Intel’s data centre business unit. Alongside the application of the GPUs, the company’s chips are comparatively more expensive that most CPUs on a per unit basis, resulting in far better margins.

Analysts say that Nvidia is ahead of the others in the race for AI chips because of its proprietary software that makes it easier to leverage all of the GPU hardware features for AI applications. According to Huang, Nvidia is likely to maintain the lead as the company’s software would not be easy to replicate.

“You have to engineer all of the software and all of the libraries and all of the algorithms, integrate them into and optimise the frameworks, and optimise it for the architecture, not just one chip but the architecture of an entire data centre,” he was quoted by Reuters on a call with analysts last week.

And it’s not just the chips, but Nvidia has the systems that back the processors up and the software that runs all of it, making it a full stack solutions company. And now, the data centre segment is roughly 70 per cent of Nvidia’s revenue mix, with over half of that is directly related to large language models (LLMs) and generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and Google Bard.

In addition to GPU manufacturing, Nvidia offers an application programme interface – or API, a set of defined instructions that enable different applications to communicate with each other – called CUDA, which allows the

creation of parallel programs using GPUs and are deployed in supercomputing sites around the world. It also has a leg in the mobile computing market with its Tegra mobile processors for smartphones and tablets, as well as products in the vehicle navigation and entertainment systems. Nvidia’s resilience is a case study in a business segment that has very high entry barriers and offers a phenomenal premium for specialisation. The way the global semiconductor chip industry works today, it is dominated almost entirely by some countries and, in turn, a handful of companies. For instance, two nations – Taiwan and South Korea – make up about 80 per cent of the global foundry base for chips.

TSMC, the world’s most advanced chipmaker, is headquartered in Taiwan, while only a handful of companies – Samsung, SK Hynix, Intel and Micron – can put together advanced logic chips. One firm in the world – the Netherlands based ASML – has the capability to produce a type of machine called an EUV (extreme ultraviolet lithography) device, without which making an advanced chip is simply not possible. So much so, that when US President Joe Biden was in the Netherlands in January, he asked the Dutch government to block exports from ASML to China as part of the efforts by the US to cut off Beijing’s ability to make advanced semiconductors, according to a Reuters report. Cambridge-based chip designer Arm is the world’s biggest supplier of chip design elements used in products from smartphones to games consoles (which Nvidia was keen to acquire). It is a nearly closed manufacturing ecosystem with very high entry barriers, as China’s SMIC, a national semiconductor champion that is now reportedly struggling to procure advanced chip making equipment after a US-led blockade, is finding out.

In this market, Nvidia, almost comprehensively, dominates the chips used for high-end graphics-based applications and as a result, has come to dominate multiple end-use sectors that include gaming, crypto mining and now AI.

And as more AI inferencing starts to happen on local devices, with an

increasing number of people accessing tools such as ChatGPT and Google’s Bard, personal computers will progressively need powerful yet efficient hardware to support these complex tasks. For this, Nvidia is pushing its new ‘RTX’ range of GPUs that it claims is adapted for low-power inferencing for AI workloads. The GPU essentially operates at a fraction of the power for lighter inferencing tasks, while having the flexibility to scale up to high levels of performance for heavy generative AI workloads.

To create new AI applications, Nvidia is also pushing developers to access a complete RTX-accelerated AI development stack running on Windows 11, making it easier to develop, train and deploy advanced AI models. This starts with the development and fine-tuning of models with optimised deep learning frameworks available via the Windows Subsystem for Linux – the open source operating system that a lot of developers rely on. Developers can then move to the cloud to train on the same Nvidia AI stack, which is available from every major cloud service provider, and subsequently optimise the trained models for fast inferencing with tools such as Microsoft Olive.

According to the company, the developers can ultimately deploy their AI-enabled applications and features to an install base of over 100 million RTX PCs and workstations that have been

optimised for AI, in effect making it an almost end-to-end solutions stack for those looking at developing or adapting AI applications. “AI will be the single largest driver of innovation for Windows customers in the coming years,” according to Pavan Davuluri, corporate vice president of Windows silicon and system integration at Microsoft.

In 30 years, Nvidia died almost thrice, each time shedding flab and successfully managing to pivot to a new growth centre. The company faced a major setback last year after regulators blocked a $40 billion takeover of the Softbank-backed British design company Arm over competition concerns.

Its biggest risk perhaps stems from its relianceon TSMC to make nearly all its chips, leaving it vulnerable to geopolitical shocks.

But the US Chips Act passed last year has set aside $52 billion to incentivise chip companies to manufacture on US soil and TSMC is spending some $40 billion to build two chip fabrication plants in Arizona. That should somewhat derisk US chip makers such as Nvidia, alongside Intel and AMD, going forward.

Specialised hardware manufacturers such as Nvidia are projected to be big winners here as AI gets more “intelligent” and progressively moves to each and every laptop or desktop.

(By Anil Sasi for Indian Express)

Which is More Serious? AI’s Near Term Issues or Long Term Threats?

Artificial intelligence could lead to the extinction of humanity, experts - including the heads of OpenAI (ChatGPT creator) and Google Deepmind - have warned. And dozens have supported a statement published on the webpage of the Centre for AI Safety, which reads “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societalscale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.” But other experts in AI say that these current winners in the AI turf are using such doomsday scenarios to camoflauge the near term complications from their own projects like ChatGPT.

am Altman, chief executive of ChatGPT-maker Open AI, Demis Hassabis, chief executive of Google DeepMind and Dario Amodei of Anthropic have all supported the statement. The Centre for AI Safety website suggests a number of possible disaster scenarios, like the following:

AIs could be weaponised - for example, drug-discovery tools could be used to build chemical weapons. AI-generated misinformation could destabilise society and “undermine collective decision-making”. The power of AI could become increasingly concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, enabling “regimes to enforce narrow values through pervasive surveillance and oppressive censorship”. Enfeeblement, where humans become dependent on AI “similar to the scenario portrayed in the film Wall-E”.

Dr Geoffrey Hinton, who issued an earlier warning about risks from superintelligent AI, has also supported the Centre for AI Safety’s call. Yoshua Bengio, professor of computer science at the university of Montreal, has also signed.

Dr Hinton, Prof Bengio and NYU Professor Yann LeCun are often described as the “godfathers of AI” for their groundbreaking work in the field - for which they jointly won the 2018 Turing Award, which recognises outstanding contributions in computer science.

But Prof LeCun, who also works at Meta, has said these apocalyptic warnings are overblown tweeting that “the most common reaction by AI

researchers to these prophecies of doom is face palming”.

Many other experts similarly believe that fears of AI wiping out humanity are unrealistic, and a distraction from issues such as bias in systems that are already a problem.

Arvind Narayanan, a computer scientist at Princeton University, has previously told the BBC that sci-fi-like disaster scenarios are unrealistic: “Current AI is nowhere near capable enough for these risks to materialise. As a result, it’s distracted attention away from the near-term harms of AI”.

Oxford’s Institute for Ethics in AI senior research associate Elizabeth Renieris told BBC News she worried more about risks closer to the present.

“Advancements in AI will magnify the scale of automated decision-making that is biased, discriminatory, exclusionary or otherwise unfair while also being inscrutable and incontestable,” she said. They would “drive an exponential increase in the volume and spread of misinformation, thereby fracturing reality and eroding

the public trust, and drive further inequality, particularly for those who remain on the wrong side of the digital divide”.

Many AI tools essentially “free ride” on the “whole of human experience to date”, Ms Renieris said. Many are trained on human-created content, text, art and music they can then imitateand their creators “have effectively transferred tremendous wealth and power from the public sphere to a small handful of private entities”.

But Centre for AI Safety director Dan Hendrycks told BBC News future risks and present concerns “shouldn’t be viewed antagonistically”. Addressing some of the issues today can be useful for addressing many of the later risks tomorrow,” he said.

Media coverage of the supposed “existential” threat from AI has snowballed since March 2023 when experts, including Tesla boss Elon Musk, signed an open letter urging a halt to the development of the next generation of AI technology.

Dr Geoffrey Hinton

Yann LeCun

Prof Bengio

Arvind Narayanan

That letter asked if we should “develop non-human minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete and replace us”. In contrast, the new campaign has a very short statement, designed to “open up discussion”. The statement compares the risk to that posed by nuclear war. In a blog post OpenAI recently suggested superintelligence might be regulated in a similar way to nuclear energy: “We are likely to eventually need something like an IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] for superintelligence efforts” the firm wrote.

Both Sam Altman and Google chief executive Sundar Pichai are among technology leaders to have discussed AI regulation recently with the British Prime Minister .

Speaking to reporters about the latest warning over AI risk, Rishi Sunak stressed the benefits to the economy and society. “You’ve seen that recently it was helping paralysed people to walk, discovering new antibiotics, but we need to make sure this is done in a way that is safe and secure,” he said.

“Now that’s why I met last week with CEOs of major AI companies to discuss what are the guardrails that we need to put in place, what’s the type of regulation that should be put in place to keep us safe.

“People will be concerned by the reports that AI poses existential risks, like pandemics or nuclear wars. I want them to be reassured that the UK government is looking very carefully at this.”

He had discussed the issue recently with other leaders, at the G7 summit of leading industrialised nations, Mr Sunak said, and would raise it again in the US soon. The G7 has recently created a working group on AI.

(By Chris Vallance for BBC)

THE JOBS LEAST LIKELY TO BE TAKEN OVER BY ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, FOR NOW

AMID THE TALK OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE REPLACING WORKERS, EXPERTS SAY THERE ARE SOME JOBS COMPUTERS AREN’T TAKING – AT LEAST FOR A WHILE.

ince the start of the industrial revolution, there have been threats that new machines – from mechanised looms to microchips – would usurp human jobs. For the most part, the humans have prevailed. Now, say some experts, with AI ubiquity on the horizon, the threat’s being realised: the robots really are coming for some jobs.

A March 2023 report from Goldman Sachs estimated that AI capable of content generation could do a quarter of all the work currently done by humans. Across the European Union and US, the report further notes, 300 million jobs could be lost to automation. And that could be dire, says Martin Ford, author of Rule of the Robots: How Artificial Intelligence Will Transform Everything.

“It's not just that this would happen to individuals, but it could be pretty systemic,” he says. “It could happen to a lot of people, potentially quite suddenly, potentially all at the same time. And that has implications not just for those individuals, but for the whole economy.”

Thankfully, it’s not all bad news. The experts issue their warnings with a caveat: there are still things AI isn’t capable of –

tasks that involve distinctly human qualities, like emotional intelligence and outside-the-box thinking. And moving into roles that centre those skills could help lessen the chances of being replaced.

“I think there are generally three categories that are going to be relatively insulated in the foreseeable future,” says Ford. “The first would be jobs that are genuinely creative: you’re not doing formulaic work or just rearranging things, but you're genuinely coming up with new ideas and building something new.”

While a robot may ostensibly provide a faster diagnosis, patients will still want humans to guide and educate them (Credit: Getty Images)

That doesn’t necessarily mean all jobs that are considered ‘creative’ are safe. In fact, things like graphic design and visual art-related roles may be among the first to go; basic algorithms can direct a bot to analyse millions of images, allowing AI to master aesthetics instantly. But there’s some security in other kinds of creativity, says Ford: “in science, and medicine and law … people whose job is coming up with a new legal strategy or business strategy. I think that there's going to continue to be a place there for human beings”.

The second insulated category, he continues, is jobs that require sophisticated interpersonal relationships. He points to nurses, business consultants and investigative journalists. These are jobs, he says, “where you need a very deep understanding of people. I think it’ll be a long time before AI has the ability to interact in the kinds of ways that really build relationships”.

The third safe zone, says Ford, “are jobs that really require lots of mobility and dexterity and problem-solving ability in unpredictable environments”. Many trade jobs – think electricians, plumbers, welders and the like – fall under this umbrella. “These are the kinds of jobs where you're dealing with a new situation all the time,” he adds. “They are probably the hardest of anything to automate. In order to automate jobs like this, you would need a science fiction robot. You’d need Star Wars’s C-3PO.”

at the University of Buffalo, US, most jobs, regardless of industry, have aspects that are likely to be automated by the technology.

“In many cases, there’s no immediate threat to jobs,” she says, “but tasks will change.” Human jobs will become more focused on interpersonal skills, continues Song McLaughlin. “It’s easy to imagine that, for instance, AI will detect cancers way better than humans could. In the future, I’m assuming doctors will use that new technology. But I don’t think the doctor’s whole role will be replaced.”

While a robot may ostensibly do a better job of finding cancer, she says, most people will still want a doctor – a real person – to be the one to tell them about it. That’s true of almost all jobs, she adds, and so developing those distinctly human skills could help people learn to do their jobs alongside AI.

has been automated – but there’s still a place for the teller. “The task of money counting became obsolete because of a machine,” she says. “But now, the tellers are more focused on connecting with customers and introducing new products. The social skill has become more important.”

It’s important to note, says Ford, that an advanced education or a high-paying position is not a defence against AI takeover. “We might think the person in the white-collar job is higher on the food chain than someone who drives a car for a living,” he says. “But the white-collar employee’s future is more threatened than the Uber driver, because we still don’t have self-driving cars, but AI can certainly write reports. In many cases, more educated workers are going to be threatened more than the least educated workers. Think of the person that works cleaning hotel rooms – it's really hard to automate that job.”

While humans will likely remain in jobs that fall within those categories, that doesn’t mean those professions are totally insulated from the ascent of AI. In fact, says Joanne Song McLaughlin, associate professor

of

labour economics

“I think it’s smart to really think, ‘what kind of tasks within my job will be replaced, or will be better done by computer or AI? And what's my complementary skill?’” She points to bank tellers, who once had to be very accurate money counters. Now, that task

In short, seeking roles in dynamic, shifting environments that include unpredictable tasks is good way to stave off job loss to AI. At least, for a while.

(Credit: By Kate Morgan for BBC)

THE MANY MIRACLES OF SLEEP

New research has discovered why sleep is so important to the brain: It not only flushes away the brain's waste products, sleep also consolidates your memory and protects you against the risk of Alzheimer's disease among other benefits. Here’s what actually happens in your brain if you get a good night’s sleep – and if you don’t.

ou’re aware that the average person needs at least seven hours of sleep per night, and you don’t need another reminder that you haven’t quite met the quota all this time, thank you very much. Besides, what’s the big deal? You might need a coffee or two in the morning to kickstart your day but, on the whole, you think you’re coping all right.

A new BBC documentary, How To Sleep Well With Michael Mosley, might just be the wake-up call you need. In the hour-long programme, presenter and chronic insomniac Michael Mosley spoke to sleep experts and put himself through tests to find out the true cost –not just sleepiness – of sleep deprivation.

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For starters, you’re not simply lying in bed dreaming away each night. Sleep, as it turns out, is your brain’s way to flush out the very waste associated with Alzheimer’s disease, regulate your emotions as well as consolidate the previous day’s memories.

To do all that – and more – your brain needs time to cycle through the four stages of sleep each night, according to Dr Rachel Sharman, a postdoctoral assistant with the Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute at University of Oxford:

Stage 1: Your brain waves start to slow down from the short and fast waves when you’re awake. Physically, your eyes are rolling and your head is nodding if you’re still upright at this point.

Stage 2: The brain waves look similar to Stage 1 but they also show little peaks of activity. Your brain is now prepping itself

for learning and processing the day’s memories for the later stages of sleep.

Stage 3: Slow brain waves are produced and this is when deep sleep occurs. This is a crucial stage for physiological repair, memory and boosting the immune system’s ability to fight infections.

Stage 4: Your brain waves return to shorter and faster patterns, similar to the ones when you’re awake. This is when rapid eye movement (REM) sleep occurs. Your body is paralysed but your eyes move rapidly as you dream. This is also when vivid dreams occur and is a stage important for emotional regulation.

“In a typical eight-hour sleep, the four stages are repeated several times in what are known as sleep cycles,” said Dr Sharman. In fact, you could go through four to six sleep cycles per night, according to the Sleep Foundation. And not all sleep cycles have the same length; on average, they last about 90 minutes each.

Seeing what your body does at each stage of sleep gives you a better idea why “it’s just not enough to get enough sleep but also enough of the individual stages of sleep”, said Dr Sharman. And the research backs this up: When you’re not sleeping enough, you’re exposing yourself to higher risks of cardiovascular disease, metabolic dysfunction and even cancer.

Here’s a closer look at some of the research featured in the show that discusses how sufficient sleep doesn’t only keep you from nodding off at a meeting but also live longer and healthier:

“We need deep sleep to detoxify the brain. It’s our brain’s laundry system,”

said Dr Sharman. “You want about 20 per cent of your lights-off to lights-on in deep sleep.”

