<ul><li><keyword id="2739029" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="nobroker" source="Orion">NoBroker</keyword> came into existence 7 years back when its founders had bad experiences with brokers.</li><li>What started as a service in 2 cities has now expanded to 6, and the platform aims to reach out to the top 50 Indian cities in the next 3-4 years.</li><li>We speak to <keyword id="262315" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="saurabh-garg" source="Orion">Saurabh Garg</keyword>, Co founder &amp; CBO, NoBroker who talks to us about the platform’s journey so far and what the next few years will look like for the platform.</li></ul>How many of you have rented, bought or sold a house and have absolutely hated the experience of paying brokerage? And if you are from places like Mumbai, chances are you have paid brokerage to the same broker for numerous years, even if you have not moved houses. For years, information asymmetry has forced many of us to unwillingly resort to using the services of brokers. It is this consumer problem that NoBroker identified and tried to solve by creating its platform over 7 years back, which came into existence from the personal experiences of the founding members. Fast forward 7 years, NoBroker has now expanded from simply connecting buyers and sellers or homeowners and tenants to even offering services like painting, cleaning, Movers and Packers, Home Sanitization to even AC Service &amp; Repair and Pest Control. It has also expanded to six major urban centers. The platform is now looking at ringing in its next phase of growth and recently launched a high decibel campaign to educate people about its buy-sell proposition. “We have been around for around 7 years now and a lot of our growth has come from word-of-mouth. However, there is also latent demand. People hate paying brokerage, and that’s where we have come in, and addressed a pain-point almost all of us have gone through,” said Saurabh Garg, Co founder &amp; CBO, NoBroker. Today, the platform claims to handle $2 billion worth of transactions on its platform annually. “Currently, we do nearly 50,000 rental transactions every month and around 4,500 buy-sell transactions, which is a much larger number in comparison to most of our competitors,” shared Garg. For now, the platform wants to focus on its buy and sell offering and wants to grow the number manifold. The campaign While NoBroker had earlier released a rental campaign, it was primarily aimed at targeting home owners rather than people looking for rent. The platform, over the years, has used digital advertising more. It has also come up with a lot of regional communication. But with the current campaign, the aim is to talk to a larger audience. <div type="Youtube" id="4y5Xve6LLNg" title="NoBroker Nahi Kiya Kya?" thumbUrl="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/4y5Xve6LLNg/mqdefault.jpg"></div> “While word-of-mouth has been an important driver for us, the latent demand for our offerings has helped us carve a space for ourselves. We listened to our consumers and solved a problem they had been struggling with. Currently, almost 65-70% of our customers come to us organically, without us doing any kind of marketing which is a big advantage for us. However, we thought it was a good time to come up with the campaign because people still feel we are very large in the rental space, but we are now very large in buy and sell too. We do 4,500 transactions in buy and sell every month which almost amounts to Rs 3,000 crore worth of transactions every month. So our objective behind the campaign was to tell everyone that we are pretty big in the buy and sell segment too. NoBroker came into existence because we did not want people to pay brokerage, our aim was to make the process easier and more convenient. Our ad aims to introduce NoBroker as a friend who will help you buy and sell in a more hassle-free way,” explained Garg. Expansion plans When NoBroker had been launched, it had started as a website. A mobile app followed a few years later. It started its operations in two cities, Mumbai and Bangalore. From there, NoBroker is today present in 6 large cities. The aim is to grow its presence substantially in the next few years. “We think this problem related to brokers exists in the top 50 cities in India. So, in the next 3-4 years, we want to go to the top 50 cities and solve the problem across rental, resale, or new sales. We also think that our proposition of non-brokerage clubbed with a one-stop shop works really well because as you move to smaller cities, getting professional services is also a big problem. Services like painting, movers and packers etc play a critical role in the entire real-estate journey and we are trying to make it a painless process, a one-stop shop. Our aim is to make it as seamless for our consumers as possible. We also want to ensure that when someone is availing a service on our platform, there is a certain level of quality and it is done in a proper manner. The future NoBroker had announced in April last year that it had raised $30 million (Rs 230 crore) in its series D round of funding that was led by General Atlantic. Right now, from a communication perspective, the platform will continue to talk about its increasing market share in the buy and sell segment. The aim is to increase the number of transactions drastically in the coming years. “The number of listings we have for buy and sell are much larger than a lot of other platforms. The task at hand for us is to make people aware of our play in the space and to figure out if we can take the 4500 closures to 3X that number in a year. We do resale and primary, which is also a very big business for us. So driving traction on sales and taking it from here to a very large business will be our key focus. Secondly, we want to keep on increasing our market share because when that happens, you are able to give more options to consumers, whether it is a buyer or tenant. So we will aim at going deeper into the cities. Thirdly, we will also focus on identifying pain-points and offering services to make the process easier for them. Over a period of time, we have realized that rent agreement, packers and movers and painting are pain-points, so we have added those services. People can also pay rent on our platform. So our endeavour would be to keep removing our consumers’ pain-points by adding important services so that we can make our consumers’ journey seamless. Also, <keyword id="9264124" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="nobrokerhood" source="Orion">NoBrokerhood</keyword>, our society management app has also gained a lot of traction so that is also something we will keep investing on,” concluded Garg.

Almost 65-70% of our customers come to us organically, without us doing any kind of marketing: Saurabh Garg, NoBroker

By Aditi Khanna London, Apr 9 () An Indian-born beauty queen, who has put her pageant life on hold to return to the National Health Service frontlines as a doctor at a hospital in eastern England, is petitioning the UK government to address the housing concerns of medics fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.Bhasha Mukherjee, who competed in Miss World 2019 as Miss England last year, was in India as part of a charity mission but decided to return to her job as a junior doctor to join her colleagues at Pilgrim Hospital in Boston, Lincolnshire, to help with the coronavirus workload pressures. The 24-year-old, currently in self-isolation for the stipulated 14-day period after flying back from India last week, launched an online petition calling for at least a 50 per cent discount on hospital accommodation. "I speak not only for myself but also all the medical staff that are being forced to choose such accommodation when they're working 13 hour shifts a day almost seven days a week, hardly using the living spaces and paying prices comparative of cities like London, in a place like Boston, a small rural town in Lincolnshire," said Mukherjee. "I am not asking for a freebie. All I ask is for hospital accommodation providers like Progress Living and others around the country to match the market! Give us a 50 per cent discount for the 50 per cent of every 24 hours we're slogging at the frontline, risking a 50 per cent chance of contracting COVID-19 and 50 per cent of losing our lives," she said. Mukherjee, from the town of Derby in the East Midlands region of England, would have to move miles away from her family home to return to her junior doctor post next week. She said that previously whilst working at the same hospital she was living in a shared house with affordable rent. Now with the constraints of the pandemic, she would be potentially risking non-medical housemates and the community if she opted for similar living conditions. "Thus, I am left with no choice but to opt for hospital accommodation which is an extortionate 605 pounds minimum for doctors of my pay grade. This is double the market price for a tiny room with an uncomfortable single bed, en suite bathroom and has been reported frequently for pests and bed bugs," she notes."Why when there are countries like India, who are putting staff up in the empty hotels for free to incentivise and reward their hard work?" she asks. Her petition, addressed to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Progress Living, has attracted over 300 of the 500 target signatures within days. Progress Living, a charitable organisation part of the UK's Progress Housing Association, said it has worked closely with the hospital's United Lincolnshire Health Trust (ULHT) to provide much needed hospital accommodation for nearly 15 years and that its rents are set in line with independent market valuations.Bernie Keenan, Deputy Chief Executive and Executive Director (Services and Growth), Progress Housing Group, said: "Like our colleagues in the NHS, our own staff are working incredibly hard, night and day, seven days of the week, to keep our accommodation available, clean and properly maintained for the increased numbers of medical staff requiring places to stay. "We will continue to work closely with the Trust and with the NHS to respond to any additional requirements they have during this very difficult period," Keenan said. In her petition, Mukherjee also highlights the UK-wide shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) such as masks and aprons for frontline NHS staff, including at her particular hospital. "Those of us still going to work/returning to work are choosing to do so knowing the risks. Junior doctors like myself are being given additional responsibilities, beyond our training and not even being offered a pay raise to match the new job role and responsibility,"she said. "Our mandatory training has been compromised, our teaching hours have been almost zeroed and same with opportunities for us to do rotations at different specialties that we had opted for. Junior doctors are having to purely focus their time on shift work," she said. Mukherjee, who spent her early childhood in Kolkata and moved to the UK with her parents aged 9, speaks five languages and has a Bachelor's degree in Medicine and Surgery from the University of Nottingham. She believes her Miss England and Miss World participation connects with her medical profession as a platform to spread the message of healthy living, especially within the UK's Indian community. "I want to take this platform of Miss England and empower people to take control of their own health and stay well in the community," she said at a charity fundraiser last year for Hope Foundation, a UK charity working with street-connected and slum children in Kolkata, which she supports as part of her beauty with a purpose mission. AK MRJ MRJ