Just what sort of toxins are being washed away? “Things like amyloids,” said Laura Lewis, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Boston University. “Amyloids are proteins that have been implicated in Alzheimer’s disease. So, for someone who doesn’t sleep well, you don’t get this waste clearance.”

Deep sleep is your brain’s laundry system. (Photo: iStock/SilviaJansen)

And the medium, which the brain uses to detoxify itself, is the very liquid that it is suspended in: The cerebral spinal fluid. Her team discovered this when the MRI scans they studied showed that the waves of the cerebral spinal fluid appeared in step with the slow brain waves generated during sleep.

“Waste products produced in the brain tissue can get moved into this liquid and get flushed and cleared from the brain,”

said Asst Prof Lewis.

In the documentary, Mosley spent almost 30 minutes trying to find his way to the middle of a maze. But after a night’s sleep, he was able to accomplish the job in just over six minutes. Sounds like a tip you could use to navigate Orchard MRT station but how does it work?

University of California’s Professor Gina Poe, whose research on how sleep serves memory consolidation and restructuring, explained that it boils down to what’s happening in the brain during specific parts of the sleep cycle. “We need sleep to connect things that we cannot see when we’re awake,” said Prof Poe. For instance, the various directions you make to navigate a maze don’t occur simultaneously “and because of that, it’s hard for us to put all of that together”.

But thanks to the brief period during the transition from deep sleep to REM sleep, when the hippocampus (it has a major role in learning and memory) writes your

temporary memories into long-term memory storage, “you can dredge up memories from yesterday that you might not even be aware of at the time”, she said.

“And it’s only during REM sleep that we can selectively disengage pieces of memory. It’s a time when you can write new memories in as well as erase pieces of memory that you need to erase. And we can wire together the proper synaptic pattern that is associated with solving the problem,” said Prof Poe.

When Mosley’s blood samples were examined, University of Surrey’s Professor Simon Archer was able to see which genes were switched on or off in the blood – and from there, determine which sample was taken before or after a self-imposed sleepless night.

That’s not a good sign because this shows that sleep deprivation causes some genes to be switched on and revved up when normally they wouldn’t be, said Prof Archer. Take, for instance,

your immune system. “When your immune system is in overdrive when it shouldn’t be, that’s not a good thing. It’s bad because you haven’t got pathogens to respond to,” he said.

It is also worrying when the lack of sleep causes the mitochondria, the “engine” part of your cells that produces energy, to dysfunction. This “downregulation” in mitochondria is similar to the mitochondria dysfunction associated with Alzheimer’s, said Prof Archer. “The problem comes when people are frequently missing sleep and accumulating those negative effects, and how that associates with health problems,” he said.

And it’s not just Alzheimer’s. The lack of sleep affects almost every system in the body, said Prof Archer. For example, trying to function after sleep deprivation is akin to having a blood alcohol level of two to three pints of beer, said Dr Sharman. “You wouldn’t drink and drive. So, what about drowsy driving?”

There are two hormones you need to be familiar with: Leptin and ghrelin. “Leptin is produced by the fat cells in the body. When you get more fat stores in the body, leptin levels go up and they tell the brain that fat stores are sufficient,” said Dr Wendy Hall, a nutrition scientist at King’s College London.

On average, those who don't sleep enough consume 385 more calories a day. (Photo: iStock/vadimguzhva)

However, those who are sleep deprived tend to “have lower levels of leptin”, said Dr Hall, which means their bodies aren’t getting the signal that the fat reserves are sufficient when they are.

Ghrelin, on the other hand, is a hormone that regulates hunger and its levels go up when you haven’t eaten for a while, she said. “There is some evidence that ghrelin levels are higher in people who are short sleepers, so they’re getting a constant hunger signal.”

Just how much more do we eat after a bad night’s sleep? “On average, people consume 385 more calories a day,” said Dr Hall. “It’s about 20 per cent of the average woman’s energy requirements. It’s a considerable amount that will lead to weight gain.”

(By Khoo Bee Khim for CNA Digital) SEASONAL MAGAZINE

JSSAHER is Forging Ahead in All Key Domains That Matter

FOR MYSURU HEADQUARTERED JSS ACADEMY OF HIGHER EDUCATION & RESEARCH, EACH ACADEMIC YEAR IS A QUEST TO OUTDO ITSELF, AS THERE ARE NOT MANY PRIVATE SECTOR PEERS THAT ARE FAR AHEAD OF IT. AND THIS DEEMED-TO-BE UNIVERSITY IS DOING IT WITH ELAN YEAR AFTER YEAR UNDER THE BLESSINGS OF ITS CHANCELLOR JAGADGURU SRI SHIVARATHRI DESHIKENDRA MAHASWAMIJI, PRO CHANCELLOR DR. B SURESH AND VICE CHANCELLOR DR. SURINDER SINGH.

An emerging powerhouse in research, JSSAHER, has in recent months achieved a remarkable milestone of having an overall hindex of 100 in SCOPUS database. The h-index, which stands for Hirsch index, measures the impact of a particular institution or a scientist, and for a university, it denotes the maximum number of citations received for the publications arising from that university. A higher h-index shows the quality of research publications from the university and has been used as a reflection of quality of research by various ranking and accreditation bodies like NAAC, NIRF, QS and Times Higher Education Rankings. For many years, JSSAHER has been continuously improving the quality of research by collaborating with

prominent universities across the world. By early this year, JSSAHER had a total number of 11,336 publications of which 5,327 publications were indexed in SCOPUS. The swift rise of the university in h-index has surprised the sector, but on close looks it becomes clear that it is the product of a superior vision to pursue multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary research, as well as the hard work by its scholars which led to publications in high impact journals that resulted in 100 such publications of JSSAHER achieving 100 citations each, which equates to an ‘h’ index of 100. With such concerted efforts in research, it is really no wonder that when the prestigious UK based Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings by Subject 2023 was announced last month, JSSAHER

His Holiness Jagadguru Sri Shivarathri Deshikendra Mahaswamiji, Chancellor

was the only Indian institution to feature under top 150 ranks in the subject ‘Clinical & Health’ with a rank band 126-150. Altogether there were 16 participating institutions under this subject in India. Signalling that it is benefitting much from its international tie-ups, JSSAHER moved ahead of its peer and longterm collaborator La Trobe University of Australia, this time. With this achievement in THE rankings, the university is starting to grab international eyeballs as it was ranked along with several leading

Universities in the world including University of Aberdeen, UK, University of Calgary, Canada, University of California, Davis, USA, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, University of Helsinki, Finland and University of Iowa, USA. And surprise of surprises, JSSAHER’s high citation score placed it equal on that count with none other than Dr. Surinder Singh, Vice Chancellor

Harvard University, which had secured third place in this ranking. The university’s 13th Convocation was a grand affair, where a total of 2,339 students received their degrees and diplomas in various faculties. While 65 of the graduates were awarded PhD degree, 25 others were awarded MPhil, six candidates were conferred with the Doctorate in Medicine and MCh degrees. Academic toppers were specially commended, with a total of 60 academic toppers being given a total of 83 medals and awards with certificates for their exceptional performances. The students who received the degrees this year came from various JSSAHER institutions including JSS Medical College, Mysuru, JSS Dental College and Hospital, Mysuru, JSS College of Pharmacy, Mysuru, JSS College of Pharmacy, Ooty, School of Life Sciences, Mysuru, School of Life Sciences, Ooty and School of Public Health, Mysuru.

Dr. B. Suresh, Pro Chancellor

SEASONAL MAGAZINE

SOARING HIGHER ON ACADEMICS AND RESEARCH

From international tie-ups to poverty alleviation, and from business case studies to multidisciplinary research, IFHE is making its presence felt across higher education and research in business, engineering, architecture, law and social sciences.

Hyderabad based ICFAI Foundation for Higher Education (IFHE), a deemedto-be-university and the flagship of the ICFAI Group spread across India, is soaring higher and higher on the two things that matter most in higher education - academic standards and research achievements. The deemed university is also expanding judiciously by way of more departments. Recently, IFHE, which was until now more renowned for its constituents like ICFAI Business School, ICFAITech School, ICFAI Law School, and ICFAI School of Architecture, launched its School of Social Sciences. Hived off from its Department of Economics, the new ICFAI School of Social Sciences has 23 faculty members, all holding doctorate degrees in Economics, and would focus on teaching, practice, research and field action projects in the various social sciences. Noted economist and IFHE Chancellor Dr. Rangarajan, Vice Chancellor Dr. LS Ganesh, IBS Hyderabad’s Distinguished Professor Mahendra Dev and former VC and Advisor to ICFAI Group Prof. J Mahender Reddy were present on the occasion. The ICFAI School of Social Sciences would soon include disciplines like psychology, sociology and political science, and is likely to focus on emerging domains like sustainability, sustainable development goals,

circular economy, social innovation and startups, as well as improve upon IFHE’s already thriving multidisciplinary research initiatives. IFHE’s constituent schools also continue to forge meaningful tieups with global institutions of repute. The ICFAI School of Architecture (ISArch) recently entered into a Memorandum of

Prof. (Dr.) L. S. Ganesh Vice Chancellor

Understanding (MoU) with the renowned Boston Architectural College (BAC) of Massachusetts, USA. This tie-up will enable both institutions to collaborate and exchange academic and research activities, including Joint Educational Programs and Projects, Exchange of Faculty, Administrative Staff & Scholars, Exchange of Materials, Publications & Information, and Joint Organization of Seminars, Workshops, Studios & Conferences. At the same time, IFHE faculty and researchers are keenly

interested in projects for the upliftment of the economically challenged in India. A recent example was IFHE’s research collaboration with the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). Jointly, they will be conducting a study in the neighbouring Odisha state to support inclusive, gender-responsive and climateresilient diversification of cropping systems and livelihoods in three districts that are suffering due to high poverty levels, vulnerability to droughts, and limited access to irrigation infrastructure. ICFAI Business School (IBS), on its part continues to win awards and accolades for its world-class MBA/PGPM program across all its 9 campuses. It has maintained its international benchmark status in business case studies since its inception. IBS Hyderabad is ranked 5th best in the entire South Zone and recognized as 25th in the list of top 100 private business schools in India in a survey conducted by the Ministry of Education through the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF). IBS Dehradun is also ranked 1st in Uttarakhand, and 17th in North India among the best B-Schools.

Dr. C. Rangarajan Chancellor

Prof. J. Mahender Reddy Advisor, IFHE

TRUE INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLING FINALLY ARRIVES IN KOCHI

TRUE INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLING FINALLY ARRIVES IN KOCHI

Cochin International School has opened its doors recently for students to experience IB & Cambridge schooling in the city, with premium features including over 2 lakh sq ft of built-up area, 4 swimming pools, 15:1 student-facilitator ratio, smart classrooms, extensive indoor & outdoor sports facilities and all meals on the house! Veteran international educationalists including Oxford educated Richard Hillebrand, and JNU trained Karol Toth, would be heading the institution promoted by Trivandrum International School (TRINS) Group led by prominent NRI businessman George M Thomas and Sapnu George.

Richard Hillebrand

hen it comes to quality education, Kerala has always had great institutions. But the advent of the new millennium saw a redefining of what exactly is great quality in schooling, when Kerala’s first truly international school was opened in the state capital of Kerala.

Under the leadership of Kerala’s IT industry pioneer, Vijaya Raghavan, who was the Founding CEO of Trivandrum Technopark, the Trivandrum International School (TRINS) was established in 2003 and it swiftly became the benchmark to beat in the entire state. It was Kerala’s first school following the famed International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum, as well as the most prominent Cambridge International School in Kerala following the IGCSE curriculum.

Twenty years later, the TRINS Group has once again proved that they continue to be the pioneers and leaders in delivering true international schooling in Kerala, by starting Cochin International School (COCHINS) in Pukkattupady, Kochi.

TRINS Group is led by its President, George M Thomas, who is a prominent NRI businessman in Oman and an educationalist par excellence, and its Executive Director, Sapnu George, who is professionally an architect with an eye

for detail and a deep passion in caring for students.

George M Thomas has also been the founder of Asian School of Business, Trivandrum, and a chain of Early Learning Centres. George is currently the Group Chairman of Saif Al Harasi & Burj Oman LLC Group of companies that has been operating in the Sultanate of Oman for nearly three decades.

George was instrumental in nurturing several institutions in the area of infrastructure development, hospitality and learning. His infrastructure development firms have successfully managed several prestigious turnkey projects in the public and private sector, and is a leader in infrastructure projects in the Sultanate of Oman.

In 2019, under George’s leadership, the TRINS Group took over The Charter School in Kochi, which has now been transformed as Cochin International School (COCHINS). The fact that The Charter School, which began its operations in 2012, was created with facilities required for eventually being an IB School, made the task before TRINS Group less formidable.

COCHINS has hit the ground running now with formidable features including 2 lakh sq ft of built-up area, 15:1 studentfacilitator ratio, 4 swimming pools, all meals on the house, smart classrooms, performance hall, indoor & outdoor sports facilities and with in-campus boarding getting readied now.

And needless to say, COCHINS stands to gain immensely from the leadership and expertise of TRINS. Richard Hillebrand, Director of Academics at TRINS Group will also be leading the Group's IB School in Kochi. After

graduating from Oxford University, Richard Hillebrand has had a chequered career in teaching across schools in England, Sri Lanka & Jordan. In India, he was the Founding Principal of Trivandrum International School in 2003. The Principal of Cochin International School is Karol Toth, who holds a Master’s Degree from JNU, and has spent almost two decades in India teaching at leading educational institutions, in both IB and Cambridge schools. Renowned as an engaging and innovative educator, Principal Karol Toth has always succeeded in inculcating a love of learning among his students and a strong camaraderie among his colleagues.

Remi C Rajan, IB-PYP Coordinator at COCHINS has eight years of experience as a PYP educator, including three years at Trivandrum International School. She is an inspiring and determined teacher who encourages each child to explore the world around them, and follows the principle that high expectations lead to high levels of achievement. She holds MPhil & MSc degrees, both in Computer Science.

Other leaders from TRINS Group who would be contributing to the success of COCHINS as mentors include Sanjay Prabhakaran, Head of IB Primary Years Programme, TRINS Group, who has experience in some of the top IB schools in India and is an IB evaluator. Sanjay embodies and implements the PYP philosophy with rigour.

Yet another mentor to COCHINS from the TRINS Group is Rensy Oommen, who joined TRINS in 2004, soon after its inception as a teacher, and is currently the Head of the Primary Section. Rensy has successfully coordinated several outreach initiatives at TRINS.

Mr. Karol Toth, Principal, Cochin International School

Mr. Vijaya Raghavan

Ms. Sapnu George, Executive Director

Mr. George M. Thomas, President

KARUNYA’S SOLUTIONS FOR GLOBAL WELLBEING

Coimbatore based deemed-to-be university, Karunya Institute of Technology & Sciences (KITS) is fast emerging as a powerhouse in both academics and research with the highest NAAC A++ accreditation, and with funded projects worth Rs 25 crore, more than 100 patent applications, 14 granted patents, and 6300 papers in Scopus and WoS indexed journals.

Imagine Artificial Intelligence based traffic control. Or imagine waste collecting robots. Or hybrid rocket motors. Or smart bio polymers, or nanoparticles for meat preservation. These are all cutting-edge products and solutions from various technology domains that not even the most innovative company in the world may not be able to create on its own. Yet, students of a deemed-to-be university in India, the Tamil Nadu based Karunya Institute of Technology & Sciences (KITS), could recently organise a twoday national level event - Mindkraft 23 - that witnessed all these state-of-the-art products and solutions, with the event serving as a perfect launchpad for such brilliant and innovative ideas of budding technologists from all over the nation. Around 150 teams participated in this flagship event of Karunya Deemed University which also saw 90 technical events. The brainchild of noted educationist and Karunya Chancellor Dr. Paul Dhinakaran, the brilliance of Mindkraft 23 was really in the fact that it was the Karunya students who organised the entire event. Obviously, students learn best when they do things for themselves. They were supported by the university’s various departments including the high-tech departments of Aerospace Engineering, Robotics & Automation, Nano Science, and other such faculties. Mindkraft 23 provided a platform for students to explore, collaborate, and find innovative solutions to complex challenges aligned with the 17 Sustainable Development

Goals (SDGs) established by the United Nations and the four key research domains of Karunya viz. food, water, energy, and health. Earlier, Karunya Deemed University’s students had won the prestigious Intel Unnati Grand Challenge. A team of students from Karunya’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering, had developed a decision support system for traffic control using state-of-the-art technology. Interestingly, this was possible due to the university facilitating an Intel Unnati Lab at Karunya campus, whose Upsquare Extreme Edge Computing device was used to build a prototype of this decision support system. Coimbatore based Karunya has also been awarded with the highest NAAC A++ grade. The university had excelled in the NAAC assessment of its laboratories, infrastructure, funded

projects, patents and research papers. KITS has been following an Industry 4.0 compliant curriculum as well as digital teaching and learning practices using state of the art infrastructure. It is emerging as a powerhouse in research with funded projects worth Rs 25 crore, more than 100 patent applications, 14 granted patents, and 6300 papers in Scopus and WoS indexed journals. One of the leaders in startup incubation and entrepreneurship, Karunya has a Section 8 company dedicated to incubation and entrepreneurship. Karunya is also home to 25 technology missions in some of the most pressing areas of concern, and it has unique facilities like a laboratory sponsored by the Ministry of Food Processing Industries and a laboratory supported by the Nano Mission. Its Aerospace Engineering laboratory boasts of supersonic and subsonic wind tunnels and it also has several industry partnered laboratories with tech majors like Siemens, IBM, Cisco, Nvidia, Suez, AMZ Automotive and Tessolve, which make the Karunya students industry ready by the time they graduate.

SOLUTIONS TO NATIONAL CHALLENGES THROUGH RESEARCH & ACADEMICS

SRMIST, the flagship of SRM Group of Universities, led by its Founder & Chancellor and sitting Lok Sabha MP Dr. TR Paarivendhar, is emerging as a powerhouse in research. In the past 3 years alone, this deemed university near Chennai has published 4,100 collaborative papers. Also, in the past 5 years, SRMIST research scholars have published 45 papers in the prestigious ‘Nature’ indexed journals. And over the past 10 years, various SRMIST research projects have received Rs. 200 crore in funding, mainly from various government owned scientific & research bodies.

SRM

rof. (Dr.) Krishna N Ganesh may not be a household name in India, but he is one of the most renowned scientists in India, whom his peers and industry look upon for vision and insights. His exemplary work in bioorganic chemistry, especially about DNA structures and its potential roles in different domains, landed him the prestigious Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize in Chemical Sciences in 1998, and Padma Shri this year. Prof. Dr. Krishna recently had an interesting take on the alternative sources of energy. He sort of denounced one

Dr. TR Paarivendhar Founder & Chancellor

of the greatest initiatives in alternative energy - solar power - and declared that the future of the world is to be a hydrogen economy. While he is not the first person to say this, when it comes from this eminent scientist and the Director of the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, with detailed logic to back his stand, the whole of India took notice. This was also because of the stage from which Prof. (Dr.) Krishna was speaking from - the Inaugural Address at the 4th Dr. Paarivendhar Research Colloquium (DPRC) 2023 at SRM Institute of Science and Technology (SRMIST), at Kattankulathur, near Chennai. The Guest of Honour at the event was Dr. R.Sankaranarayanan,

Outstanding Scientist, Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. Prof. (Dr.) Krishna also had other innovations to educate this elite audience. He called upon their attention to the recent fires at the massive garbage dump yards in New Delhi and Kochi, and informed that solid waste management can be possible by developing new technologies and materials to conduct reactions and processes at room temperatures, thereby reducing the rising costs of energy and faster implementation of such projects. But he cautioned that such projects would require interdisciplinary research that starts in classrooms, and appreciated the

work that private & deemed universities in India like SRMIST, which were established by visionaries, were undertaking to the cause of science education and research. Indeed, Dr. TR

Paarivendhar, the Founder & Chancellor of SRMIST is a multifaceted leader, visionary & educationalist who is also the sitting Member of Parliament in the 17th Lok Sabha of India from Perambalur constituency in Tamil Nadu. What Prof. (Dr.) Krishna said about SRMIST’s achievements in research are also facts, though little known, as in the past 3 years alone, SRMIST has published 4,100 collaborative papers. Also, in the past 5 years, SRMIST research scholars have

published 45 papers in the prestigious ‘Nature’ indexed journals. And over the past 10 years, various SRMIST research projects have received Rs. 200 crore in funding, mainly from various government owned scientific & research bodies. The world is also taking note of such achievements, with a recent example being the La Trobe University in Australia signing a Memorandum of Understanding with SRMIST to establish a Joint Centre of Eminence. High level interactions with topmost scientists of the country and abroad have now become second nature for SRM Group of Universities. The Group’s younger university, SRM University of Andhra Pradesh, recently had such an interaction when its Pro Vice Chancellor Prof. D Narayana Rao and faculty interacted with Prof. CNR Rao, a world-renowned scientist and recipient of the Bharat Ratna, at Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research

(JNCASR) in Bengaluru. The meeting facilitated an extensive discussion on SRM-AP’s ongoing and future research projects. Prof. CNR Rao appreciated SRM-AP’s progress in research over the past five years and provided suggestions to effectively align the university’s research activities with the emerging national missions that contribute to the country’s development. SRM-AP had recently been adjudged as the Best Emerging University with Academic Excellence in India at the 13th Asia Education Summit & Awards 2023 held in New Delhi, with the award handed over to the University by

Union Minister of State for Education and External Affairs Dr Raj Kumar Ranjan Singh along with former Union Minister for Education Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank, for SRM-AP’s outstanding services and contribution to the higher education sector. SRM students also continue to shine on, in not only academics, but extracurricular activities like sports, with a recent example being both its boys and girls teams winning the top spot in All India Inter University Chess Championships, with perfect 10/10 scores, the only university to achieve this feat.

Ravi Pachamoothoo Pro-Chancellor, SRMIST

Dr. P. Sathyanarayanan President SRM-AP

HOW GOOD ARE AIR FRYERS FOR YOUR FAMILY'S HEALTH?

MANY PEOPLE THINK THAT AIR FRYERS ARE EITHER GIMMICKY OR THE SAME AS A STANDARD, CONVECTION OVEN. HOWEVER, WE THINK BOTH OF THESE VIEWS ARE UNTRUE.

standalone, basket-style air fryer will perform differently than a convection oven and even an air fryer toaster oven. This is because air fryers are actually quite different than a convection setting on a home oven, and we do think it’s worth buying one.

Firstly, air fyers are not fryers at all. They are small convection ovens. Essentially, a convection oven has a fan that blows hot air around for more efficient, even cooking. “That doesn't mean an air fryer and the convection setting on a home oven range are the same in terms of performance - far from it,” says senior culinary director Daniel Gritzer. “What gives air fryers the convection an edge is their efficiency: an air fryer has a much smaller cooking chamber compared to an oven range relative to their fan sizes. This means an air fryer can heat up much more quickly (often eliminating the need for a pre-heating phase), and it's able to blast the hot air around around at a much greater rate.”

Paired with a perforated basket for allover air circulation, this results in quicker cooktimes, faster browning, and more all-over crisping. Hence, the “frying” part of air fryer. Air-fried food will never be deeply crunchy like something out of a deep fryer, but, instead, as nicely browned as a convection oven probably can get it (that is, if you get a good air fryer). “In short, air fryers roast better, more evenly, and more quickly than most oven ranges,” Daniel says. Even an air fryer toaster oven isn’t an compact as a basket-style air fryer, so the oven will need to preheat longer and, often, won’t brown or crisp as thoroughly.

HOW DOES IT COMPARE TO DEEP FRYING?

A deep fryer requires a large amount of oil, enough to fully submerge the food. Air frying typically calls for, maximum, a few tablespoons. With a deep fryer, you’re using hot oil to cook the food. With an air fryer, you’re using what is essentially a very small, efficient convection oven. This is why air fried foods have much less oil, calories and therefore healthier.

WHAT ARE THE DOWNSIDES TO AN AIR FRYER?

Well, like any small electric, countertop appliance, air fryers eat up space (in your kitchen and/or storage). Air fryers also aren’t nearly as big as you might think.

A DEEP FRYER REQUIRES A LARGE AMOUNT OF OIL, ENOUGH TO FULLY SUBMERGE THE FOOD. AIR FRYING TYPICALLY CALLS FOR, MAXIMUM, A FEW TABLESPOONS.

Even larger, 6-quart models best serve four people maximum, while smaller, 4-quart models are really suited for two to three people. If you were cooking for a crowd, you’d have to do things in batches. However, as Daniel says, “that's the whole point, because it's that small capacity that allows the fan to be so effective.”

THE BIG STORE CON AND AI: COMING TO A CAMPUS NEAR YOU THE BIG STORE CON AND AI: COMING TO A CAMPUS NEAR YOU

Renowned educationist, consultant and entrepreneur Dr. Madhukar G. Angur, Founder Chancellor of Alliance University, Bangalore, and Dr. Jack Helmuth, Professor of Finance at the University of Michigan, write about how online education assisted by artificial intelligence based tools can become much like a ‘big store con’ worldwide, using illustrations from both the USA and India, and how students can detect and guard against it. Dr. Angur holds a Ph.D. from the University of Texas, Arlington, USA; a Post Graduate Diploma in Management (PGDM) from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, India, and a Bachelor of Technology degree in Electrical Engineering from the National Institute of Technology, Surathkal, India. Dr. Angur is the recipient of many awards and accolades including the David M. French Distinguished Professorship - a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Flint campus of the University of Michigan.

The Big Store refers to one of the classic long con confidence games. The con establishes a store, whether it be an investment brokerage, insurance agency, or even a bank. Perhaps it sounds familiar. In the movie “The Sting,” a fake racetrack-betting parlor served as the store. The Big Store was integral in Robert Stone’s novel A Hall of Mirrors, which was later made into a Paul Newman movie (Newman also starred in The Sting) called WUSA. Legendary long cons exist in the past as well as today; just recently, a big store, a fake bank, ran for an entire year in China.

There is a pervasive dichotomy evolving in American higher education. On the one hand, we have the traditional brickand-mortar, students-in-the-seats experience. Football, beer, Greek life, and going to a classroom for lectures or labs are long-established traditions. In-class exams, eye contact with your peers and professor, and most importantly, co-curricular and extra-curricular experiences are enormously important for a student’s education and development. The traditional campus will survive indefinitely. There will always be a market for the ivy towers.

Dr. Madhukar G. Angur

On the other hand, there is online education, where a student can receive an entire degree remotely without ever stepping foot on campus. Highly recognizable universities provide such degrees, along with their traditional campus programs. There are also online degree programs that have little or no physical campus structure. In either case, can the quality, experience, and final product of an online education be equivalent to the traditional education? Most emphatically - NO.

Enter the prospect of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in education. AI can potentially bridge the gap between traditional and online education by providing personalized learning experiences, automating administrative tasks, and offering virtual tutoring. While AI cannot replace the value of in-person interactions, it can enhance online education and make it more competitive with the traditional campus experience.

Even though they are often priced identically, marketed to leave an impression that the degree is equally recognized, and even using the same identical instructors, the results of the two differ. The traditional campus, with all the incremental experiences, provides a far superior education. A sizeable majority of professors will agree with that assessment. This is despite dedicated faculty that are creatively employing the most current online technology, methodologies, and AIbased tools.

The push to legitimize, sans caveat emptor, online degrees is a classic big store brought about by circumstance. Many traditional campuses are faced with declining enrollment because of demographics. There are real budgetary crises, especially if you must keep fulltime faculty employed and the research wheels greased. Picture the empty hallways, empty classrooms, and empty coffers, all the ingredients that necessitate the big store revenue. Please note, our comments are not about the emergency Covid-19 education measure taken these past few years

and likely to repeat itself if another wave of something like Covid-19 comes through. We are discussing the persistence of online degree education and the incorporation of AI to enhance the experience.

The irony of the big store con is that the target often does not know that they are conned. There will likely be sizeable income and societal differences between the two groups, and the online student may not recognize that they are being paid systematically less, advance more slowly in their careers, and generally not appreciable of the benefits of a broad education. Will there be exceptions? Of course, yes. However, eventually, the market segments, in terms of long-term earnings and success, will appear. Perhaps the online statistical underperformance will be masked by the complexity of the data and the con will not be fully detected. Or perhaps it will be when repaying student debt with less income capacity.

In either case, the perpetrators, as with any successful con, will have moved on undetected. Retirement programs are lucrative safe havens for them. The tragedy is that the target of the long con will be unaware of the consequences of matriculating in online degree programs, even with the integration of AI.

Any big store con must have a cast of players to populate the store. First up are the university administrators. Budgetary issues have driven them, with the allure of easy online money and the promise

of AI-enhanced learning, to play the con. Of course, students will be happy with these courses; they grew up in the electronic information age. Administrators have a variety of sanctimonious rationales for these programs that no one seems to challenge. For instance, they like to claim that there is more student diversity, especially geographic, with distant learning. Realize that in the USA most state schools have an in-state and higher out-of-state tuition schedule that impedes such diversity in traditional programs. How clever! And the state tuition represents a regressive tax, where the poor are paying state taxes to help finance tuition for higher income groups that are disproportionately attending school. No one wants to upset that scheme.

Another player is the federally sanctioned accreditation agencies. There are regional accreditation agencies that evaluate the entire university and accreditation for programs, like nursing or business. People generally do not know that the accreditation process and reaccreditation reviews are peerconducted by administrators and faculty from other universities. One of the unsung reasons for their existence is that they provide (minimum) assurance of quality. Their regulatory oversight helps to negate state officials or university boards from delving too deeply into questions of quality or relevance. Admittedly, they have been active in raising questions and

providing standards regarding online learning and the integration of AI. However, just a few decades ago, a main campus might have accreditation issues if they started an off-campus site on a military facility a few hours away, with quality classrooms and instructors, but no library facility. Now, anything goes with distance learning and AIenhanced education.

Politicians have been very adept at using voters’ concerns regarding the high cost of college education. Popular plans such as free tuition or student debt forgiveness are bandied about with gusto. Politicians with an even more populist bent are vocal concerning online education and demanding that AI technology should lower the cost of education. How will this play out? Balancing the budgetary realities with the popularity of state universities will require a political balancing act that will have the players in the big store scrambling for détente.

The students themselves, the target of the con (the mark), are players too. Many students have little choice but to opt for online programs because of a variety of circumstances. Even if they realize the program is second best, they must choose online. However, there is also a large portion that selects online simply for convenience. Some are merely interested in picking up a diploma (wall art). It is not uncommon for a student to select online classes even when they are living in hostels/dorms. Like a doubleedged sword, the internet provides opportunities to outsource homework and term papers at reasonable prices.

Ultimately, do these students realize that the online experience, even with the support of the most sophisticated AI, does not provide the same experience and results as the traditional program? Has anyone informed them of these costs? Perhaps the online advisor when they register online for the first time? The dean or the department chair? Is it commonly discussed in the media, providing not so much a warning, but simply information? Can incoming students, often first-generation college students, and their parents be that naïve? Apparently. After all, look at the massive

student debt and, in many cases, the inability, even with a college degree(s), to pay off the debt. If they can make those bad decisions, they are equally capable of naively grasping the online degree program and assuming it provides the same ultimate benefits of the traditional degree, even with the incorporation of AI. As we know with any long con, the mark may never know they were conned. As decades roll by, this will create a segment of society that will be disillusioned by never achieving their dreams or their full potential. They have the best intentions. To paraphrase the legendary conman Joseph ‘Yellow Kid’ Weil, he never conned someone who did not want to be conned. This online education big store, even with AI’s potential to enhance learning, will leave a significant portion of their generation a lost generation, and no one will know what happened.

India has been inundated with Education Technology (EdTech) platforms which mushroomed over the past decade and grew in size particularly during the pandemic. However, the teaching and learning that supposedly occurred during the hay days are still questionable. Distributed learning and/ or blended learning methodologies are being experimented in various institutions of higher learning with mixed results.

No matter how sophisticated AI gets with any degree of AI enabled integration occurring in distance or distributed learning, it would not be able to completely replace face-to-face learning. Yes, AI will make a select group of jobs obsolete but new skills and enhanced adaptive skill development would evolve and universities and institution of higher learning must always be cognizant of this both in terms of knowledge creation and knowledge dissemination.

While AI has the potential to improve online education and bridge the gap between traditional and online learning experiences, it is essential to recognize that it cannot replace the value of inperson interactions and the overall campus experience. As higher education continues to evolve, it is crucial for universities, administrators, and students to be aware of the differences between online and traditional education and make informed decisions about their academic pursuits. The integration of AI in education should be approached with caution and a realistic understanding of its limitations, ensuring that the technology serves as an enhancement rather than a replacement for a well-rounded education.