Indian-born beauty queen doctor petitions for affordable COVID-19 housing in UK

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Master model builders construct the massive <a href="https://www.insider.com/category/lego">Lego</a> structures, like the ones replicating American cities, at <keyword id="1240696" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Legoland">Legoland</keyword>.</li><li>A baby wrangler is hired by <a href="https://www.insider.com/category/movies">movie</a> productions to make babies cry onscreen.</li><li>Marble harvesters extract 4 million tons of marble per year from the famous quarries in Carrara, Italy.</li></ul>Following is a transcript of the <keyword id="21654" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="video">video</keyword>: From people who harvest giant blocks of marble to master <keyword id="6380548" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="lego">Lego</keyword> builders, to people who can make babies cry in <keyword id="406" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="60" keywordseo="Movies">movies</keyword>, there are a lot of fascinating and unexpected jobs out there. But just because you haven't heard of them doesn't mean you haven't seen their work on the big screen, on your plate, or in your blankets. Here are 21 jobs you probably never knew existed.This cinder-block was made to be broken. And it was created by NewRuleFX's Ryan Johnson, who specializes in breakaway movie props. His most frequently requested props are these glass bottles. They're made with a thin resin plastic that looks exactly like the real thing, but an actor can break one over their head on camera without getting injured. Some other props include chairs and bricks that can fall apart with just a little pressure and glass shards that are actually made from rubber. Breakable windows are made by gluing together multiple panes of glass. So while the shards are real, they won't hurt the actor as long as they punch straight through the pane.To be a great bonsai artist, one needs to dwarf real trees, and then master bending and twisting trees into intricate and artful shapes. But there's one trait a bonsai tree artist like Chiako Yamamoto needs to master, patience. It takes three years for a transplant to create new roots and five years for the tree to adapt to any of Yamamoto's changes. According to Yamamoto, this small bonsai took 15 years to finish. And this one here took 25 years to look like this. And while this is an art form, these are living things, so they constantly change and respond to light and water. It's no wonder that one can sell for around a hundred million yen or just under a million dollars.Matt Slagle is one of the master model builders behind these massive Lego replicas of major cities. Here's New York, San Francisco, and Las Vegas. The builders used 10 million blocks on Miniland USA, with New York alone using three million. And everything there from a car to the Statue of Liberty, had to be built exactly on a one-to-20 scale of its real life counterpart. And master model builders have to get every tiny detail right, like you can see here in each of San Francisco's Painted Ladies. Their crowning achievement? The One World Trade Center replica. At 26 feet tall, it stands as the tallest Lego model in the U S.More marble has come from the quarries in Carrara, Italy, than anywhere else on earth. The quarries produce four million tons per year, and it takes 13,000 people to harvest and extract all that material, including 600 truck drivers who make their way up dangerous roads every single day. To remove the marble, quarriers have to carefully drill three holes in a slab, creating one vertical line and two horizontal lines. These meet in one central strategic spot. They then carve it out using a five-millimeter diamond wire until the marble is fully removed from the mountain. More wires or a chainsaw can then cut these marble blocks down even more.Real truffles are only found underground by a truffle hunter like James Fever. First Fever's dog has to sniff out the truffles' location. Then Fever has to dig each one out by hand. He also needs to sniff it to make sure it's even ripe after picking it. And even if he does get a good one, it can go bad after just five days, so they need to be sold quickly. However, a truffle can reap big rewards. An 80-gram truffle can net you $90, while the world's largest white truffle sold for $61,000 in 2014.Elaine Hall is what is known in Hollywood as a baby wrangler. Her job is to make sure that child actors are safe on set and that they give the best performance possible. Hollywood has specific time limits for how long young stars can work, so Hall makes sure her stars nail their takes as quickly as possible. When working on "Akeelah and the Bee," she was able to get a baby to hysterically cry on command simply by fake crying herself.The Greenland shark is the most toxic shark in the world, but in <keyword id="55091" type="COUNTRY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Iceland">Iceland</keyword>, Gurjon Hildibrandsson and his family have been making and selling fermented meat from it for generations. It's a laborious six month process to make these sharks edible. The meat is first fermented in cold storage rooms for six to nine weeks. Then it needs to be hung outside for six months to dry out while still retaining the correct texture.While certain food items you see on screen might be fake, a lot of food and movie scenes is real. And for those occasions, productions hire a food stylist like Zoe Hegedus. Her job is to make sure all the food on camera is both appealing to the cameras and edible for the actors. Sometimes that even involves substituting real food with edible lookalike props. For example, when working on the film, "Midsommar," Hegedus had to make a Scandinavian dish topped with egg yolk. However, the real egg yolks wouldn't hold together on the long hot shoot days. So instead she concocted a sphere made of mango and orange juice that looked exactly like a real egg.Before eiderdown fibers end up in high-end duvet covers, they first need to be harvested from ducks. Farmers start by collecting every eider nest by hand. The job entails a lot of wandering because the nests are located far apart, and a harvester needs several nests, as each one yields just 15 grams of material. The harvesting process is both ethical and completely natural, and at the same time, incredibly difficult, but that's only a fraction of the work. Machines help the harvester sort through the nests, but unwanted objects like rocks, sticks, seaweed, and feathers need to be picked out by hand. Cleaning one kilo of it can take up to five additional hours.Stephen Kutcher is known as The Bug Man of Hollywood, training bugs for the big screen. To get a spider to crawl across the floor and into a slipper in "Arachnophobia," he guided the spider to where it needed to go using invisible vibrating wires. In Spider-Man, Kutcher put a spider on a paintbrush, then tapped it once the spider was at the end to get it to drop down to an exact spot. And in "Exorcist II: The Heretic," he trained 3,000 locust to cling onto the wall of a cage by shining a heat emitting light at it, drawing them to the warmth.Not all scissors are mass produced. Some are still handmade by master putter-togetherers at this factory in England and can cost anywhere between 100 and $315. Cliff Denton is one of just two remaining master putter-togetherers at the Ernest Wright factory. And it takes years of training to get to his level of craftsmanship. The final stage of scissor making alone can take five years of training. If you hit the wrong spot while hammering the blade, the entire pair of scissors will be ruined.Sophia Bogle is a book conservationist whose daily job is to restore 120-year-old archival books. The process begins with deconstruction. Vogel removes the acidic old tape from the book cover. She also sands it and then cleans it with a repair knife. Then she washes the individual pages in hot water and restores them using Japanese tissue to fix any tear she finds. The rest of the process involves touching up the cover, embossing, and then gluing and pressing it all together. And the tiny details matter. If she uses the wrong type of black pen on the cover, she can damage it.A lot of those sounds you hear in nature docs are actually fake since it's often too difficult to capture the real sounds in the field. So Foley artists like Richard Hinton have had to find creative ways to pair sounds with nature. Some of the sounds he has mastered are swimming schools of fish, lava, and even an orangutan eating.Just one of these Kolinsky sable paint brushes can take a week and a half to make, with brush makers separating hundreds of strands of hair by hand. And it's the hair that makes these brushes remarkable. The brushes are made from the strong high-quality tail hairs of the Kolinsky sable in Siberia. Sandra Harris is one of only nine brush makers in the world who can make these Series 7 Kolinsky sable watercolor brushes. It can take three years of training to get to her level.Fugu, or puffer fish, is a poisonous fish that's a delicacy in Japan. To properly prepare the fish and make it edible, chefs like Yutaka Hattori must carefully remove its toxic eyes, gills, liver, gallbladder, kidneys, and ovaries. The Japanese government tightly controls who can prep the fugu. Only a few select chefs are trained to make it edible, and they must take an extensive exam to legally serve the fish. One of the biggest challenges is that the poisonous parts vary by species and can be more difficult to identify in hybrid puffer fish.Rogan art is created with a castor oil based paint combined with different colors. Before using it, it needs to be lit up. It's a dangerous process that only a few artists are skilled enough to handle, as it can catch fire at any time. During this process, Abdul Gafur Khatri swirls paint on his palm to create heat, and then uses a metal rod to create designs on fabric. This art form has been in the Khatri family in India for eight generations, and they are the last family still keeping it alive. These days, they find themselves competing with mass produced textiles. It's a completely freehand painting process, meaning the design can come out completely different than originally planned. This is one of the reasons it takes years to learn, and also what makes both this skill set and the craft itself so unique.Filmmakers can't achieve the realistic look of their characters' weapons in close-ups if they resort to plastic blades. Enter blacksmith Tony Swatton, who has been forging weapons for movies and TV for over 30 years. He made the swords in "Pirates of the Caribbean" and the hook from "Hook." And Swatton can design weapons from all eras and cultures. Zoro's blade in "The Mask of Zorro" was created using two curved hunting swords from the 1500s that were cobbled together to look like the classic rapier.Cheryl Eisen stages <keyword id="513494" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="luxury-apartments">luxury apartments</keyword> up for sale in New York. That means she makes them look stylish enough that people will actually want to buy them. Eisen selects her decor from a 60,000 square foot warehouse in Jersey City, full of custom furnishings, lighting, and artwork. She might choose an oversized print to make a room look bigger, or throw in some floor-to-ceiling drapes to make ceilings appear higher than they really are. A stager must have a good eye to nail the right aesthetic for the location and the prospective buyer. Staging an apartment shows the buyer how they can live in and furnish a space, which you wouldn't see in an empty apartment.Your favorite video game characters might be created digitally, but somebody still needs to act out all of their motions. Enter Richard Dorton, a creature performer who specializes in all kinds of video game characters. His movements become the base of these characters thanks to motion capture. First Dorton's full body is scanned and his motions are captured by a computer in real time. These actions are then translated to the CG character in the game. And to make this all the more realistic, he has to get really physical, especially for particularly dramatic moments like this roar. The most commonly seized item at JFK International Airport is actually food, and it's an agricultural specialist's job to seize and destroy all of it. These agents are trained to prevent the spread of any pests or diseases that could harm US livestock or crops. So before dropping any fruits or vegetables in the grinder, agents like Ginger Perrone must cut open and inspect each piece for evidence of disease or pests. But Perrone gets a little help from some four-legged canine friends like Biscuit, who's trained to sniff out food in luggage. These dogs' sense of smell is so strong that they have an estimated 90% accuracy rate.

21 jobs you probably never knew existed

<img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5e8ca60c15ea4b411d441e5c-1450/testorfmichaellgsq.jpg" alt="Michael Testorf" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" />Legg Mason Global Asset ManagementMichael Testorf is one of the managers of the ClearBridge International Growth Fund<ul class="summary-list"><li>International fund manager Michael Testorf gave Business Insider tips on how he's constructing a diversified portfolio in a world reshaped by the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/china-virus-everything-we-know-deadly-2019-ncov-wuhan-spread-2020-1">COVID-19 pandemic</a>.</li><li>Testorf is one of the managers of the ClearBridge International Growth Fund, which Kiplinger ranks as the best international large-cap mutual fund of the last 10 years. </li><li>Testorf says the fund continued to beat its peers in the first quarter when markets melted down. It was already in the process of shifting to a more defensive approach.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/?hprecirc-bullet">Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories</a>.</li></ul>Michael Testorf's fund was one of the world's best for almost the entire length of the now-departed bull market, but he's not dwelling on the past.Testorf is one of the managers of the <a href="https://www.morningstar.com/funds/xnas/lggax/people">ClearBridge International Growth Fund</a>, which Kiplinger ranks as <a href="https://www.kiplinger.com/tool/investing/T041-S001-top-performing-mutual-funds/index.php?table_select=IntlDiv">the best international diversified large company fund</a> over the previous decade. In a market that's changed dramatically, Testorf says the fund is still ahead of its peers."We had a decent outperformance for the first quarter," he told Business Insider in an exclusive interview. "A little bit more than 5%."The main reason is that some of the fund's investments had reached their targets, and they'd started to shift their portfolio away from cyclical stocks and toward companies with business models that are more steady and defensive. He offers two keys to its performance over the decade: An emphasis on quality, and a strict approach to prices."Quality means, for us, one being is strong balance sheet, meaning relatively little debt, having a strong business model, and good cash flow generation," he said. "We don't want to overpay for growth because overpaying for growth ... will lead to losses."The fund's investments <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/best-global-stock-picks-for-the-next-decade-elisa-mazen-2020-1">typically consist of high-potential "emerging growth" companies, trend-based "structural growth" companies, and steady "secular growth" names</a>.Thanks to the recent meltdown and some investments that achieved the manager's goals, the International Growth Fund today has more cash than usual - about 4% instead of the typical 1% - and is leaning more on the structural and secular growth companies and de-emphasizing emerging growth.Testorf told Business Insider about some of his strongest convictions about the portfolio today. Those include three investments - each in a different country and a different sector - that he has the most confidence in, one where he's preparing take advantage of a recent stock slump, and one he had no choice but to sell.<h2>The favorites</h2>Testorf explains that Swiss drugmaker <a href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/stocks/roche-stock">Roche</a> could beat the market during an ugly earnings period."I'm a little bit worried about what happens in the quarter one earnings season," he said. "I think the big pharma companies should do relatively well."At the same time, he says the company has a "very, very strong" pipeline that will help ease its path after some key patent expirations, and the market is underestimating Roche's earnings power. That's part of the reason it's the largest investment in his fund.His second pick, German tech company <a href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/stocks/teamviewer-stock">TeamViewer</a>, is something of an international answer to Zoom, which has soared in the era of social distancing - but <a href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/zoom-video-stock-price-credit-suisse-sell-now-coronavirus-competition-2020-4-1029068363">where experts are starting to think the enthusiasm has gone too far</a>.Testorf breaks down TeamViewer's business into three areas: Videoconferencing, remote help desks, and remote workplace log-ins."You remotely log into your work PC. That's what I do now every single day. Also a lot of people use it personally. ... It's freemium model."He says the company has about 340 million active users, and similar to Zoom, a vast majority are using a free version. But its profits could explode if it starts converting more of those users to paid versions."I think that is one where you will not see earnings disappointment," he said. "There's so many new clients particular in Asia ... that it's fair to believe their quarter one numbers will be very strong, and the upcoming quarters should be also very, very strong going forward.Another company going through big changes because of the pandemic is <a href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/zoom-video-stock-price-credit-suisse-sell-now-coronavirus-competition-2020-4-1029068363">Arco</a>, a Brazilian educational software company. Testorf says about a million private school students already attended class through its platforms, and more private and public schools are now testing Arco's services as a result of the outbreak and lockdowns."Arco just introduced the platform to a lot of other new schools which were not able to provide a virtual class offering," he said. "It could also be a potential COVID-19 winner."In the meantime he sees the company as a safe investment because of its extensive contracts, its status as an acquirer of rivals in a fragmented industry, and the emphasis parents place on education."It's a very defensive name in Latin America," he said.<h2>The opportunity</h2>British pest control company <a href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/stocks/rentokil_initial-stock">Rentokil</a> has been included in the International Growth fund for years, and Testorf praises its "super high-quality top management" and free cashflow generation.Because they're rigorous about refusing to overpay for growth, he and his fellow managers recently cut their investment in the company in half because its stock price had climbed to a fair value. Unexpectedly, it's plunged with the rest of the market, and he says he might add to his position again."Now, we're in a position where we have upside again, and if that one comes down further, I'm happy to buy that," he said. "We have a clear concept what we want to buy at which kind of price, and that's what we're waiting for."<h2>The exit</h2>Testorf praises <a href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/stocks/hdb-stock">HDFC Bank</a> as a good long-term stock, but recently closed his position because there's simply too much uncertainty surrounding the company today. "It's probably the best quality bank in India, with the best growth, the best management," he said, but "Social distancing is in India almost impossible, and we have no idea what the actual numbers of coronavirus (cases) could be and what the impact could be."Do you have a personal experience with the coronavirus you'd like to share? Or a tip on how your town or community is handling the pandemic? Please email <a href="mailto:covidtips@businessinsider.com">covidtips@businessinsider.com</a> and tell us your story.And get the latest <a href="/coronavirus-business-impact">coronavirus analysis and research</a> from Business Insider Intelligence on how COVID-19 is impacting businesses. <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/unemployment-numbers-coronavirus-economy-layoffs-2020-3">3.3 million Americans filed for unemployment - and an economist predicts it could be far worse than the Great Recession</a></h3> <iframe class="bijwplayerclass" src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/SGqZEM54-CEZHWCBG.html" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" scrolling="auto" style="margin:0px;"></iframe>