(The views expressed in this article are solely of the author.)

UP CM YOGI ADITYANATH ENTERS 7th YEAR OF STELLAR LEADERSHIP

INDIA’S MOST POPULOUS STATE OF UTTAR PRADESH HAS COMPLETED SIX YEARS UNDER THE LEADERSHIP OF CHIEF MINISTER YOGI ADITYANATH, AND THE STATE HAS GROWN LEAPS AND BOUNDS IN VARIOUS SECTORS INCLUDING INVESTMENTS, INFRASTRUCTURE, AGRICULTURE, TOURISM, SOCIO-ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, LAW AND ORDER, QUALITY ASSURANCE AND EASE OF DOING BUSINESS. THIS TRANSFORMATION WAS OBVIOUS TO THE WORLD DURING THE RECENTLY CONCLUDED GLOBAL INVESTORS SUMMIT 2023, WHICH ATTAINED A RECORD OF OVER RS. 33 LAKH CRORE WORTH OF INVESTMENT MOUS, BUT EVEN IN HIS 7th YEAR, CM YOGI HAS NO PLANS TO SLOW DOWN, AND IS GUNNING TO MAKE UP A $1 TRILLION ECONOMY BY 2027, BEFORE THE STATE GOES FOR ITS NEXT POLLS.

How Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is engaging with major developed nations across the world is something that many CMs across India can learn from. His diplomatic savvy was recently visible when he engaged directly and deeply with a group of South Korean pilgrims who were visiting Uttar Pradesh to commemorate a special occasion.

UP CM YOGI ADITYANATH ENTERS 7 STELLAR LEADERSHIP

India and South Korea recently completed the half-centenary of their diplomatic ties, and to mark this, a group of 108 Buddhist pilgrims from the Republic of Korea walked over 1,100 km over 43 days, visiting key Buddhist sites in UP and as well as in other part of India, as part of a walking pilgrimage being organized by the Sangwol Society of South Korea. The pilgrimage aimed to further increase the friendship and collaboration between the two countries.

South Korea is a key trading partner for India, with the mutual trade between the two countries being $28 billion now, of which India exports goods worth $9 billion to South Korea, and imports goods worth $19 billion from the Asian major. Uttar Pradesh is also a key beneficiary in the mutual trade and investment between both nations, as in 2018, a mobile phone manufacturing unit of Korean giant Samsung Electronics was commissioned in UP’s Gautam Buddha Nagar.

As Yogi Adityanath completes six consecutive years as Chief Ministerwhich is a first in UP - such savvy engagements with developed nations and giant MNCs have become a hallmark of his leadership style. The recently concluded Global Investors’ Summit in Lucknow captured this perfectly as it went on to ink investment MOUs to the tune of more than Rs 33 lakh crore, which created a new record in India.

With only one year gone from his second five-year term as UP Chief Minister, Yogi Adityanath’s ambition is to lead and propel Uttar Pradesh to be

a one trillion dollar economy by 2027, when the state would again be going for the polls. While it is still a very ambitious target, for those who know CM Yogi up close, it seems achievable, especially as he has the full backing of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in this pursuit.

Recently, under the leadership of CM Yogi Adityanath, the state took the pioneering step of establishing Uttar Pradesh Gunvatta Sankalp (Uttar Pradesh Quality Mission) in collaboration with the Quality Council of India (QCI). With this step, Uttar Pradesh has become the first state in India to facilitate a state-level mission by QCI, and this step has been taken with the explicit objective of using quality as a growth enabler to be a 1 trillion economy by 2027.

The Quality Council of India, established in 1997 by the Government of India and the Indian industry, is the apex organisation in India responsible for establishing and operating an independent national accreditation system, for improving the quality across sectors and for providing consulting services to the government and other stakeholders on

all matters concerning quality.

QCI’s strategy has been an all encompassing one, and not merely on industrial quality. It resonates well with Uttar Pradesh government’s drive for higher quality through leveraging the services across sectors like education, health, MSMEs, and skilling. Indeed, industry associations including ASSOCHAM, FICCI, IIA and PHDCCI are collaborating with the establishment of the Uttar Pradesh Gunvatta Sankalp in Lucknow.

QCI’s National Board for Quality Promotion is responsible for running the national quality campaign. QCI has also constituted independent Boards in different sectors that offer accreditation in their respective areas – examples being NABL for labs, NABH for hospitals, NABCB for certification and inspection bodies, and NABET for education and training. All concerned institutions in UP, across such sectors, will now get a headstart in improving their quality for attaining these coveted certifications.

The pioneering step of establishing the Uttar Pradesh Gunvatta Sankalp is also ushering in a new era of development

for the state in which, it moves from being an ‘Aatmanirbhar’ (self-sufficient) Uttar Pradesh to a ‘Daata’ (provider) Uttar Pradesh that will serve the nation from its bounties. Indeed, PM Modi himself had signalled this change when he hailed the recent UP GIS 2023 as a major step forward in the entire nation’s growth story and not just of UP.

At the same time, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is acutely aware of the relatively backward areas in the state, and has unleashed a program on war footing to make 100 such aspirational blocks & districts Aatmanirbhar. Special works are being undertaken to better 75 socio economic indicators in these blocks and districts.

Apart from the nodal officer, other key functionaries, BC Sakhis, Gram Sanchivalayas etc, the CM has appointed specially selected CM Fellows for implementation of these schemes in these aspirational districts and blocks. Special resource pools called Amrit Sarovars are also being created across the state, as well as a digital dashboard for recording and monitoring the progress of these programs.

While Uttar Pradesh will always have a challenging task in employing all its job seekers, being the most populous state in India, under CM Yogi’s rule, much headway has been made in this regard. The government has given jobs to over 5.5 lakh youngsters in the last six years, even while ensuring fairness and transparency in these recruitments.

Under Chief Minister’s directive, a novel training program for aspiring officer candidates for Uttar Pradesh Public Service Commission had been set up earlier. Named Mukhyamantri Abhyudaya Coaching Scheme, it has become a rapid success with 43 of its candidates clearing the PSC test for recruiting 496 officers across the state.

Private sector hiring has also been on a healthy upward spiral in the state, as it makes steady progress in bettering the business environment and in attracting investments. However, the UP government has been equally keen on growing entrepreneurship in the state. Under this scheme, over 60 lakh young entrepreneurs were extended support to build their start-ups.

Among these, 8,714 units are the bigger or formally registered startups in the state. The state IT department, has been designated as the nodal agency for startups, and is providing financial assistance of up to Rs 7.5 lakh to these registered startups. In addition to this, the UP government also provides Rs 17,500 as monthly sustenance allowance to them.

Interestingly, among these 8714 registered ventures, 4305 startups or nearly 50% of these new ventures, are by women entrepreneurs. The state IT department provides an extra 50% in financial assistance to women entrepreneurs, and this has been a top reason why so many women have come

forward to launch their startups in the state. Women MSMEs need not pay stamp duty too in the state, as per a new government directive. Towards improving the social and business environment in the state, CM Yogi Adityanath had adopted a zero tolerance policy towards organized crime and mafia in the state. More than 12,513 criminals were booked under the Gangsters Act and 126 top criminals were slapped with NSA, which has resulted in the state witnessing not even a single riot for around one year now. During the first year of his second term which is now completed, CM Yogi directed the establishment of a new task force and three new police commissionerates for bettering the law & order situation. The new Anti Narcotics Task Force (ANTF) has been taking the drug mafia head on, and the new police commissionerates at Prayagraj, Ghaziabad & Agra have helped in reducing the average response time for distress calls.

Agriculture still being a great pillar of the Uttar Pradesh economy, the government is closely following all the emerging needs of the farmers. In one such swift action recently, the government directed the insurance companies to compensate the insured farmers who had sustained crop damage from the recent rains and thunderstorms in the state.

Optimizing agriculture for UP’s seasons and soil types has been another priority for the UP government. Towards this, the Yogi government has created a new Rs. 15.31 crore grant for expanding the coverage of Zaid crops. And in accordance with 2023 being the International Year of the Millets, the cultivation of these native and healthy grains are also being promoted.

Improving its Zaid crops is a priority for UP, as currently only 9% of the agricultural area is utilized for it. Zaid is a short season during the summer months between the rabi and the kharif seasons (March to June), where important Zaid crops including rice, watermelon, muskmelon, cucumber,

SEASONAL MAGAZINE

vegetables, corn, pepper, tomato, coarse seeds and fodder crops can be grown.

Uttar Pradesh which is India’s second largest producer of paddy, has also plans to reduce this by 17% and reallocate such lands for the cultivation of millets & oilseeds. The state can afford to do so as it has 60 lakh hectares of paddy under cultivation across 70 districts that produce a formidable output of 15 million metric tons of rice each year.

The state, which is also the second largest producer of millets in the country, has strategized this as a sound move, as paddy is heavily dependent on rains, while millets are not. And during last year, UP had received 42% less rains, sending many paddy farmers into distress. The state is also implementing an ambitious plan to move up the value chain in paddy, by focusing more on the exotic varieties of rice that fetch sharply higher returns.

Uttar Pradesh is also getting modernized at a fast pace. The infrastructure and transportation sector of the state is turning state-of-the-art. The state is soon to become the only state in India to have 5 international airports. While three international airports are already functional in the state, two new international airports are under construction at Jewar and Ayodhya.

Including these, the UP government is working on increasing the total number of operational airports from the current figure of 9 to as many as 21. During the tenure of the Yogi government,

construction work of four airports has been completed so far and the work on six new airports at Aligarh, Azamgarh, Moradabad, Shravasti, Chitrakoot and Sonbhadra are nearing completion.

The state, which recently had its annual budget for the financial year 2023-24, is putting special thrust also to enhance the rail and ropeway connectivity in the state. Priority has been given to India`s

first ropeway project for public transportation in Varanasi. The budget also includes a provision of more than 2500 crores for the development of metro rail service in the four metropolitan cities of UP.

Apart from these, the UP government has earmarked Rs 1306 crore in the budget for the Delhi-GhaziabadMeerut Corridor’s Regional Rapid Transit System project. Another mega infra project that the state is investing in is the Chief Minister`s Urban Expansion and New City Promotion Scheme which has been allocated Rs 3000 crore in this budget. Altogether, Rs. 55,000 crore has been earmarked for the road, rail and metro sectors.

On the tourism front too, Uttar Pradesh is witnessing a major upswing as was witnessed in the GIS 2023. Japanese hospitality major HMI Group will be building 30 hotels in 30 cities of UP at an estimated investment of Rs. 7200 crore.

ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE IF IT IS YOUR PASSION

ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE IF IT IS YOUR PASSION

his story is about Tarunda but it begins long before him. Sometime towards the end of the 19th century, the Kesarvanis moved from Kashmir to Bihar. That would be the great-grandfather of Tarunda. After working for some years in Purnea, he moved to Berhampore in Bengal and thereafter to Calcutta. In between, the Kesarwanis took up the surname Shaw, though no one can say why anymore.

To those who don’t know Tarunda or Tarun Kumar Shaw, he is a lean man with a comet’s velocity, cloth bag slung from one shoulder and a carton tucked under the arm, head thrust forward forever powering through steel, glass and wood of offices, residences, clubs and schools with an expressionless face. At 58 he criss-crosses the chaotic city on his scooter. Rare is the person who has seen him sitting, and even when he is standing his entire bearing is animated, as if he cannot wait to open his own box of treats and surprise his customers.

Tarunda’s father Gopal Lal Shaw got a job as a peon in a bookshop called Dey Brothers in the now long-closed “book range” of New Market. Gopal Lal didn’t go to college but he learnt the nuances of bookselling; customers started calling him Dey. And when the real Deys started to wrap up business, he struck out on his own. Says Tarunda, “In the 1970s, my father was the only one homedelivering foreign magazines and foreign newspapers.”

Gopal Lal never owned a shop space, and with so many books at home, a young Tarun caught the book bug. He was still in college when he bought a second-hand bicycle and started helping his father.

In 1989, Gopal Lal was run over while delivering books. By then Tarunda and his brother Uttam Kumar had taken over the business. Tarunda was, as they say, a carbon copy of his old man, and some of the older clients continue to address him as Gopal to this day.

Tarunda expanded the business. The stories pour out. Of corporate bigwig Bipradas Chattopadhyay who was mountain-smitten, bought books on mountains but had never seen one.

Kunal Dey of Sinthi, a university professor, who bought books on wildlife. Artist Prabir Sen who has “everything possible” on Halley’s Comet. More stories. The artist who bought all that is in print on Marilyn Monroe; the elderly industrialist who likes to read his Jeffrey Archers no sooner than they are written. Tarunda talks about the 1980s, when clerks in private offices read Chekhov, Lenin, Marx.

In the “old days” everyone in the book

TARUN KUMAR SHAW, THE TRAVELLING BOOKMAN OF KOLKATA PIONEERED SOMETHING DECADES AGO THAT E-COM MAJORS STILL CAN'T- YOUR ORDERS ARE ON ITS WAY BEFORE YOU EVEN ORDERED IT.

business knew books, loved books. “A shopkeeper selling le Carre knew that the writer himself had been a spy. Trade basics.” Tarunda learnt a lot about books from either side of the book chain. If there was someone like a Babuda from Dey’s Publishing who would enlighten enthusiasts like him about Bengali books, there was someone like Rituparno Ghosh whom he heard holding forth on Draupadi. “If he asked for four titles and I got only four for him, he would be furious,” says Tarunda. From his framed portrait in the Shaws’ puja room, Gopal Lal watched the business change.

At all times Tarunda carries a thick notebook made to order from the neighbourhood binders. Every page has a name on top and below book titles and

GOPAL LAL NEVER OWNED A SHOP SPACE, AND WITH SO MANY BOOKS AT HOME, A YOUNG TARUN CAUGHT THE BOOK BUG. HE WAS STILL IN COLLEGE WHEN HE BOUGHT A SECOND-HAND BICYCLE AND STARTED HELPING HIS FATHER.

prices. There are squiggles, slashes and ticks, which only he can decipher; an accountant’s nightmare though the system works fine for him.

Week after week, Tarunda appears at the doors of booklovers, wordlessly lays out his carefully curated wares for just enough time to tempt and then packs them wordlessly and sets off again. He recounts how Sunil Gangopadhyay would say in his imitable style, “Ei duto nilam”, and get back to his business. Often, after Tarunda has left, a client will discover a shy volume. He says, “Sometimes a person will touch a book, smell it, then put it down and look away.” That volume is for them. But not everyone is thrilled. A client’s wife has warned: “If you get any more books, I shall cook and feed him only books.” No one who has ever bought a book from Tarunda can swear on his Galileo’s Daughter or The Encyclopaedia of Religion and say he hustles his clients for payments. In those days when companies disbursed salaries in cash, Tarunda knew the designated salary day of each place; he would turn up that day, that’s all. “When I returned home my pockets would be swollen,” he recalls. That said, Tarunda’s standard line is, “If only the rich would buy books, I too would be rich. But I sell books to those who love them.” As he says it, the middleclass client may not be able to pay for a book in one go but rarely defaults on payments.

Tarunda says he sees a book and a client’s face flashes through his mind. By way of wrapping up this interview, he agrees to play a game of match-thefollowing. He fishes out a book and immediately calls out the name of a customer.

The game begins. The book on 18th century English painter JohnConstable is matched with the just retired cop Debasish Boral. Hannah Dawson’s book of feminist writing isfor retired professor Dipesh Lahiri. A History of Masculinity by Ivan Jablonka is for retired banker Sanjoy Mitra…

That’s Tarunda for you, the tireless evergreen bookman.

(By Upala Sen for Telegraph)

WHAT ARE THE FEATURES OF MUMBAI TRANS-HARBOUR LINK

The Mumbai Trans-Harbour Link is a sixlane 22-km-long bridge which is being touted as India's longest sea bridge. It will reduce the travel time between Sewri in Mumbai to Chirle in Navi Mumbai from 1.5 hours to 20 minutes. The bridge, whose sea length is over 16 km, is designed for a vehicular speed of 100 kmph.

AI MAY KILL MANY PEOPLE: GOOGLE'S EX-CEO ERIC SCHMIDT

Google's ex-CEO Eric Schmidt raised his concern that Artificial intelligence (AI) is an "existential risk". He added, "And existential risk is defined as many, many, many, many people harmed or killed." He also said, "There are scenarios not today, but reasonably soon...where these systems will be able to find zero-day exploits in cyber issues, or discover new kinds of biology."