Coronavirus investing 3-1-1: A global fund manager beating 98% of his peers shares 3 stocks that are must-haves, one he'll buy when opportunity strikes, and one he doesn't trust anymore

<img class="gwt-Image" src="/photo/47582738.cms" /> Just in case you had this notion that startups in India meant ecommerce sites with some flash sale and discounts, here’s <keyword id="6354321" type="CITY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Bengaluru">Bengaluru</keyword> -based FlyBird Innovation to prove you wrong. The weather experts having forecasted a drop in amount of rainfall this season, farmers in southern states of the country were having sleepless nights, that is until FlyBird came to their rescue, with their own brand of innovative irrigation solutions. 
 These technology startups are helping to reduce water usage by almost 40%, according to the Economic Times. Karnataka being a <keyword id="196094" type="POSITION" weightage="20" keywordseo="leading-producer">leading producer</keyword> of coconuts requires plenty of water as coconut plants are guzzlers. An increasing number of startups is developing much-needed and affordable solutions for farmers across the agricultural cycle - for eliminating pests, smarter irrigation, precise weather forecasting, and improving yields - that could help three-fifths of India's 1.2 billion people who are dependent on monsoon rains. 
 
"Our solution for precise irrigation also increases crop yield and gives farmers higher returns by 10-15%," said Saitsh KS, founder of FlyBird. At a price of Rs 16,000-Rs 28,000, the firm's technology costs about one-third of similar US and Israeli variants, he said. 
 For the farmers, the <keyword id="25450" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="savings">savings</keyword> are more fundamental. "A coconut plant requires 100 litres of water a day. With the earlier flooding system I would overuse water by as much 1,000 litres. Now this extra water can be used for other crops,” a <keyword id="48857" type="POSITION" weightage="20" keywordseo="Farmer">farmer</keyword> told ET. 
 Farmers can also look up to Skymet Weather Services for a more accurate telling of the weather. The private forecaster - using a system that is a combination of historical data and high speed computing - has been closer to actual rainfall in the past three years than the <keyword id="55209" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="Indian-Meteorological-Department">Indian Meteorological Department</keyword>. The Noida-based firm has also facilitated crop <keyword id="35450" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="insurance">insurance</keyword> claims for 13-15 million farmers, said Jatin Singh, <keyword id="1542630" type="POSITION" weightage="20" keywordseo="founder-and-chief-executive">founder and chief executive</keyword>. 
 For pest control, Bengaluru-based <keyword id="2888712" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Barrix">Barrix</keyword> has developed phermone-based traps and sticky sheets. "Farmers spend Rs 1,500-3,000 per spray per acre of land with commercially available pesticides. Even then pests get resistance and come back and damage crops," said Lokesh Makam, founder and <keyword id="5645" type="POSITION" weightage="20" keywordseo="CEO">CEO</keyword>, adding that Barrix has sold its products to 60,000 farmers across 16 states. 
 "There is a huge upside to improve productivity by using non-traditional technologies, i.e., bringing other functional expertise into agriculture viz-a-viz IT, analytics, data, sensors, pharmaceutical concepts, etc," Jinesh Shah, founding partner, <keyword id="1873742" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="Omnivore-Partners">Omnivore Partners</keyword>, an agriculture-focused <keyword id="6357097" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="venture-capital">venture capital</keyword> firm that has backed both Skymet and Barrix told the financial daily. "The marriage of these technologies to solve agriculture problems can be fruitful for investors going forward." 
 
(Image: Wikimedia)

Startups in Bengaluru are helping coconut farmers in a very innovative way

<img class="gwt-Image" src="/photo/48082021.cms" />The online marketplace <keyword id="6354742" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Flipkart">Flipkart</keyword>, which has recently started its own digital product range, is all set to surprise its consumers with another major announcement anytime soon. Flipkart is in advanced talks with <keyword id="54613" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="makemytrip">MakeMyTrip</keyword>, the online travel company to start online ticketing platform on its portal. 
 
As per an Economic Times report, Flipkart is planning to provide a one-stop shopping experience to its users by the end of this year. 
A senior Flipkart employee, on condition of anonymity said, "We are planning to integrate ticketing powered by MakeMyTrip on the Flipkart marketplace, which means that a customer will be able to book air and rail tickets from the Flipkart platform." 
 
The online ticketing platform MakeMyTrip, however, did not responded to the emails sent by ET, nor did Flipkart made any comments on the report. 
 
The online travel marketplace, MakeMyTrip, which offers travel booking, mobile recharge and bill payments, is growing as a preferred pick by its consumers. In a market like India, where possibilities of online bookings is swelling with airline bookings estimated to account for over half of all ecommerce transactions, such pacts would surely be accepted by users. 
 <keyword id="18635" type="CITY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Amazon">Amazon</keyword> too announced a partnership with Indian Railways subsidiary, <keyword id="65866" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="IRCTC">IRCTC</keyword>, and became the official partner of the online ticketing platform in March this year for two years. 
 <keyword id="541988" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="SnapDeal">Snapdeal</keyword>, on the other hand bought online mobile recharge platform FreeCharge. The e-tailer also offers services like pest control, mobile and bill payments, and financial services such as home and personal loans.

Now book your air and train tickets on Flipkart!