VEDANTA-FOXCONN

APPOINTS MIKE YOUNG TO OVERSEE INDIA MANUFACTURING

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WIPE YOUR MIND TO BE SUPER PRODUCTIVE

NOTED PRODUCTIVITY EXPERT, SPEAKER, AUTHOR, AND MENTOR WHO HELPS PEOPLE WORK SMARTER, DONNA MCGEORGE SAYS WIPING YOUR MIND AND OTHER SUCH SMALL CHANGES TO YOUR DAILY ROUTINE, YOU CAN RECLAIM TIME, BOOST YOUR PRODUCTIVITY, AND LIVE A MORE FULFILLING LIFE.

As someone who’s been through the corporate grind and emerged on the other side, I can tell you that there’s nothing more important than making intentional choices about where you spend your time. We all get caught up in the busyness of life, but it’s essential to take a step back and think about what truly matters. Here are four small changes you can make to your daily routine that will supercharge your productivity and give you back some valuable time to spend where it’s important.

1) WIPE YOUR MIND

Take five minutes every morning and list everything you have in your mind. Write down everything from “replace batteries in smoke detectors” to “research next holiday” to “prepare client presentation” to “empty dishwasher” and “put a load of washing on.” Productivity author David Allen says, “Your mind is for having ideas, not storing them.” When we overwhelm our minds with trying to remember things, it limits our ability to think clearly. So get it all out of your head.

2) WORK WITH THE CLOCK IN YOUR BODY

Even though you may be programmed to do things at certain times because of habit, you are doing yourself a disservice. There are optimal times for better brain performance at work, which means you can schedule the types of tasks you do to make the best use of your most productive time. Most of us are more mentally alert in the morning, meaning work that requires a bit of mental intensity is best done at that time. If you are a night owl, identify your best two hours of the day, and protect that window for your most important work.

3) DECIDE NOW FOR TOMORROW

At the end of the day, take a few minutes to make any small and low-impact decisions today that can clear the way for tomorrow. It could be things like: Blocking out what time tomorrow’s lunch break will be; Packing my bag with things I might need: For example, if I am giving a presentation, I make sure I have my cables, remote-control slide mover, and so on, all ready to go; Deciding, if tomorrow is a non-routine kind of day; what time I will need to leave in the morning; how I will be traveling the next day; what train/tram/bus I will catch, or, if driving, what route I will take. Deciding all these things before you leave the office at night will eliminate any chance of your sitting bolt upright in bed in the middle of the night and help set you up for success the next day.

4) SHORT, TIMED BURSTS OF WORK

The Pomodoro Technique, developed by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s, is

a time-management method named after the tomato-shape kitchen timer that Cirillo used to track his work. The technique involves breaking your work into 25-minute intervals, called “Pomodoros,” separated by shorter 5minute breaks. Working this way limits distractions, improves concentration, increases productivity, and reduces burnout. Following on from the Pomodoro Technique, have less meetings in your day, and reduce the amount of time they should take up. When we have less time (or even if we simply perceive we have less time), our call to action is much greater. The less time we have, the more focused we are on getting the task done. Studies have shown that those who impose strict deadlines on themselves for tasks performed far better (and more consistently) than those who don’t.

By making these small changes to your daily routine, you can reclaim time, boost your productivity, and live a more fulfilling life. So don’t wait any longer. Start today and see how much of a difference it can make.

KERALA'S MANGROVE MAN

KERALA'S MANGROVE MAN

ON THE RECEDING SHORELINES OF LOW-LYING VYPIN ISLAND OFF INDIA'S WESTERN COAST, T. P. MURUKESAN FIXED HIS EYES ON THE WHITE PAINT PEELING OFF THE DAMP WALLS OF HIS RAISED HOME AND RECOUNTED THE MOST RECENT FLOODS.

can be seen in Kochi, the state's financial capital.

"They protected our houses against floods, sea erosion, and storms, used to be an inseparable part of our life, our ecosystem," he said. "Only these can save us."

Murukesan said he has planted over 100,000 mangroves. He plants saplings on alternate days and does most of the work himself. Some help comes in the form of saplings from the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation, a non-government organization based in Chennai, India.

His efforts come up against a strong trend in the opposite direction.

Ernakulam district, which includes Kochi, has lost nearly 42% of its mangrove ecosystems, including major decreases in the southern Puthuvypeen area in Vypin, according to a study released last year by the Indian Space Research Organization and the Kerala University of Fisheries and Ocean Studies.

Mangrove cover in the state has reduced from 700 square kilometers (435 square miles) to just 24 square kilometers (15 square miles) since 1975, according to the Kerala Forest department.

The floods are occurring more frequently and lasting longer," he said. The last flood was chest-height for his young grandson. "Every flood brings waters this high, we just deal with it."

Sea level rise and severe tidal floods have forced many families in Murukesan's neighborhood to relocate to higher grounds over the years. But the retired fisherman has almost singlehandedly been buffering the impacts of the rising waters on his home and in his community.

Known locally as "Mangrove Man," Murukesan has turned to planting the

trees along the shores of Vypin and the surrounding areas in the Kochi region of Kerala state to counter the impacts of rising waters on his home.

Tidal flooding occurs when sea level rise combines with local factors to push water levels above the normal levels. Mangroves can provide natural coastal defenses against sea level rise, tides and storm surges, but over the course of his life forest cover in the state has dwindled.

Murukesan said he grew up surrounded by beautiful, abundant mangroves that separated islands from the sea. Now, only fragmented patches of mangroves

"The construction of coastal roads and highways has severely damaged mangrove ecosystems in the state," said K K Ramachandran, former member secretary of the Kerala Coastal Zone Management Authority, a government body mandated to protect the coastal environment. "There should be an incentive for people who are making efforts to protect them."

Murukesan's dedication to the cause has won him praise, awards and the audience of senior politicians but not incentives beyond the immediate benefits to his home.

He said the mangroves he planted in and around the area in 2014 have grown into a dense thicket and are helping reduce the intensity of tidal flooding, but he's nevertheless continuing his efforts.

Despite the thousands of new mangrove trees, other factors like climate change

mean tidal floods have become more frequent and severe, sometimes keeping children from going to school and people from getting to work. It's all mentally exhausting, Murukesan and his wife, Geetha, said.

"I have to travel a lot to collect seeds. My wife helps me in the nursery as much as she can. I am tired but I cannot stop," he said.

Geetha said they do the tough work "for our children," preserving the forest for decades to come.

"It keeps us going," she said. Vypin is at high-risk for tidal flooding, said Abhilash S, director of the Advanced Centre for Atmospheric Radar Research at the Cochin University of Science and Technology.

"The sea level has risen and has damaged freshwater supplies. Sea erosion and spring tides have worsened. Coastal flooding is a common occurrence now," he said. "The carrying capacity of the backwaters has reduced due to sediment deposition and encroachment, and the rainwater enters residential areas during the monsoon season."

Backwaters in the state of Kerala are networks of canals, lagoons and lakes parallel to coastal areas, unique ecosystems that help provide a buffer to rising sea levels.

According to the World Meteorological Organization, global mean sea level rose by 4.5 millimeters per year between

2013 and 2022. It's a major threat for countries like India, China, the Netherlands and Bangladesh, which comprise large coastal populations.

NASA projections show that Kochi might experience a sea level rise of 0.22 meters (8.7 inches) by 2050, and over half a meter (nearly 20 inches) by 2100 in a middle-of-the-road climate warming scenario.

"Many families have left," Murukesan said.

Fishing families living within 50 meters (55 yards) of the shore get a financial assistance of 10 lakh rupees ($12,000) through a rehabilitation scheme run by the Kerala government. Only few of those not covered under it have means to relocate to safer places.

Some fishing families shift to government shelters in the monsoon season and return after it ends. A few have built stilt houses that stand on columns to fight tidal floods.

Murukesan knows the sea is rising, but it's the backwaters that make him more anxious. The backwaters have become shallow due to the silt deposited by heavy floods. During heavy rain events, the water inundates the island.

"We are caught between the sea and the backwaters. They are likely to swallow the island in some years, but I am not going anywhere," he said. "I was born here, and I will die here."

(Credt: VOA / AP)

US DEFENSE SECY TO TRAVEL TO INDIA AHEAD OF PM MODI'S WH VISIT

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will visit India in early June, the Pentagon has announced. Austin will meet Defense Minister Rajnath Singh and other leaders during his visit to India as the US and India continue to modernise the US-India Major Defense Partnership, the Pentagon said. Austin's visit precedes PM Narendra Modi's official state visit to White House next month.

TWITTER ENGINEERING HEAD RESIGNS DAY AFTER DESANTIS' SPACES GLITCH

Foad Dabiri announced he's quitting as Twitter's head of engineering a day after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' 2024 US presidential bid announcement on Twitter Spaces faced glitches. Without detailing reason for resigning, he said, "During my time at Twitter, I experienced two...eras: pre and post [acquisition by Elon Musk]...To say [post acquisition] was challenging...would be understatement."

GO FIRST HAS NO RIGHTS OVER ENGINES, LEASES WERE TERMINATED: P&W

US engine maker Pratt & Whitney (P&W) told a US court that it has no engines currently available for Go First airline. "These leases have been terminated...and they (engines) cannot be sent because Go First has no right to them," it stated. Go First is seeking enforcement of an arbitration order in US, which it won in Singapore against P&W.

PURVA BACK ON A RAPID GROWTH TRACK PURVA BACK ON A RAPID GROWTH TRACK

Bengaluru-based real estate developer Puravankara Limited has had several firsts to its credit since its inception in 1975. Starting with their first-ever multi-storey project in Bengaluru, Founder and Chairman Ravi Puravankara led the group to become the first developer to initiate theme-based projects. Puravankara then went on to become the first developer to secure Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and the first to launch an affordable housing brand, Provident Housing. Then came the tumultuous years for the realty sector in the country, starting from the 2009 global financial crisis. Along with its peers, Puravankara, too, witnessed a slowdown in growth. But all through these years, brand Purva’s focus on quality and calibrated expansion remained under the leadership of Chairman Ravi and Managing Director Ashish Puravankara. The results of all this hard work during the past several years has been showing up in the latest numbers from Puravankara Ltd., and its majestic presence in over 80 projects across 9 cities.

The Marina One project in Kochi, Kerala being jointly developed by Puravankara and Sobha

here were several positive indicators in Puravankara Ltd.’s latest operational update for Q4 and FY’23, which was released recently. The biggest highlight being that Puravankara achieved its highest ever annual and quarterly sales since inception, with Q4 sales coming in at Rs 1,007 crores, and FY’23 sales recording a high of Rs 3,107 crores.

In percentage terms also, the sales growth was robust, indicating that Puravankara is shifting to a higher gear. At the same time, quarterly sales in Q4 rose by over 21% compared with the corresponding quarter of last fiscal and annual sales jumped by over 29% compared with the previous fiscal.

Quarterly sales growth was from Rs. 831 crore during Q4 FY’ 22 to Rs 1,007 crore this Q4 FY’ 23, while annual sales growth was from Rs. 2,407 crore recorded during FY’ 22 to Rs. 3,107 crore achieved in FY’ 23.

Q4 FY’ 23 volumes rose to 1.21 million sq ft from 1.19 million sq ft in the previous Q4 FY’22. FY’ 23 volumes rose to 4 million sq ft from 3.52 msf last fiscal.

The next highlight was the significant growth in realisation per square feet. Puravankara posted an over 19% rise in realisations in Q4 at Rs 8,321/sq ft as against Rs 6,981/sq ft during the same quarter last year. And on an annual basis, average realisation increased by nearly 14% to reach Rs 7,768 / sq ft from Rs 6,838/sq ft during the end of the previous fiscal. The higher spike in realisation in Q4 signals that brand Purva is increasingly in demand in its territories.

Yet another positive trend from Puravankara in the recent update is an impressive increase in customer collections from its real estate business. Collections increased to Rs. 2,258 Crore in FY’ 23 in comparison

RAVI PURAVANKARA Founder & Chairman

to the customer collections of Rs. 1,440 Crore in FY '22, which is a stunning rise of 57%.

Puravankara Ltd is professionally led by a strong leadership team comprising of Chairman Ravi Puravankara, Managing Director

Ashish Puravankara, Vice Chairman

Nani R Choksey, Executive Director of Provident Housing

Amanda Joy

Puravankara, and Executive Director

and

Chief Executive Officer of

Puravankara Ltd, Abhishek Kapoor. Managing Director Ashish Puravankara, indicated that Puravankara Ltd is expecting the pre-sales growth momentum to continue, driven by a healthy pipeline of new launches amounting to 14 million sq ft in the coming quarters.

While both the branded real estate sector and the company are enjoying strong tailwinds by way of the structural resurgence in demand as the pandemic-related slowdown gets corrected rapidly, there is also a favourable lull in the headwinds affecting the sector, as the RBI has recently paused the hikes in the repo rate. Puravankara has indicated its view that the unchanged repo rates will further support the existing growth momentum.

Close on heels of the operational update announcement, investors were quick to cheer the listed Puravankara stock, taking it up by nearly 4% on a single day. The stock, which had suffered significant correction along with the rest of the realty sector and the market in recent months, has been recovering during the past several days in anticipation of good numbers, which has now proven more than true. The stock also enjoys an exceptional dividend yield. In the quarter ending June 2022, Puravankara Ltd has declared a dividend of Rs 5 - translating to a dividend yield of 6.13%.

Driving Puravankara’s growth in FY’

ASHISH PURAVANKARA Managing Director

23 was its launch of nine new projects across Bengaluru, Chennai & Coimbatore. Among these, seven launches were in its home turf of Bengaluru, including the Zentech Business Park, Purva Meraki, Purva Park Hill, Purva Celestial, Purva Orient Grand, Purva Blubelle & Purva Oakshire.

These ranged from the largest Bengaluru project from Purva this past fiscal, Park Hill at 0.83 million sq ft, to the smallest one, Purva Meraki, which is still huge at 0.12 million sq ft as its per-home cost is upward of Rs. 3.5 crores for palatial 3 & 4-BHK ultra luxury apartments. All the new launches in FY’23, taken together, amounted to 6.04 million square feet.

However, the largest project from Puravankara this past fiscal was in Chennai, the Purva Lakevista, which is enormous at 2.16 million square feet. It is a new project in the sprawling Purva Windermere campus, and features 1,2 & 3 bedroom homes ranging from Rs.

46 lakhs to Rs. 1.15 crores.

Earlier, Puravankara had stated that it plans to develop 20 million sq ft of real estate with a potential revenue of Rs 15,000 crore by the end of FY’ 24. Of these, around 6 million sq ft now stands completed by the end of FY’ 23.

Puravankara has definitive plans to add the rest 14 million sq ft in FY’ 24 across Chennai, Bengaluru, Coimbatore, Kochi, Pune and Mumbai, at an average realization of Rs. 7,500 sq ft or higher.

The latest launched projects from Puravankara include two new plotted development projects and one residential project in Bengaluru and one plotted development project in Chennai. The Group has a dedicated brand, Purva Land, for plotted development.

Among the new launches planned by Puravankara, about 45% will be in Bengaluru, 25% will be in Chennai, 16% will be in Kochi and the rest

across the other cities it operates in. This will translate to seven launches in Bengaluru, two in Kochi, three in Chennai, and one in Coimbatore and Pune.

In India’s economic capital of Mumbai, where Puravankara is carving out a unique presence, it is planning several redevelopment projects, including brownfield projects. The groundwork will start within a few months after the identified projects have been confirmed.

However, its home turf of Bengaluru continues to hold the maximum revenue potential for Purva projects. The company has already acquired the lands needed for its new Bengaluru projects to construct about 7 million sq ft.

Of this 7 msf, about 1 msf will be under the Puravankara brand, 3.5 msf in Provident Housing, and about 2.5 msf will be under Purva Land, its plotted development brand.

Due to its nearly 50 years of experience in the Bengaluru market, Puravankara has unique insights and expertise in identifying and acquiring lands for these segments.

While brand Purva enjoyed the limelight in FY’ 23, more action is expected in Provident Housing in FY’ 24, between the Rs. 40 to Rs. 80 lakh segment. This is partly because of the higher interest burden that makes customers prefer more affordable projects.

Established in 2008 as a wholly owned subsidiary of Puravankara Ltd, Provident Housing Ltd is a large-scale

community developer, offering the greatest value for money within the residential segment. The company caters to the diverse residential needs of buyers, with a focus on aspirational home ownership. It has massive projects across Bengaluru, Chennai, Mumbai, Pune, Coimbatore, Kochi, Mangaluru, Hyderabad and Goa. Like its parent, Provident has several firsts to its credit, including one of

Mr. Abhishek Kapoor, CEO, Puravankara Limited

The Oxygen Club at Purva Zenium, on Airport Road, Bengaluru.