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5817f9dd5124c9db6236597a-800/brazil-not-expecting-another-big-wave-of-zika-with-onset-of-summer.jpg" border="0" alt="Genetically modified male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes are pictured at Oxitec factory in Piracicaba, Brazil, October 26, 2016. REUTERS/Paulo Whitaker " data-mce-source="Thomson Reuters" data-mce-caption="Genetically modified male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes are pictured at Oxitec factory in Piracicaba" />Thomson ReutersGenetically modified male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes are pictured at Oxitec factory in Piracicaba, Brazil.</div></div></div><ul><li><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/category/bill-gates">The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation</a> is partnering with mosquito engineering company Oxitec to develop a male mosquito designed to kill off future generations of malaria-transmitting bugs.</li><li>The genetic engineering technique has been used before to control populations of mosquitoes that carry Zika and yellow fever.</li><li>After decades of decline, malaria deaths are on the rise, and experts are worried about more drug-resistant strains of the disease cropping up.</li><li>The push is part of the Gates Foundation's global plan to eradicate malaria from the Earth "within a generation." </li></ul><hr /> Beyond being itch-provoking summer pests, mosquitoes kill <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-mosquitoes-deadliest-animals-2017-4">an estimated 830,000 people</a> around the world each year. That makes them more deadly than any animal on Earth, humans included. A majority of those mosquito-caused deaths (more than 440,000) are cases of malaria, which are transmitted person to person in a one-celled parasite that female mosquitoes pass around when they suck our blood.Bill and Melinda Gates have been on something of a crusade to eradicate the deadly disease since creating their foundation in 2000, funding <a href="https://www.gatesfoundation.org/What-We-Do/Global-Health/Malaria">around $2 billion worth</a> of grants to combat malaria.Now the foundation is putting $4.1 million towards a new approach: dispatching a lab-engineered force of male-only mosquitoes built to essentially murder their own offspring.This week, the foundation entered into a cooperative agreement with UK-based Oxitec to develop the new mosquitoes, <a href="https://www.oxitec.com/oxitec-to-apply-new-generation-of-self-limiting-mosquito-technology-to-malaria-spreading-mosquitoes/">the company announced</a> on Tuesday. Oxitec, a genetic engineering company that spun out of Oxford University in 2002, has trademarked its insects as "Friendly Mosquitoes," though the bugs are arguably anything but to disease-carrying female mosquitoes.Other strains of the "Friendly" mosquitoes have <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/could-genetically-engineered-mosquitos-stop-zika-2016-1">been deployed in the past</a> to help kill off Aedes aegypti mosquitoes that can carry Zika, dengue and yellow fever. They've been dispatched in Brazil, on the Cayman Islands, and in Panama, and have been tested in controlled cage trials in India, the company told Business Insider. In certain spots they've reduced wild populations of Aedes aegypti - the yellow fever and Zika-carrying mosquito - <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4489809/">by around 90%</a>. The Gates Foundation already poured at least $5 million into Oxitec to develop those strains of killer mosquitoes back in 2010, but it hasn't funded any Oxitec projects since, the company said.<h2>How malaria-killing mosquitoes could work</h2><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/57b7464bdb5ce92c168b7c1a-728/white-house-seeks-18-billion-from-congress-to-combat-zika.jpg" border="0" alt="A technician from Oxitec inspects larvae of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes in Campinas, Brazil, February 2, 2016. REUTERS/Paulo Whitaker" data-mce-source="Thomson Reuters" data-mce-caption="A technician from Oxitec inspects larvae of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes in Campinas, Brazil" />Thomson ReutersA technician from Oxitec inspects larvae of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes in Campinas, Brazil.</div></div></div>Oxitec's newest genetically-engineered male mosquitoes will be released into the wild to mate with natural-born malaria-carrying females.Since only female mosquitoes bite, the lab-engineered insects won't nip anyone once they are set loose. Instead, they'll mate with the females, and pass on to their offspring a "self-limiting" gene that is meant to kill off future generations of female mosquitoes before they reach adulthood, when their people-biting phase of life would normally begin.The males can then continue seeking out more female mosquitoes to impregnate with the self-limiting gene for up to another ten generations, the company said in a <a href="https://www.oxitec.com/oxitec-to-apply-new-generation-of-self-limiting-mosquito-technology-to-malaria-spreading-mosquitoes/">release</a>.The process isn't perfect. In one trial of yellow fever-carrying mosquitoes in Panama, Oxitec ended up releasing about one genetically-engineered female for every 10,000 males it set loose, but <a href="https://www.oxitec.com/faq/">the company says</a> those females are disease-free and die in days. Finding new ways to combat the spread of malaria is becoming increasingly urgent because cases of the disease, which had declined 62% between 2000 and 2015, have since spiked around the world. "We can confidently say that we have stopped making progress," Pedro Alonso, the director of the Global Malaria Programme at the World Health Organization (WHO) in Switzerland, <a href="https://www.nature.com/news/rise-in-malaria-cases-sparks-fears-of-a-resurgence-1.23046">said last year</a>. Alonso worries that as malaria rates fell, governments around the world shifted focus, and funding for anti-malaria initiatives has flatlined as a result.Scientists also think that some of the parasites that cause the deadliest forms of malaria are <a href="https://www.nature.com/news/rise-in-malaria-cases-sparks-fears-of-a-resurgence-1.23046">becoming more resistant</a> to drugs.<h2>Genetically engineered mosquitoes are a controversial fix</h2><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/56ab6e3a5124c9621b8b4568-728/ecuador-reports-22-zika-virus-cases-suspects-67-more.jpg" border="0" alt="A technician from Oxitec inspects pupae of genetically modified Aedes aegypti mosquitoes in Campinas, Brazil, January 28, 2016. REUTERS/Paulo Whitaker" data-mce-source="Thomson Reuters" data-mce-caption="A technician from Oxitec inspects pupae of genetically modified Aedes aegypti mosquitoes in Campinas, Brazil" />Thomson ReutersA technician from Oxitec inspects pupae of genetically modified Aedes aegypti mosquitoes in Campinas, Brazil.</div></div></div>The new Oxitec mosquitoes might be ready for field trials by the fall of 2020, but the company has been met with some resistance for using genetic engineering tactics before. Oxitec is hoping to try out some of its other lab-made mosquitoes <a href="http://keysweekly.com/42/mosquito-oxitec-is-courting-the-keys-again/">in the Florida Keys</a> this summer, even though residents have in the past voiced fierce opposition to the idea.Residents voted against allowing the genetically modified mosquitoes out in 2016. This year, Oxitec has hosted some town hall meetings and met with local officials in the Keys, hoping to further court neighborhoods that voted in support of their plans two years ago, <a href="http://keysweekly.com/42/mosquito-oxitec-is-courting-the-keys-again/">The Keys Weekly</a> reported. Oxitec isn't the only company trying to use GMO mosquitoes for malaria prevention. A group of scientists at Imperial College London are also working on a mutation that would essentially sterilize malaria-carrying female mosquitoes, <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/12/14/504732533/to-fight-malaria-scientists-try-genetic-engineering-to-wipe-out-mosquitoes">NPR reported</a> in 2016. The mosquitoes aren't out of the lab yet. Environmental groups such as <a href="https://foe.org/projects/genetic-engineering/">Friends of the Earth</a> have come out forcefully against the genetically-engineered mosquitoes, arguing we don't know how these lab-made creatures might impact the fragile balances of Earth's ecosystems. Scientists counter that the goal of releasing genetically engineered mosquitoes is not to kill them all off, but to make a bigger dent in killer diseases like Zika and malaria."If we succeed, people won't even notice," molecular biologist Tony Nolan, who works with GMO mosquitoes at Imperial College London, told <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/kill-all-mosquitos-180959069/">Smithsonian Magazine</a>. "There will be plenty of mosquitoes out there." <div class="margin-top"> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/malaria-mosquitoes-deadliest-disease-human-history-2016-7">The deadliest disease known to humans has been killing us for over 20 million years</a></h3> <div> <iframe class="bijwplayerclass" data-player="jwplayer" src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/8dhA3lfm-CEZHWCBG.html" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" scrolling="auto" style="margin:0px;" allowfullscreen=""></iframe><script>function receiveMessage(event){ console.log(event.data.fullscreen); Android.fullscreen(event.data.fullscreen); }window.addEventListener("message", receiveMessage, false);</script> </div> </div>