SEASONAL MAGAZINE

the first backward integrations in the affordable segment through Starworth Infrastructure and the first use of precast construction technology in a residential project. Provident Sunworth is the largest community living project in Bengaluru, and the company had partnered with the World Bank arm International Finance Corporation (IFC) for their projects. The most preferred kind of development that Puravankara is planning to prioritize in FY’ 24 will be in the size of around 1 million sq ft, which can generate revenues of about Rs 1,200-1,750 crore, and is a highly profitable and rapidly executable model for the company.

Puravankara is increasingly becoming a name to reckon with in the commercial segment, and the company currently has 3 million sq ft under construction, which will be completed over the next 30 months in Bengaluru. Of these, 0.85 million sq ft will be in the Kanakapura Road area and about 2.1 msf will be near the Airport Road.

Around one year back, in March 2022, Purva Asset Management, a subsidiary of Puravankara, had launched a Rs 750 crore Alternative Investment Fund (AIF) to invest in affordable housing projects and plotted developments across its projects in Bengaluru, Pune, Chennai, Hyderabad and the Mumbai Metropolitan Region.

This had come in handy for acquiring land in Chennai at a cost of Rs. 93 crore for plotted development with a potential of 1.3 msf. The company plans to invest Rs. 100 crore from this fund for further acquisitions in Bengaluru. Puravankara also has plans to raise around Rs. 1000 crore in capital during FY’ 24 to pare debt and shore up growth capital.

Even in the challenging sector of selling plots, Puravankara continues to demonstrate its skill and dominance

in key markets like Bengaluru & Chennai. A recent example of this flair was in the sales of Purva Oakshire which saw sales of over Rs. 105 crore over the launch weekend.

The Purva Oakshire offers plots ranging between 1,000 and 4,500 sq. ft. and the project is located on Avalahalli Road, in Rampura, Bengaluru North. The launch event itself recorded 250+ walk-ins and 100+ Expressions of Interest, demonstrating the project’s exceptional value, as well as customer trust in brand Puravankara.

Spread across 35 acres, this Londoninspired plotted development is categorized into three prestigious neighbourhoods: Mayfair, Kensington, and Paddington, and has more than 6 acres of open green spaces. There is also an elegant resort here, which offers more than 30 amenities, and the houses will be surrounded by a dazzling array of flora and fauna.

The design objective has been to weave in the regal ambience of

Greater London into the contours of North Bengaluru. Customers made a beeline for Oakshire as it offered them a unique living experience that combines luxury, comfort, and convenience in a tranquil environment. Puravankara is committed to delivering a worldclass development here that will stand the test of time and become a true landmark in community living. The company also recently announced the launch of another plotted development project, Purva Raagam, in Chennai. This uniquely themed development offers spacious and open residential plots. The project has been developed, keeping music as its central theme. Purva Raagam puts forth a musical theme in its development spread across 33 acres of project area, the clubhouse, and more than 15 lifestyle amenities. With launches progressing smoothly and strong financials, the company seems set to continue its growth path over the next financial year as well.

AMANDA PURAVANKARA

Executive Director, Provident Housing Ltd

INDIA'S 10,000 FORGOTTEN MANSIONS

INDIA'S 10,000 FORGOTTEN MANSIONS

ONCE SYMBOLIC OF THE POWER AND WEALTH OF THE NATTUKOTTAI CHETTIAR COMMUNITY, THOUSANDS OF GIGANTIC AND GLAMOUROUS MANSIONS IN TAMIL NADU NOW LIE IN RUINS.

vening had fallen by the time I alighted from my train in Karaikudi, a town in the Chettinad region in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu, and there was a light drizzle. As my taxi made its way through the damp streets into the sleepy surrounding hamlets, I noticed hundreds of huge crumbling villas flanking the narrow village lanes. Silhouetted against the dark orange sky, the Chettinad mansions, as they are known, looked exquisitely beautiful but desolately empty.

More than 10,000 lavish mansions dot the Chettinad region, many of them spanning tens of thousands of square feet. These gigantic, often glamorous, houses were built by the rich merchant families of the Nattukottai Chettiar community, who amassed great wealth by trading precious stones in Southeast Asia. They rose to the peak of their economic power in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, when most mansions were built.

When World War Two began in 1939, however, overseas trading took a hit and the wealth of the Chettiars quickly declined. It turned out to be the darkest period in their history, forcing the Chettiars to seek employment outside Chettinad, with many migrating out of India and abandoning their abodes.

Today, Chettinad is famous for its fiery chicken Chettinad dish and the much sought-after antiques from Karaikudi, but most travellers remain unaware of these luxurious mansions spread over the remaining 73 villages in the region. Although most of them lie in ruins, a handful have been converted into heritage hotels and museums by enthusiastic owners who are working to keep the Chettiar legacy alive.

Before long, I arrived in the village of Kanadukathan, 15km from Karaikudi, and checked into Chettinadu Mansion, a 100-year-old mansion-turned-hotel that was to be my home for the next two days. A Chandramouli, the elderly owner, greeted me with a smile and told me that reviving the mansion has been his favourite retirement project.

"My grandfather built Chettinadu Mansion between 1902-1912. Four generations including me and my family have lived in this house. I feel proud of my heritage and that's why it's my responsibility to preserve it," he said.

As I toured the enormous rooms and multiple courtyards of the 43,000sq ft home, I was taken aback by the sheer opulence of each and every component. The mansion had an

expansive white facade adorned with beautiful stained-glass windows, while its grand foyer featured an embellished gold ceiling, crystal chandeliers and heirloom furniture. My gaze was soon drawn to the magnificent courtyard flanked by lofty pillars in cerulean blue. A narrow, wooden staircase led me to a breezy corridor where fancy guestrooms had white, iron lace balustrades for balconies.

"The timber came from Burma, mirrors and chandeliers were brought from Belgium and the marble for the floor was procured from Italy," noted Chandramouli. "The black granite columns that you see in the large hall were from Spain, whereas the blue castiron pillars in the central courtyard came all the way from Birmingham in England."

I gazed at the furnishings in wonder and entered my own room to discover a private terrace and walls painted in the illusive trompe l'oeil technique.

Mansion building was serious business for the Chettiars, who poured all their money and heart into constructing their dream homes. They were inspired by European architecture and commissioned local architects to work with raw materials from all over the world. Consequently, Gothic facades, marble floors, stained glass windows and tiles from the Far East became a regular feature in every house. But distinct components of vernacular Tamil architecture, such as wide, open courtyards, raised verandas, richly carved wooden frames and stucco reliefs

depicting Hindu deities, were also highlighted.

"Chettinad's buildings offer visitors a glimpse of how local architecture can be inspired by outside influences and still reflect the culture from which it springs. That's what makes them so special," said Dr Seetha Rajivkumar, head of the department of architecture at Adhiyamaan College of Engineering in Tamil Nadu. Rajivkumar's research focuses on analysing the value of built heritage in India, with a special focus on Chettinad.

The opulent mansions often take up an entire street, with enough room for joint families to live together (Credit: Soumya Gayatri)

The opulent mansions often take up an entire street, with enough room for joint families to live together (Credit: Soumya Gayatri)

On average, every mansion has more than 50 rooms and three to four courtyards. Most span more than an acre, covering an entire street, which is why locals refer to them as periya veedu or "big houses".

"Our forefathers built big houses for joint families to live together. Since the men were always away for business, it was important for the women and children to stay together to feel safe," Chandramouli explained. In their heydays, more than 70-80 family members lived in these houses at the same time.

Over the next two days, I charted out a mansion trail through Kanadukathan, Athangudi and Karaikudi, hiring a tuktuk and visiting a dozen villas in varying states of disrepair, each with a unique history and character.

My first stop was a luxurious mansion in the little-known village of Athangudi. Known as the Athangudi Palace, this sumptuous mansion-turned-museum took my breath away. As I stepped into its grandiose reception hall, I stood dumbstruck by the sight that surrounded me: an enormous chequered floor in Italian marble, Spanish granite columns topped with sculpted lion heads for capitals, vaulted windows with Belgian stained glass, a wrought-iron balcony supporting delicately frescoed Mughal

arches and an exquisitely ornamented ceiling fitted with floral tiles from Japan. The house was fit for a king.

Athangudi Palace's reception hall features an enormous chequered floor in Italian marble (Credit: Soumya Gayatri)

Athangudi Palace's reception hall features an enormous chequered floor in Italian marble (Credit: Soumya Gayatri)

Next, I headed to the Bangala, Chettinad's first heritage hotel located in the heart of Karaikudi. I was here to attend an exclusive Chettinad cooking class but ended up fascinated by the mansion's history. Bangala has an interesting past; it was never a family home like the other mansions, rather it was a party venue owned by the affluent family of Mr MSMM Chocalingam Chettiar, also called the MSMM family. The men of the family used it to host and entertain their male friends. Women were not permitted at the Bangala. Ironically, the Bangala is now managed by the energetic Meenakshi Meyyappan, granddaughter-in-law of the

MSMM family. "I see to all aspects of housekeeping and curate all menus myself," said Meyyappan, now 89, who loves hosting guests from all over the world. A great cook herself, Meyyappan has co-authored The Bangala Table: Flavors and Recipes from Chettinad, a book that celebrates not just the local cuisine but also the rich culture and history of the region.

On my tour, I was also invited into some private houses by friendly owners who still lived in them. A few, including the majestic Chettinad Palace in Kanadukathan, were chained shut from outside. Several others lay abandoned due to unending legal battles over ownership and prohibitive restoration costs.

Although some of the mansions are lived in, others lie abandoned and in a state of disrepair (Credit: Soumya Gayatri) "Renovation expenses of Chettinad's homes can run into thousands of dollars. And, this is not a one-time cost, these buildings require regular upkeep and repair," Rajivkumar explained. "Add to that a lack of interest among multiple owners, and conservation becomes a herculean task."

But both Meyyappan and Chandramouli are optimistic. "Only 10% of Chettinad's mansions have received tourist makeovers so far, whereas 30% have been completely destroyed. It is our job to resuscitate the remaining 60% by working together as a community," Chandramouli said.

Meyyappan, who has recently kickstarted the annual Chettinad Heritage and Cultural Festival, aims to breathe new life into the ruined mansions by reviving interest in Chettinad's history and culture. "Awareness is crucial for our conservation efforts and this festival, which will be held in August-September every year, is our first step towards achieving it," she told me.

Although Chettinad remains relatively unknown even in India, its forgotten mansions are seeing a slow revival thanks to the efforts of local champions. With one simple goal – preservation of the Chettiar legacy – on their minds, and lots of grit and determination, the likes of Meyyappan and Chandramouli are not giving up.

(By Soumya Gayatri for BBC)

MAN WANTED TO KILL QUEEN ELIZABETH DURING US TOUR IN 1983: FBI

Newly released FBI documents have revealed that UK's Queen Elizabeth II faced a potential assassination threat during her visit to the US in 1983. A man, whose daughter was killed in Northern Ireland, allegedly wanted to kill Queen Elizabeth II at Yosemite National Park. The assassination threat was made to a police officer in San Francisco, reports stated.

JPMORGAN MAY MAKE AIBASED INVESTMENT ADVISOR, APPLIES TRADEMARK

JPMorgan Chase & Co has applied to trademark a product called IndexGPT, indicating that it may be working on developing a ChatGPT-like chatbot that gives investment advice. IndexGPT will tap in to "cloud computing software" for "analysing and selecting securities tailored to customer needs", according to JPMorgan's filing. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have reportedly begun testing IndexGPT.

SEARCH STARTUP BY IITIANS, NEEVA, ACQUIRED BY US-BASED SNOWFLAKE

US-based cloud data warehousing firm Snowflake announced it has acquired Neeva, a search engine started by two IITians after leaving their jobs at Google. Snowflake Co-founder Benoit Dageville said the company plans to infuse Neeva's AI-driven search technology across its data cloud services. Individuals from Neeva's leadership and other team members will now join Snowflake, he added.

MP EMERGING AS MOST SOUGHT AFTER “INVESTMENT DESTINATION POST GIS 2023

With the Global Investors Summit 2023 proving to be a major success by way of global participation and solid investment proposals, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan is leading the Madhya Pradesh Government from the frontline in facilitating the implementation of the various investment proposals received during the summit and in the run-up to it. The immediate objective that CM Chouhan has set before the state is to leverage the investment intentions worth Rs. 15.50 lakh crore received during GIS 2023 to transform MP into a 550 billion economy by 2026. The state is making huge inroads into traditional strongholds like textiles as well as in newly emerging areas like green energy with unique projects. While ‘Ease of Doing Business’ is being further enhanced, the momentum of investment flows into the state is continuing unabated even after the event.

he two-day MP GIS 2023 event that was held in Indore during January 11 & 12 witnessed truly global participation with representatives and business leaders from 84 countries attending it.

As many as 10 nations were official partner countries for the event, including Japan, Canada, Netherlands, Guyana, Mauritius, Bangladesh, Zimbabwe, Suriname, Panama & Fiji.

Esteemed participants in MP GIS 2023 included Presidents of two countries, and Ambassadors, Consulate Generals & Deputy Chiefs of Mission of 35 countries. On the business side, around 490 international business delegates including CXO level corporate leaders and around 400 global buyers participated in the event.

Heavy participation was witnessed from various geographies, including European Union and Africa, with the delegates of India Africa Trade Council participating actively. There was also a high level of participation by Non Resident Indians

(NRIs) in the event, partly due to the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas being held in Indore, just prior to the investment meet.

Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has since then directly reviewed the outcome and the further follow-up of the GIS 2023 and has taken several decisions for fast tracking the implementation of the various investment proposals. Under these guidelines, Madhya Pradesh’s plug and play facility will be further strengthened, while no written permission will be required from the state government initially for a period of 3 years for setting up industries in the notified industrial areas. Further, inspection will also be waived for an initial period of 3 years in these notified areas.

The state’s single window clearance system will continue to work as a separate facility. CM Chouhan also made it clear that his hugely successful initiative of meeting with investors on every Monday is to be continued, while weekly review would be done for the follow-up of all the recent investment proposals.

The new ‘How Can I Help You’ digital solution on www.invest.mp.gov.in portal, can deliver timely and satisfactory solutions to problems received through it online. The CM will do a monthly review of all the problems received here.

Madhya Pradesh’s Department of Industrial Policy and Investment Promotion has been designated by the CM as the nodal department for doing the follow-up on all MP GIS 2023 proposals, while the individual department level reviews will also be done periodically. During the review meeting, the CM noted that the event saw hitherto unseen enthusiasm

among investors, and congratulated all the officers concerned and exhorted them to make sure that GIS 2023 continues to be the rising sun in the state’s future prospects.

Madhya Pradesh’s strategy of playing to its strengths seems to have delivered big for the state in MP GIS 2023. Under CM Chouhan’s guidance, the summit had given priority to sectors in which MP has significant strengths including agriculture, food processing, textiles, pharmaceuticals, logistics, automobile, renewable energy and IT. The plug and play facility that was already available to the IT & ITES sector, is now being extended to the garments, packaging and toys sectors as well.

The textile and garments sector in Madhya Pradesh has been witnessing much action in 2023. A Readymade Garment Manufacturing Unit of Gokaldas Exports Ltd. has been inaugurated at Acharpura, which will provide direct & indirect employment to 5000 persons soon, and in 5 years’ time the employment will double to 10,000 persons out of which around 80% would be women. Recently, CM Chouhan had laid the foundation stone of a Unit of New Zeel Fashionwear coming up at Badnawar, Dhar, MP. This Unit too will generate significant employment opportunities, to the tune of more than 12,000 people of which 95% would be women.

The state received investment proposals worth around Rs.15.50 lakh crore during GIS 2023, and the sector-wise splitup has been Rs. 6 lakh crore in renewable energy, Rs. 2.80 lakh crore in urban infrastructure, Rs. 1 lakh crore in agriculture and food processing, Rs.1 lakh crore in mineral based industries, Rs. 78,000 crore in IT & electronics sectors, Rs. 77,000 crore in chemicals & petroleum, and Rs. 71,000 crore in the services sector. These investment proposals across various sectors have a potential of generating over 28 lakh employment opportunities in the state.

The Chief Minister has announced that the near term target for the state would be to make itself a 550 billion economy by 2026. With a population of 8.5 crore citizens, CM Chouhan has explained that it is very much possible, if their 17 crore hands contribute something worthwhile to the state in their own capacity, even if it is just planting a sapling for the future.