Bill and Melinda Gates are giving $4 million to help scientists engineer a malaria-killing mosquito - here's how it could work

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5c61a5f026289814d34f85d8-2400/gettyimages-1069950060.jpg" border="0" alt="Insects" data-mce-source="Hillary Kladke/Getty" data-mce-caption="40% of global insect species are at risk of dying out, a new study finds." />Hillary Kladke/Getty41% of global insect species are at risk, a new study finds.</div></div></div><ul class="summary-list"><li>Roughly 40% of the world's insect species are in decline, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0006320718313636">a new study shows</a>.</li><li>The die-offs are happening primarily because insects are losing their habitats due to farming and urbanization. The use of pesticides and fertilizers is also to blame, as is climate change.</li><li>The study's authors warn that the repercussions of <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/germany-insect-population-flying-bugs-climate-change-pesticides-population-decline-2017-10">this loss of Earth's insects</a> could catastrophic.</li><li>The rapid shrinking of insect populations is also a sign that the planet is in the midst of a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/biological-annihilation-sixth-mass-extinction-2017-7">sixth mass extinction</a>.</li></ul><div title="Page 2"><div data-rapid-cpos="4" data-rapid-subsec="paragraph" data-rapid-parsed="subsec">Somehow, it's easier to be concerned about wolves, sea turtles, and White rhinos dying off than it is to feel remorse over vanishing bugs.But the loss of insects is a dire threat - one that could trigger a "catastrophic collapse of Earth's ecosystems," a new study warns.The research, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0006320718313636">the first global review of its kind</a>, looked at 73 historical reports on insect declines around the world and found that the total mass of all insects on the planets is decreasing by 2.5% per year.If this trend continues unabated, the Earth might not have any insects at all come 2119."In 10 years you will have a quarter less, in 50 years only half left and in 100 years you will have none," Francisco Sánchez-Bayo, a study co-author and researcher at the University of Sydney, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/10/plummeting-insect-numbers-threaten-collapse-of-nature" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-ylk="subsec:paragraph;cpos:5;elm:context_link;itc:0" data-rapid-parsed="slk" data-rapid_p="5" data-v9y="1">told the Guardian</a> That's a big problem, since insects are food sources for countless bird, fish, and mammal species. Pollinators like bees and butterflies also perform a crucial role in fruit, vegetable, and nut production.</div><div data-rapid-cpos="5" data-rapid-subsec="paragraph" data-rapid-parsed="subsec"><h2>Insects are going extinct 8 times faster than mammals, birds, and reptiles</h2>Sánchez-Bayo and his co-authors focused their analysis on insects in European and North American countries. They estimated that 41% of insect species are in decline, 31% are threatened (according to criteria set by the <a href="https://www.iucn.org/resources/conservation-tools/iucn-red-list-threatened-species">International Union for Conservation of Nature</a>), and 10% are going locally extinct.That extinction rate is eight times faster than the observed pace of extinction for mammals, birds, and reptiles.The study suggests that bee species in the UK, Denmark, and North America have taken major hits - bumblebees, honey bees, and wild bee species are all declining. In the US, the number of honey bee colonies dropped from 6 million in 1947 to 2.5 million just six decades later.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5c61d6d70d15f5043743f7b9-2400/ap385676659072 1.jpg" border="0" alt="honey bee" style="color: #000000;" data-mce-source="AP" data-mce-caption="In this Wednesday, July 16, 2014 photo, Gene Brandi inspects one of his beehives in Los Banos, Calif. " />APA California beekeeper inspects his honey bee hive.</div></div></div>Moths and butterflies are also disappearing across Europe and the US. Between 2000 and 2009 alone, the UK lost 58% of butterfly species on farmed land. Dragonflies, mayflies, and beetles appear to be dying off as well.When looking at all animal populations planet-wide (not just insects), according to a <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/114/30/E6089.full">2017 study</a>, the Earth appears to be undergoing a process of "biological annihilation." That analysis estimated that "as much as 50% of the number of animal individuals that once shared Earth with us are already gone."</div>This rapid decline in global biodiversity is sometimes called the "sixth extinction," since it's the sixth time in the history of life on Earth that the planet's fauna has experienced a major collapse in numbers. In the past, mass extinctions have been caused by the emergence of ice ages or asteroid collisions. This mass extinction, however, is driven by human activities - namely deforestation, mining, and carbon-dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming."As insects comprise about two thirds of all terrestrial species on Earth, the above trends confirm that the sixth major extinction event is profoundly impacting life forms on our planet," the authors wrote.Read More: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/biological-annihilation-sixth-mass-extinction-2017-7">Scientists say we're witnessing the planet's sixth mass extinction - and 'biological annihilation' is the latest sign</a><h2>'Catastrophic consequences for ... the survival of mankind'</h2><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5c61ca80262898198223354f-2400/gettyimages-966221064.jpg" border="0" alt="Bugs on windshield" style="color: #000000;" data-mce-source="Joe Klementovich/Aurora Photos/Getty" data-mce-caption="By 2119, all of the world's insects could be gone." />Joe Klementovich/Aurora Photos/GettyBy 2119, all of the world's insects could be gone.</div></div></div>The study emphasizes that insects are "essential for the proper functioning of all ecosystems" as food sources, crop pollinators, pest controllers, and nutrient recyclers in soil."If insect species losses cannot be halted, this will have catastrophic consequences for both the planet's ecosystems and for the survival of mankind," Sánchez-Bayo told <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/10/plummeting-insect-numbers-threaten-collapse-of-nature">the Guardian</a>.Substantial declines in insect populations therefore threaten the food, timber, and fiber production that humanity's survival depends on, according to Timothy Schowalter, professor of entomology at Louisiana State University."The pollinator declines jeopardize 35% of our global food supply, which is why European countries are mandating protection and restoration of pollinator habitats," he told Business Insider.Schowalter added that insects also are critical food resources for many birds, fish and other vertebrates, which would disappear if their food source does. "Insects are often maligned, or at least their significant contributions to ecosystem productivity and delivery of ecosystem services are underappreciated," Schowalter said. "In short, if insects and other arthropods do decline, our survival would be threatened."</div><h2>Farming practices are behind the insect die-off</h2>This isn't the first time scientists have called attention to plummeting insect populations. In 2017, <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0185809">a study indicated</a> that 75% of Germany's flying insects <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/germany-insect-population-flying-bugs-climate-change-pesticides-population-decline-2017-10">had disappeared since the 1990s</a>. Another <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/115/44/E10397">recent study</a> showed that the total biomass of arthropods - creatures like insects, spiders, and lobsters that have jointed legs but no backbone - in Puerto Rico has taken a nose dive since the 1970s. Pesticides and fertilizers, along with heavy land use for farming, are primary drivers of this decline. "Overall, the systematic, widespread and often superfluous use of pesticides in agricultural and pasture land over the past 60 years has negatively impacted most organisms, from insects to birds and bats," the authors of the new study wrote. They added: "The conclusion is clear: unless we change our ways of producing food, insects as a whole will go down the path of extinction in a few decades."Sánchez-Bayo told <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/10/plummeting-insect-numbers-threaten-collapse-of-nature">the Guardian</a> that he thinks insecticides like neonicotinoids and fipronil are especially damaging. "They sterilize the soil, killing all the grubs," he said. <div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5c61bab274c58768b9448ebc-2400/rtx1225d.jpg" border="0" alt="india farmer pesticides" data-mce-source="REUTERS/Jayanta Dey " data-mce-caption="A farmer sprays pesticide containing monocrotophos on a paddy field at Mohanpur village, about 45 km (28 miles) west of Agartala, capital of India's northeastern state of Tripura, July 25, 2013." />REUTERS/Jayanta Dey A farmer sprays pesticide containing monocrotophos on a paddy field at Mohanpur village, about 45 km (28 miles) west of Agartala, capital of India's northeastern state of Tripura, July 25, 2013.</div></div></div>Climate-change-driven temperature shifts are playing a role in insect deaths, too, though it's not the main factor. "So far, declines have been related more to land-use changes, especially agricultural intensification, forest fragmentation and urban development, than to temperature change," Schowalter said. <div title="Page 15"><div title="Page 15">To address the steep decline in insect populations, Sánchez-Bayo and his co-authors are pushing for initiatives to restore insect habitats and cut down the amount of chemicals used in agricultural practices."It is imperative that current pesticide usage patterns, mainly insecticides and fungicides, are reduced to a minimum," they wrote.</div></div> <div class="margin-top"> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/londons-first-insect-farm-owners-are-trying-get-people-to-eat-worms-2018-8">London's first insect farm owners are trying get people to eat worms and crickets to save the world</a></h3> <div> <iframe class="bijwplayerclass" data-player="jwplayer" src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/L0j6P5Km-CEZHWCBG.html" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" scrolling="auto" style="margin:0px;" allowfullscreen=""></iframe><script>function receiveMessage(event){ console.log(event.data.fullscreen); Android.fullscreen(event.data.fullscreen); }window.addEventListener("message", receiveMessage, false);</script> </div> </div>