Madhya Pradesh indeed is a state with staggering potential. MP is in the very heartland of India, and the 2nd largest state in the country by area. Economically, it is one of the fastest growing states with annual GSDP growth of over 8% CAGR over the last decade. Madhya Pradesh Government has worked diligently over the past decade to develop the state as an industrial hub and promote it as a high potential investment destination.

During the last five years alone, the state government has made an investment of more than $15.4 billion for creating advanced support infrastructure. The state enjoys excellent connectivity to India’s largest cities and markets including New Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad and Kolkata, by air, road and rail.

The state has an extensive road and rail network, with

2,30,000 km of roads, including over 40 national highways, and over 550 trains passing through the state daily. The state is also connected to all major metro cities by air. To leverage its central and strategic location and to overcome the challenges of being a land-locked economy the state has developed 7 Inland Container Depots (ICDs) and is also developing Multi Modal Logistics Parks (MMLPs)

The state also stands to benefit from several new national level projects. The proposed Delhi-Mumbai Expressway is 1350 kilometres long, out of which 244.50 kms will pass through Madhya Pradesh. The new lifeline of India will pass through Mandsaur, Ratlam and Jhabua districts of MP and shall enhance connectivity of these districts for movement of people and material thereby facilitating industrial growth.

Madhya Pradesh is also making huge inroads in the emerging green energy sectors. Towards this, the state has designed some unique projects that build further upon the state’s unique strengths. For instance, the heritage town of Sanchi in the heart of Madhya Pradesh is all set to be a 100% Solar City soon. The ancient Sanchi Stupa in the city has long made it a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Madhya Pradesh government had chosen to build Sanchi as a solar city while taking its tourism potential and proximity to the capital into consideration. The town and its around 10,000 residents use about 2 MW of electricity each day, and under this solar plan, all installations, such as street lights, high tower lights, road signs, and roadside blinkers, houses, agricultural & industrial sectors will be fully powered by solar energy.

Other notable green energy projects coming up in Madhya Pradesh include the floating solar energy plant in Khandwa district’s Omkareshwar town, which will be completed within the next 18 months. The first CNG plant of Mahakaushal area is now being constructed in Jabalpur with the assistance of Smart City and Sanchi Dugdha Sangh at a cost of Rs. 18 crores. The daily production of Bio CNG from here will be 2400 kg.

Madhya Pradesh is clearly emerging as India’s most sought after destination for investment, as the momentum continues even after the summit is over. Madhya Pradesh Industrial Development Corporation (MPIDC) has given land to three industries in the past week in Jhanjharwada industrial area in Neemuch. These industries together have proposed to invest Rs 800+ crore in phases in the region which will generate significant employment. LOI has been issued to a glass manufacturing company that has proposed to invest Rs 450 crore, another manufacturing unit has moved a proposal to invest Rs 380 crore while a motor rewinding unit will invest Rs 25 crore.

Madhya Pradesh Government has built 96 sprawling industrial parks that offer ready industrial infrastructure, complete with online and GIS based land allotment. The state government’s ease of doing business service has caught the attention of global investors in GIS 2023, as over 46 services and approvals from 12 core departments are provided to investors within 30 days of application through a single window clearance system.

KERALA MOVING FAST IN MSMES AND STARTUPS KERALA MOVING FAST IN MSMES AND STARTUPS

ue to its relatively high population, less land area and high living standards as measured by one of the highest Human Development Index (HDI) values in the country, Kerala has always had unique challenges when it came t o economic development by attracting large scale investments. To compound the state’s problems, many areas of the narrow state wedged between Arabian Sea on the West and Western Ghats on the East, are ecologically fragile or sensitive, which makes large scale industrialization, especially of the manufacturing and polluting kind, impossible in the state. Kerala had long countered these challenges by focusing on its strengths like its natural beauty, for growing its tourism industry, which catapulted ‘God’s Own Country’ into being one of the leading tourist destinations for domestic and overseas travellers. Kerala had also made some inroads into IT and IT Services, by establishing or facilitating various tech parks in Thiruvananthapuram and Kochi, even though it fell short of the progress made by its neighbours Karnataka and Tamil

Nadu in this regard. But after many false starts and trials, the state under the veteran leadership of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan seems to have found two new niches where it is silently making much progress. Firstly, the state had designated the current fiscal 202223 as the ‘Year of Enterprises’ with an aim of facilitating the launch of at least 1 lakh new Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSMEs). With one more month to go, the state seems to have surpassed this target by starting over 1.34

lakh new MSME ventures, which involved around Rs. 8000 crore in investments, with the potential of creating over 2.88 lakh job opportunities. While the Opposition has contested some of these numbers, there is no doubt that Kerala has made some significant headway in this crucial sector. Similarly, unknown to many, Kerala has been carving out for itself a significant space in the country’s startup ecosystem. Between 2016 and 2021, over 4000 startups were launched in Kerala. While most of them are still bootstrapped startups, the bigger among them have cumulatively raised $551 million in funding across 110 funding deals, since 2015. Kerala’s strength in startups lie in the fintech and SaaS space, with these startups securing the highest VC funding of $364 million (66%) in the state. Recently the state government’s startup arm, Kerala Startup Mission (KSUM) had organized the Seeding Kerala Conclave, an investors and startups meet, where Sparks Angel Network, Kerala Angel Network and Phoenix Angels announced plans of investing Rs. 8 Cr, Rs. 5 Cr and Rs. 4.95 Cr respectively in Kerala-based early-stage startups.

SEASONAL MAGAZINE

PROSPECTS UP FOR PRESTIGE AS HEADWINDS TURN TO TAILWINDS

What sets apart a leader in any sector is how it performs during downturns rather than in good times. The first three quarters of this fiscal delivered serious headwinds for the entire real estate sector, as it witnessed unprecedented rate hikes by Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in its bid to contain the inflation contagion that hit Indian shores too due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But a sector leader like Prestige Estates Projects faced these headwinds with considerable strength, which is readily seen from its H1 (Q1+Q2) results as well as the ongoing sales momentum in Q3 & Q4. The Bengaluru

headquartered developer which had guided for Rs. 12,000 crore of pre-sales for this current fiscal, could surpass more than halfway of thisRs. 6500 crore - by the end of H1 itself. The listed developer has done extremely well in both its residential and office / commercial segments. This helped the developer report an 80% surge in its consolidated net profit at Rs 140.7 crore in Q2 of this fiscal year, on a year-on-year basis. Total income rose to Rs 1,474.7 crore in the second quarter of this fiscal year from Rs 1,345.2 crore in the corresponding period of the previous year. Sales bookings during Q2 rose 66% yearon-year to Rs 3,511 crore on higher demand despite a rise in home loan interest rates. For the full half year of this fiscal or H1, Prestige Estates’ sales bookings more than doubled to

Rs 6,523.1 crore from Rs 2,845.9 crore in the corresponding period of the previous year. The developer sold 3,210 units during the second quarter, translating to 36 Prestige homes sold every day on an average basis. Total sales during H1 was 8.18 million square feet with an average realization of Rs 7,976 per square feet. In its core and traditional market of Bengaluru, its presales was largely led by the sprawling Prestige City project so far, and going forward, Prestige has a pipeline of 25 million sq ft of upcoming launches to keep the residential momentum in high gear, of which around half is from nonBengaluru markets like Mumbai, NCR-Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune and smaller markets like Kochi and Calicut. It also has Rs 6,500 crore of inventory in ongoing projects to rely upon in Q4 and beyond. Earlier, in FY’22, Prestige had reported sales bookings of Rs 10,400 crore, thereby becoming the first real

estate company to breach Rs 10,000 crore pre-sales mark in the country. Despite its entry into the Mumbai market only a couple of years back, Prestige was among the top sellers in the central suburb of Mulund with sales worth Rs 883 crore in 2022. Prestige Estate’s commercial portfolio is also doing extremely well, and it is most bullish on Mumbai from where it expects around 50% of its overall rentals to come from by the next few years. Prestige has three office towers, spread over 10 million square feet coming up in the core Mumbai business district of Bandra Kurla Complex, as well as upcoming office towers in Pune, Hyderabad, and Kochi too. But the bigger story from Prestige is that the company has performed well during the recent headwinds, and that these headwinds are now all set to subside with inflation easing and rate hikes getting paused or even reversed soon. This will deliver significant tailwinds for the company in Q4 and beyond.

FY’22 had gone down in India’s real estate sector, with a unique change in the pecking order. Noted Bengaluru headquartered developer, Prestige Estates Projects had zoomed past sector leaders DLF, Macrotech (Lodha) & Godrej Properties by way of sales booking in the last quarter of FY ’22. If anyone thought it was a one-off or anomaly, Prestige has proved that they are wrong, in Q1 of this fiscal. Despite the significant headwinds by way of the 140 bps interest rate hikes, and unprecedented cost escalations, Prestige has shown significant momentum with Q1 sales booking jumping 310% on a year-onyear basis to over Rs 3000 crore. The overall momentum was striking as it translated to Prestige selling almost 28 homes every day of Q1, with a total of 3.63 million sq ft spanning 2560 units at an average pricing of Rs. 8500 per sq ft. Prestige seems to have clearly benefited from the market’s consolidation to the more organized and credible players post RERA implementation in the country. For Chairman & Managing Director, Irfan Razack, the emergence of Prestige into national leadership and international limelight is a matter of vision fulfilled as he has always guided the listed developer to be highest in quality and ambition, but lowest in noise. A bigger story in Prestige Estates Projects is that it is targeting to sell properties worth at least Rs 12,000 crore this fiscal, up 16% annually, with 8,500 crore coming from its core market of Bengaluru and the rest from other

cities such as Mumbai and Hyderabad. Already, around Rs 750 crore of sales bookings in Q1 had come in from its new market of Mumbai. To achieve such high growth Prestige has plans to launch multiple projects, having close to about 15 million square feet of area, in the upcoming quarters of this fiscal year, apart from selling its inventories in the ongoing projects. Close on heels of its success in Mumbai, Prestige is also planning to launch a project in the Noida market this fiscal. When it comes to capital markets, there is nothing like being a leader. From TCS to Asian Paints and from Reliance to HDFC Bank, it is a winner-takes-it-all market. Eyes of the foreign and domestic institutional investors, who basically drive the Indian equity market, are forever focused on the longstanding sector leaders, and on emerging leaders if any. That is why Prestige Estates Projects is in international limelight right now, after their FY’22 numbers were published. For, in this past fiscal, Prestige has stunned most industry watchers to emerge as the largest developer in India in terms of sales booking, ahead of traditional sector leaders including DLF, Macrotech (Lodha) & Godrej Properties. If you are stock savvy, you will now be eager to know the market cap of Prestige vis-a-vis these peers, and the answer is it is way too lowonly 46% of Godrej, 34% of Macrotech and 22% of DLF. Yes, by now, you will be able to guess where Prestige is headed, and that is only one reason why Prestige Estates is in international limelight right now!

When the Q4 and annual numbers of India’s top four listed developers came in, there were many interesting trends to detect. For one, all were in serious sales upswings. But Prestige squarely beat all the other three - DLF, Lodha & Godrej - in absolute sales bookings during the past fiscal, and also on percentage terms, except for DLF.

Against Lodha’s sales bookings of Rs. 9024 crore, DLF’s Rs. 7273 crore, and Godrej’s Rs. 7861 crore, Prestige recorded a sales booking of Rs. 10,382

crore, beating them all by a wide margin. Needless to say, it is Prestige’s largest sales booking ever too. In percentage terms, while Lodha witnessed a 51% growth in sales bookings and Godrej saw a 17% growth, Prestige grew by 90%, second only to DLF’s 135% growth which was however from a low base last year. There was more to this performance by Prestige than which meets the eye. Firstly, all the other three developers were headquartered in either Mumbai or in Delhi-NCR, and their primary development activities concentrated in these two regions, which are the most expensive two realty markets in India. In contrast, Prestige is headquartered in Bengaluru, with its primary developments there, and has only recently entered Mumbai and NCRDelhi, which means its highest-value sales are yet to kick in, on a massive scale!

And when it comes to market capitalization, Prestige is much smaller than these three peers that it decisively overtook in sales bookings! And when you go into the internals of this market-cap riddle, you realize that it is indeed a matter of lower valuation, with Prestige’s Trailing Twelve Months (TTM) Price/Earnings (P/E) multiple being at just 15 times, as against 53 times accorded to DLF, 46 times to Lodha and 105 times given to Godrej! Now, with Prestige emerging as the sales leader, expect a big shakeout in the realty sector valuations!

No wonder then that international heavyweights like Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan are both having ‘Overweight’ stance on the Prestige stock with targets of Rs. 612 and Rs. 635 respectively as against the scrip’s price of around Rs. 425 now.

One reason why Prestige has been able to do quite well in FY’22 is its unwavering focus so far on the Bengaluru market. The Silicon Valley of India performed quite well in Q4 of FY’22, both in terms of housing sales and new launches. As per ANAROCK Research, Bengaluru saw housing sales of nearly 13,450 units

in this quarter, which is an yearly growth of over 55%, while new launches stood at 13,210 units, an increase of 72%.

As the de facto leader of Bengaluru, Prestige reaped rich dividends from this post pandemic trend. There was robust demand for its sprawling Prestige City project in Bengaluru as well as for its new launches in Hyderabad and elsewhere in the country. But the future game changer for Prestige is expected to be its recent foray into India’s economic capital of Mumbai, and arguably the country’s most expensive realty market.

Prestige had launched its first residential projects in Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), including Prestige City at Mulund, Prestige Daffodils at Pali Hill, and Prestige Jasdan Classic at Central Mumbai. The response to these three projects at the launch event itself has been extremely good, attesting to the well-thought of nature of these offerings. Prestige has a stated aim of achieving Rs. 3,000 crore in annual sales from these and upcoming MMR projects.

Total launches by Prestige in FY22 stood at 16.77 million square feet. For this ongoing financial year, the company has set a sales guidance of more than Rs. 10,000 crore, which it expects to achieve through a strong pipeline of projects in Bengaluru and other markets like Mumbai. Going forward, more than 50% of the new launches are slated outside of its core Bengaluru market.

Prestige has long been pursuing a goal of debt reduction, and it has a stated objective of maintaining net debt/equity ratio at around 0.5x in the medium term. In Q4 of FY’22, the success of this plan was visible with its net debt to equity ratio standing at 0.35x. Net debt fell sequentially or QoQ from Rs. 4,170 crore in Q3 of FY’22 to Rs. 3,360 crore in Q4 of FY’22. The company has achieved this through some extraordinary and well-structured deals during the last two years.

In 2021, Prestige had announced the

sale of some of its commercial and residential assets in two phases to the US based Blackstone Group, for reducing its debt. The deal had a total enterprise value of around Rs. 9,160 crore. The second phase of the Blackstone deal has also concluded in FY’22, with the remaining payment of Rs. 250 crore to Prestige expected soon.

During the last three years, Prestige has been witnessing a dramatic period of turnaround. Under Chairman & Managing Director Irfan Razack’s visionary leadership, FY’21 saw Prestige’s profits and RoE nearly tripling, and debt-to-equity diving to one-third of the previous year thanks to the $1.5 billion Blackstone deal.

Unlike many of its southern peers, Prestige has a significant portfolio under lease. Prestige has 29 million sq ft of office space and 5 million sq ft of retail space in various stages of implementation now. The residential sales and commercial leasing activity act as twin engines of growth for Prestige, and are complementary in nature. While sales momentum in the residential segment generates free cash, timely execution in the leasing segment contributes to the further value generation.

Prestige also enjoys significant pricing

power in the market, and this has come in handy during this inflationary period that has driven up input and construction costs. To offset this, Prestige has raised prices recently. But what really matters for Prestige now is the impressive diversifications it is undertaking in warehousing, hospitality, retail and its impressive geographic diversification into Mumbai.

One huge advantage a brand like Prestige Estates holds in India’s realty market is that, having made a name for itself in high quality residential and commercial projects, it can extend that expertise and goodwill to new buzzing segments as they emerge. The firm had some time back made such a silent foray into large Grade A warehouses. For testing the waters, it built two such warehouses in a 15 acre land it held in Malur near Bengaluru.

As in every Prestige project, keen attention went into every detail, especially as it was a learning experience for the company too, as it was doing Grade A warehouses for the first time. But it came out with flying colours with one of the buildings attracting e-com major Flipkart as the tenant and the other being taken by Dhoot Transmission.

Now, having proved itself in this domain with such a pilot project, Prestige Estates is going all out to develop this domain, especially as there is a huge demand from ecommerce companies like Flipkart, Amazon, and several of their smaller peers. Towards this, the company has acquired multiple land parcels in and around Bengaluru as a first step. Being a Bengaluru headquartered developer, the company has unparalleled expertise in the city, and the city being the e-commerce hub of India also augurs well for it. Later on, Prestige plans to take this vertical to other regions of the country too. But unlike some of its peers, it is not making a big splash for attracting investors at this stage, despite the warehousing sector attracting $900 million investments in 2021 alone.