Insects are dying off at record rates - an ominous sign we're in the middle of a 6th mass extinction

<img class="gwt-Image" src="/photo/46244466.cms" /> 

	 It is a known fact that India is an agrarian economy. No wonder, agriculture remains one of the key focus areas for the Indian Finance Minister while drafting the yearly budget. Do you know what his plans for this industry are this year? Well, the industry doesn’t know that either. We got in touch with few industry experts to know what their expectations are from the <keyword id="2549811" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Budget-2015">Budget 2015</keyword>, and here they are. 
	 
	Reforms 
	 
	People in this industry are hoping that with an increasing focus on developing agriculture sector to meet the food security demand in the country, the government will also introduce reforms in agricultural practices. 
	 MK Dhanuka, managing director, <keyword id="282018" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Dhanuka-Agritech-Limited">Dhanuka Agritech Limited</keyword>, told BI, “Lack of technical know-how and awareness of superior farm inputs, among farmers is another challenge. Government has attempted several approaches specially targeting marginal farmers; however present dismal state of farmers shows lack of effective implementation of these schemes. Major overhaul of the sector is the need of hour.” 
	 
	He further added that the government should take several initiatives to educate farmers about the importance of different pesticides and chemicals for better productivity. “Plant protection chemicals play an important role in reducing wastage and losses of food. It is an important farm input. Sadly, the yield per hectare in India is much lower, compared to developed countries. Every year, crops worth crores of rupees are wasted due to pest attacks and diseases,” noted Dhanuka. 
	 
	Financial assistance 
	 
	The sector has been facing severe credit crunch since the beginning and players in this industry have time and again emphasized on the need for more pro-active measure to boost financial assistance to the farmers. “Agricultural credit is another area of concern. Rural areas have very low penetration of institutional financial credit,” stated Dhanuka. 
	 Besides, the sector has also failed to attract any substantial investments in recent times. Even Sandeep Sabharwal, CEO of <keyword id="2726881" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="SLCM-Group">SLCM Group</keyword>, an agri logistics and warehousing company, agreed with the fact. He said, “There has been an ever standing demand for efficient infrastructure to control the post harvest losses in the agriculture sector. It is extremely significant to augment post harvest logistics to encourage enterprises by subsidizing the sector which in turn will empower the stakeholders. It is tragic that despite of strong dependence on agriculture sector, it accounts for only 16% of our GDP. The importance of Agriculture in India can be summarized by the fact that more than 58% of the population of India is still associated with the agriculture domain.” 
	 
	Cut in excise duty 
	 

	The industry has also demanded a cut in the excise duty for agrochemicals in order to support better yield and make it more accessible for the farmers. “Current government’s commitment towards GST implementation and improving overall infrastructure will have far reaching impact on the agriculture industry. These steps will not only help in creating a better business environment, but also improve the profitability from the farm produces.
 
Image: Indiatimes.com

3 key things that Indian agriculture industry is expecting in Budget 2015

<img class="gwt-Image" src="/photo/47024184.cms" />

	 Social media may have brought brands and consumers closer to each other, but it has its own side effects too. The recent case of voyeurism which involved <keyword id="6492243" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Fabindia">Fabindia</keyword> saw some serious backlash from the consumers on both Facebook and Twitter. 
	 Similarly, a couple of months ago, <keyword id="14775" type="CITY" weightage="20" keywordseo="McDonalds">McDonalds</keyword> got caught in a controversy, when a social media post alleged that a McDonalds’ outlet in Pune had thrown a street kid out, went viral. With consumers becoming self-proclaimed citizen journalists, do we really see any impact of such negative posts on a brand’s image in the real sense? 
	 
	“Yes it does. Because it paints and portrays brands as insensitive. Brands are meant to be benign entities in the market. The moment something like this happens, what happens is that the brand’s image becomes negative. And this can be corrected only by action immediately as the internet is a viral medium,” said brand expert Harish Bijoor CEO of Bijoor Consultants. 
	 
	However, he added that in terms of numbers, such social media post will not have any immediate impact. “The impact will not be seen in the numbers. But if such incidents occur frequently or are repeated, then the brand is finished,” noted Bijoor. 
	 Talking about the <keyword id="567165" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Pune-incident">Pune incident</keyword> to BI India, Ranjit Paliath, vice president, Business Operations, McDonald’s India (West &amp; South), said, “When the incident involving a street child being denied access to a restaurant in McDonald’s broke on social media, we immediately investigated the matter internally to understand if our employees had in any manner breached basic courtesy and respect. On completion of the investigation, necessary action was taken and the concerned security personnel was suspended. At all times, we did keep putting out statements on social media platforms to keep our customers informed about the actions taken. The company apologized to the child and to the customers for the hurt caused affirming that we treasure and respect everyone in equal measure and do not support any form of discrimination.” 
	 
	According to media reports, the brand had shut its outlet following the incident. “We would like to inform you that the Pune restaurant is open and functional. The restaurant was closed only for few hours to cooperate with the Police for investigations. McDonald’s, at all times, seeks to provide to its customers a safe and welcoming environment and is committed to instilling the need to set the highest standards of courtesy and respect across the system,” clarified Paliath. 
	 
	Interestingly, McDonalds global is once again involved in yet another unpleasant incident in which a woman found a cockroach in her burger purchased from one of the outlets in New Zealand. 
	 
	Commenting on the issue, Paliath explained that the product was bought from a the outlet’s driveway and not the restaurant. “The restaurant in New Zealand has the highest food safety and hygiene grade, and an active pest control program. The food was not served in the restaurant, but was served via drive through, and taken away from the premises to the person’s home. The person posted alleged pictures, but never complained to the restaurant. After the incident broke on social media, she has been contacted by McDonald’s but is refusing to allow an investigation to be held. Therefore at this stage it is impossible to establish the facts of the matter,” he asserted. 
	 While McDonald’s Pune incident hogged a lot of limelight, cola giant <keyword id="54572" type="CITY" weightage="20" keywordseo="PepsiCo">PepsiCo</keyword>’s <keyword id="567902" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Tropicana">Tropicana</keyword> incident failed to create a storm on the social media. On January 26, Rukhsar Saleem, a customer wrote an open letter to the brand. She alleged that a rotten mass was found in the Tropicana juice carton that had an expiry date of March 30, 2015. 
	 