Like in everything it does, Prestige wants to differentiate itself in this sector with premium offerings, and it also wants to undertake significant growth and value addition in this vertical, before considering to onboard investors into this. This has been a strategy it did quite successfully in its retail & office space vertical, as seen in the Blackstone deal.

In Grade A warehousing, it is eyeing a unique opportunity, as large organized players like itself with expertise in everything from conceptualization to land acquisition to design to execution to leasing, is rare in this field. That is why Prestige

is confident of differentiating its upcoming warehouses from the rest of the pack. By investing significant funds into this vertical on its own, Prestige wants to build one of the largest Grade A warehousing portfolios in the country.

With its foray into warehousing, Prestige is also closing a gap in its portfolio in retail. Already, it was a noted player in brick n’ mortar retailing, having developed several malls and running them too. Even though it sold off significant retail properties to Blackstone, it remains bullish on physical retailing as it believes that going forward retailing will follow a hybrid model of e-com and brick n’ mortar.

This can be seen from the changing strategies of e-com companies like Flipkart, Amazon, Jiomart etc, all of whom are planning to leverage the tens of thousands of multi-brand and single-brand physical stores owned by individual retailers in malls and high streets for wider reach and rapid delivery to their growing customer base. This means significantly more business for such shops and malls, and Prestige is gearing up for this future with two new malls under construction and six more malls in the planning stage. When these are complete, Prestige will have double the retail properties compared to the retail assets it sold to Blackstone last year.

With large IT and ITES players starting

to bring back their huge workforces back to their offices, Prestige is also eyeing an uptick in the demand for office space. Sensing the green shoots of recovery in office space demand, it is building several such office space projects in multiple cities including India’s economic capital of Mumbai. Another segment that is witnessing a renewed surge post the pandemic is revenge travel, among both business and leisure travellers, and hospitality properties stand to gain the best benefits out of this. Prestige, which already has a strong foothold in hospitality, is all set to cement it further by a major tie-up with US hospitality major Marriott International for two new hospitality projects in New Delhi. Prestige and its 50:50 joint venture partner DB Realty will develop two Marriott hotels and a convention centre in a 7.7 acre land in Aerocity.

The two projects - New Delhi Marriott Marquis & Convention Centre and The St. Regis Aerocity – are unique in the Indian market. While the former will be the first Marriott Marquis & Convention Centre in India, the latter will be a tribute to Marriot’s flagship hotel in US, The St. Regis New York,

and will feature its renowned New York Deli. Together these two properties will bring 779 rooms to the New Delhi hospitality market, and 85,000 sq ft of premium meeting spaces. For the convenience of business and leisure travellers visiting and staying in New Delhi, the two properties are coming up quite near to Indira Gandhi International Airport. And it is not only expansion into such buzzing verticals that Prestige is handling currently. It is in the midst of doing what is historically its greatest expansion ever – a geographic expansion – into Mumbai, arguably the hottest property market in the country for long.

Traditionally, most non Mumbai based developers have however not fared well in the city which is home to stock market titans and Bollywood celebrities, due to multiple reasons. One factor has been the exorbitant cost of land, which has resulted in either super expensive apartments that few developers can market effectively, or the super small apartments for the masses which witness intense competition between almost all kinds of developers. Into such a scenario has Prestige entered boldly with some unique projects.

Prestige’s very first project in Mumbai, Jasdan Classic in Central Mumbai speaks volumes about their strategy for the city. Even when some of the largest Mumbai based developers prefer far away suburbs for premium projects, Prestige has chosen an inside city land at Byculla West for this flagship project. Jasdan Classic consists of two skyscrapers with 233 ultra luxury homes. They are relatively large sized apartments with configurations of 2,3,4-BHK and priced between Rs. 3.69 crore and Rs. 9.44 crore.

Jasdan Classic is spread over 2.2 acres of land, with each tower of 45 storeys. Nine levels of podium parking, three levels of clubhouse and plush amenities like an infinity swimming pool, gym, spa, squash court, & multipurpose hall are available inside the sprawling project.

All the apartments here are designed in spacious layouts with ultra-modern living areas, large windows for cross ventilation and balconies featuring breath-taking views of the South Mumbai cityscape. The Arabian Sea on the West and the Eastern Harbor on the East sets the perfect tone of style and class for the prospective homebuyers here.

The message from Prestige is loud and clear – they are not compromising on location, or space offered or on ultrapremium amenities. While marketing such a project is a tough call for many developers, Prestige is confident of handling it comfortably, and besides that, since there are only 233 homes to sell, this flagship project from Prestige is likely to be a sure and steady sell-out.

The selection of a hot and expensive location like Byculla West in Central Mumbai for their flagship project, is not a one off strategy either. Upcoming residential projects from Prestige in Mumbai would be at similar hot locations like Pali Hill at Bandra and Marine Lines. Prestige has boldly entered such super premium

micromarkets, with a keen insight that for a change many high net worth families would prefer luxury homes in such prime locations rather than in the outskirts or suburbs of the city.

That is, if such projects were available. For long now, such homes from tier 1 branded developers were rare. In its upcoming commercial developments in Mumbai too, Prestige wants to develop in the best addresses, like it has always done in Bengaluru. This has led to it choosing land parcels in prime locations like Mahalaxmi and Bandra Kurla Complex for its first two commercial projects in the city.

However, this doesn’t mean that Prestige would be shying away from the other end of the housing spectrum in Mumbai, the relatively affordable segment. The listed developer has carefully chosen the buzzing suburb of Mulund for its foray into this segment. Interestingly, this is its largest land parcel so far in Mumbai, and given the intense competition there among most of the large players, expect Prestige to offer a significantly differentiated range of homes.

HOW GALGOTIAS UNIVERSITY IS GROOMING EXCEPTIONAL ACHIEVERS

What have the StockPe co-founder Shubham Rawal, E&Y Partner Dr. Avantika Tomar and Aaj Tak Anchor Shubhankar Mishra have in common? Many things may be, as they are all young high achievers, but mainly they are all alumni of Galgotias Group of Institutions. Having placed over 1 lakh students so far, including in some of the world’s most prestigious companies including Microsoft, Google & Mercedes Benz, Galgotias University is now extending its stellar placement record to its School of Liberal Education too. Under the visionary leadership of its young and dynamic CEO Dhruv Galgotia, the Group is also a powerhouse in startup incubation, with Galgotias campuses having spawned over 100 startups.

You must have heard about students founding their own startups. But have you ever heard about a student not only founding his startup but returning to his campus to found a full-fledged startup incubator that has progressed to over 800 members and acted as a catalyst for over 100+ campus startups?

That is the inspiring story of young entrepreneur Shubham Rawal, cofounder of noted startup StockPe, and the entrepreneurship cell at Galgotias University. And wonder of wonders, he did all the background work, while he was caring for his ailing father who was undergoing dialysis at various hospitals.

The inspiring story of Shubham Rawal has a heartrending milestone that will bring tears to your eyes - of his father

passing away after a prolonged fight with kidney disease, and Shubham bagging his first round of funding the next day. The young entrepreneur credits his father for initiating him into coding and computers, and the CEO of Galgotias Group Dhruv Galgotia for providing him direction and all support as an entrepreneur.

Shubham’s high achievement is by no means an isolated incident. Dr. Avantika Tomar is a partner at Ernst & Young’s educational consulting division, Parthenon, where she advises governments, universities, corporates and other stakeholders on strategy and consulting. Earlier, she had worked with the Boston Consulting Group, and also with two leading corporates in Australia for around 5 years.

Dr. Avantika recently visited her alma mater, the Galgotias Group, home to Galgotias University (GU) and Galgotias College of Engineering and Technology (GCET) from where she had passed out as a BTech Mechanical Engineering graduate in 2006. Ace corporate leaders like Dr. Avantika symbolises the maturity Galgotias has achieved in higher education. Despite having seen the world, and being a high achiever in her young age - she is also a PhD holder from IIM Calcutta - Dr. Avantika was all praise for the rapid strides the Galgotias Group of Institutions had taken in the recent decades. She was especially appreciative of the entreprenurial culture which has incubated over hundreds of entreprenurial ventures with over one hundred of them progressing to be well defined startups.

She remembered with gratitude the support of Galgotias management and faculty and exhorted the current students to look beyond marks, and utilize the sprawling infrastructure and facilities at the Galgotias campuses to their full advantage.

Greater Noida based Galgotias University has swiftly emerged as a leader in the world of quality education by delivering consistently excellent results across academics, research and placements. Galgotias is inspired to carry forward the vision of Hon. PM Shri Narendra Modi Ji of making India a Vishwaguru and the dream of Hon. UP CM Shri Yogi AdityaNath Ji of making Uttar Pradesh a truly Global Knowledge Superpower.

It has recently achieved NAAC A+ accreditation with a high score that makes it the second highest among all state private universities in the country. In the NIRF 2022 Rankings too, Galgotias has achieved excellent ranks

across several domains, including engineering, management and pharmacy. In the OBE Rankings 2022, the university is placed in the Platinum Band with Grade A++. Galgotias’ MBA and BPharm programs are also NBA accredited for adhering to world class standards.

When it comes to innovation too, the university has been top ranked, having been placed in the Excellent band under the Union Government’s ARIIA framework. And Galgotias University shot into national limelight when it received 3,99,373 applications under the newly introduced CUET exam, thereby becoming one among the topmost 8 preferred universities in the country for admissions.

For the academic year 2022-23, the university’s admissions are now open for several career focused UG/PG/PhD degrees across almost every domain including engineering, computer science, business, pharmacy, nursing,

Dhruv Galgotia

medical & allied sciences, law, hospitality & tourism, agriculture, media & communication studies, liberal education, basic & applied sciences, finance & commerce, and more. Under the dynamic leadership of its CEO Dhruv Galgotia, the young university has succeeded in attracting exceptional faculty, forged tie-ups with MNC majors like Infosys, Cognizant & Wipro for the benefit of students, and is also planning a major foray into the healthcare and hospitals sector.

Galgotias University has recently emerged as a national leader in higher education by bagging the highest benchmark in academic excellenceNAAC A+ accreditation - in its first accreditation cycle itself. With a NAAC Score of 3.37 out of 4, Galgotias has also become the only private university in Uttar Pradesh with such a high score, and the second highest among all state private universities in the country.

In the NIRF 2022 Rankings, Galgotias had attained 59th Rank in Pharmacy, 93rd Rank in Management and 147th Rank in Engineering.

With over 96% placements including in some of the world’s largest firms, during the last five years, including the most troubling pandemic years, the Greater Noida based Galgotias University has also achieved the escape velocity needed to climb to an international orbit.

For the 2021-22 batch, there were over 4500 offers from over 450 recruiters, with 32% students getting Dream Offers, and an overall average CTC of 5.25 Lakhs Per Annum. The highest package this year was Rs. 44 LPA from Microsoft, bagged by BTech CSE student Guru Prakash Singh.

In MBA placements too, Galgotias has come out with flying colours with 850+ offers from 300+ recruiters with highest CTC being Rs. 17.55 LPA and Average CTC being Rs. 5.10 LPA.

On the admissions front too, Galgotias has been faring well, coming in as the 8th most preferred university in CUET, after majors like Delhi University and BHU.

Almost all Departments of Galgotias have been faring excellently, with School of Hospitality & Tourism getting 2nd Rank in UP in GHRDC Survey; BPharm Program getting NBA

accredited; School of Nursing achieving 100% placement; and School of Law getting 3rd Rank in a recent national survey.

Three GU students have also been selected for last year’s prestigious Google Summer of Code program. Galgotias University has also been ranked among the top institutions worldwide in teaching and facilities by the QS star rating system. Typically, when universities are assessed by the public or even some of the rating agencies, what counts more is the achievements - like campus placements, highest CTC, research projects, startups incubated etc. But for all such achievements to flow sustainably from a studentl, he or she needs to have emotional intelligence first. Otherwise such achievements will just be a one-off event that can’t be replicated for their own benefit and the benefit of the community around.

With this idea in mind, Galgotias University has been trying to inculcate emotional intelligence into its courses, and it had achieved a breakthrough when it became the first private

university in India to conduct a value added course on non-violent communication.

The 30-hour value added course on nonviolent communications involved a series of lectures on the theme ‘NonViolent Communications’ designed and delivered by Gandhi Smriti and Darshan Samiti (GSDS), Ministry of Culture, Govt. of India. The lecture series was an outcome of a collaborative effort of the Department of Humanities, School of Liberal Education, Galgotias University and GSDS.

The course was made available to Galgotias’ undergraduate and postgraduate students for their all-round development including academic and personal development. A pre and post survey too was conducted and presented in the event to map out behavioural change among the youngsters. The survey indicated a positive intervention and held the future prospect of constructive impact in students’ lives.

To ensure national standards for its postgraduate programs and to ensure greater transparency, Galgotias

Shubham Rawal

Dr Avantika Tomar

University had become one of the eight additional universities that opted for the Common University Entrance Test PG (CUET PG). Earlier, the new test was launched with the participation of 42 participating universities, dominated by 35 Central Universities and prestigious names like Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi, and The English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU), Hyderabad.

With the farsighted vision by Galgotias University to be a pioneer in this new program by the Central Government, it has become one among 50 internationally renowned universities and institutes of India. Administered by the National Testing Agency (NTA), the CUET PG is an online entrance exam that provides a common platform and equal opportunities for admission to these 50 prestigious universities. It will be a computer based test for admissions to various courses like MA, MSc, MCom and LLM at these participating universities and will be conducted in both English and Hindi. Galgotias University had hosted the Grand Finale of Toycathon 2021-2022 (Physical Edition). Under the

‘Aatmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan’ initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Toycathon 2021 was conceived to challenge India’s innovative minds to conceptualize novel toy and games based on Bharatiya civilization, history, culture, mythology and ethos. Toycathon is an inter-ministerial initiative organised by the Ministry of Education’s Innovation Cell with the

support from All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), Ministry of Women and Child Development, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Ministry of MSME, Ministry of Textiles, and Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.

Galgotias University has been attracting top-notch talent to its advisory and faculty panels. The University had grabbed national eyeballs when it took in Justice JR Midha who had retired as a Delhi High Court Judge in 2021, to be an Advisor and Professor Emeritus at GU. The unique reason behind this enrollment was that Justice Midha has a vision to reform legal education in India. This renowned scholar and practitioner has been exhorting for an overhaul of professional advocacy skills based on the development of rational thinking, logical processes, legal reasoning and strong communication skills.

Soon enough, Justice Midha’s vision resulted in a first initiative, when Galgotias University launched India’s first judicial training programme under his mentorship. Galgotias’ School of Law has collaborated with Universal Institute of Legal Studies & Law Curators for this prestigious “Advanced Course on Judicial Service & Professional Advocacy”.

Galgotias University has also won much appreciation for providing this Value Added Course free of cost to the students. The course will prepare students to be updated on recent case laws, and inspire in them the

importance of hard work, dedication and perseverance to be an ace legal professional.

In recent years, Galgotias University has also strengthened its flagship engineering programs for which it has been most famous. Industry tie-ups are continually being forged and strengthened so that GU graduates and postgraduates in engineering are industry-ready from day one of their careers in corporates of any size or scale. Such tie-ups include guest lectures from industry experts, internships, joint curriculum development and many more of such activities.

These are being pursued on a continuous basis and the major such programs at Galgotias University include Infosys-Campus Connect Programme, Cognizant Digital Nurture and Wipro Talent Next. GU students are already reaping rich dividends by way of internships and placements from such

partnerships for which the management has always taken a proactive stance.

Galgotias University, despite being relatively young, has an overall placement status of 96%. Even in the recent pandemic years, when recruitments nosedived at many peer universities, Galgotias has stood its ground. The average CTC has also been on a continual rise despite the emerging challenges across the industry sectors. Overall, Galgotias has placed over 1 lakh students in reputed companies so far.

Galgotias has also emerged as one of the first private universities in India, to attain the prestigious NBA accreditation for several of their programs at an extremely rapid pace. These accredited programmes include Computer Science & Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Communication Engineering.

GU has fared well in national rankings like NIRF and global rankings like QS and Times Higher Education. Its overall NIRF ranking is steadily moving up, while its pharmacy and management programs have received attractive positions. Galgotias’ School of Hospitality & Tourism has also recently won a coveted global certification.

Subhankar Mishra