	“I am so angry beyond any sane soul’s comprehension, over such negligence, pathetic quality check and terrible disaster on behalf of self proclaimed ‘world’s No.1 Juice Brand’ Tropicana, PepsiCo India. I am still reeling under the shock and scared to the core when my husband showed me this ugly infected mass coming out of the juice carton. As from this very carton, I had given juice to my two years old son few hours before only,” she wrote in the letter. 
	 
	Threatening to take strict action against the company, she further added, “But now I will do everything possible to make people aware of this incident through every platform, so that people should not blindly trust such tall false claims. And as a profit making organization, you need to do your homework really well before introducing any product in market. 
	 
	The brand was quick to do damage control and immediately contacted Saleem. Cmpany officials had got in touch with her and had taken both the carton and the rotten mass from for testing. 
	 
	“We have collected the pack from the consumer and examining all possibilities including mishandling of the pack.,” a company spokesperson told BI India sometime back. 
	 
	He added, “Consumer safety is paramount to PepsiCo and all our products including Tropicana conform to both Indian and global quality benchmarks. To ensure highest standards of product quality and hygiene, our products are manufactured in automated plants using world-class processes. The juice is untouched by hand and post pasteurization is filled into Tetra Pak and sealed on fully automated lines. The packaging has several layers of film and aluminum foil which prevents any air, and more importantly, microbes from entering into the container and coming into contact with the juice.” 
	 
	Image Credit: Indiatimes.com

Street kid thrown out of
McDonalds or a rotten mass in Tropicana; negative publicity does not impact the brands' revenues

<img class="gwt-Image" src="/photo/54641155.cms" /> 
(Image: Indianrailinfo) 
 With train fares sky rocketing (read surge pricing) and the minister ambitious enough to introduce world class facility in Indian trains, I believed <keyword id="6355455" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Indian-Railways">Indian Railways</keyword> must be heading to a grand renovation and might match the travel-quality in other developed South Asian counterparts of it. 
 To travel to <keyword id="6354925" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="Kolkata">Kolkata</keyword> from New Delhi, I wanted to experience how Indian Railways must have changed in the days of Talgo trial runs and <keyword id="6355629" type="CITY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Google">Google</keyword> enabled wi-fi in stations. I ditched the allure of flash sales of airlines offering me a <keyword id="1475258" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Delhi-Kolkata">Delhi-Kolkata</keyword> flight ticket for Rs 2500, inclusive of all taxes. A day before my journey last month, I bought a ticket on the newly introduced surge pricing for New Delhi-Sealdah Rajdhani Express, one of the premium trains in the country. The ticket, although priced at Rs. 2105 costed me something around Rs 2850, thanks to flexi pricing. But I was hopeful that the service must have bettered and it’s worth it. 
 I reached the New Delhi station in late afternoon. With limited seating options, people squatted on the dusty floors of the platform waiting for different trains. As the <keyword id="93583" type="CITY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Sealdah">Sealdah</keyword> Rajdhani arrived, I was readying myself for premium hospitality from the Indian Railways. 
 
Two minutes into my designated berth, as I was checking out the place, a co passenger entered the coach with 16 sets of bags including a LED TV and packed the coup. 
 
Evening of ‘super <keyword id="18712" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="20" keywordseo="Gold">gold</keyword> dhamaka chai’ 
Twenty minutes into the journey, I was served bottled water along with the evening snacks, which consists of a namkeen (with oil dripping), a stale sandwich, a sweet, and a tea-kit. Now if you are conscious about health diet, you should have got your own snacks. The tea bag was a Super Gold Dhamaka tea, a brand you might never hear of, but it exists. 
 
Stinky toilet with flooded floor 
Moving on to the next episode – the toliet. The Wester Styled toilet was stinking and the hand shower lying on the flooded floor. I discovered that the drain outlet is clogged with dirt and it won’t be possible for the cleaner to do the needful. The washbasin tap has a missile like projectile that lands directly on your foot. Tired of it, I decided to check out the other toilet, which was slightly better. But the stink is omnipresent. The tap in this toilet needs to be patted to get the water flowing in the moving train. There are just so many lifehacks, I learnt in a few hours in the train. 
 
WTF is food-hygiene! 
<img class="gwt-Image" src="/photo/54641140.cms" /> 
(Representational image to show how doors are kept blocked. Source: Mouthshut) 
 Coming out of the toilet, I found the attendants of ‘Meals on Wheels’, the contractor of food service in this particular train, squatting in the floor and readying dinner. The trays have been laid down on the ground and being arranged. <keyword id="51958" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="20" keywordseo="YES">Yes</keyword>, in front of the doorways, dustbins and washrooms. Those will soon be served to the passengers. Also one side of exits are made inaccessible by these attendants because they need a place to arrange their food. So in case of an emergency, you have to depend on just two doors and emergency windows for exit. 
 
Dessert-less dinner 
<img class="gwt-Image" src="/photo/54641131.cms" /> The dinner arrived at 8:30. It was a decent one with two tiny pieces of chicken, rice, roti, dal and yogurt. The passengers, who had ordered <keyword id="2396101" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Continental-meal">Continental Meal</keyword>, received cold fried chicken, pasta, bread and some inedible noodles. One of them had requested for the breads to be toasted, which the attendants denied to oblige. Well, the dinner was over by 9pm and the only dessert ice cream started getting distributed at 10:15. Yes, when most of the passengers were ready to sleep, this strategy worked better for ‘Meal on Wheels’ because 70% of passengers refused to have. We were seated in the end of the coach and somehow the ice creams got over by the middle of the coach. The server informed us that ice cream is over and they can serve Frooti, ‘if we want’. Definitely nobody wanted a fruit juice after dinner. 
 
Blankets are washed every 2 months 
As we prepared for sleep, my pillow was found to be a used-one with stains. The blanket was smelly and the attendant informed was indifferent about it. He said, blankets are washed every 2 months. The sleep wasn’t much comfortable because the AC was too cold and there was no attendant in the coach at midnight. Moreover, there were mosquitoes. The coach attendant in the morning informed us that pest control is done after 2-3 months and he can’t help with it. On asking for the complain book, he said his job would be at stake if we complain. 
 
Delay of premium train 
The breakfast doesn’t need to explained, as it was of the same quality as evening snacks with un-toasted breads. You need to choose between jam or butter, as both would exceed their budget. There was no fruit juice with it, which it used to be earlier. The train was delayed by 2 hours and reached Sealdah at around 12:30pm and there was no free water bottle or food served in extra to make up for the delay. 
 
Thou shalt tip 
Towards the end of the journey, the coach was stinking like never before. The cleaner just mopped the floor, which isn’t enough to clean the floor walked down by 72 passengers. There was no deodorizer used. And then as the train was nearing destination, the servers of 'Meals on Wheels' started asking for tips. While there is no such official order on it, the minimum tip is Rs 20 per passenger, otherwise they would just not leave and keep coaxing you. The same people who are rude enough and serve food as if doing you a favour suddenly wear ear-to-ear smile. 
 
As I completed 1454 kms on India’s premium train for 19 hours, I realized I could have simply taken the flight and reached home last night itself by paying a few hundreds more on spot-ticket.

I paid Rs 2800 on flexi pricing in a premium train to Kolkata; the biggest mistake I made

<img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/54997aadeab8eadb641468d4-1024-681/5613611181_6f76794728_b.jpg" border="0" alt="jane goodall world bank">World Bank/Kristoffer Tripplaar</img>
When she was <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/06/22/opinion/global-agenda-magazine-the-earth-in-2050-interactive.html">asked by the New York Times</a> recently whether the Earth would be a better or worse place by 2050, chimpanzee expert, UN Messenger of Peace, and author of a book titled <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Reason-Hope-A-Spiritual-Journey/dp/B000LP66V6">"Reason For Hope," Jane Goodall</a> had a surprisingly bleak response:
"I see the world in 50 years, perhaps 100, as a dark place," Goodall said.
What's terrifying about Goodall's vision isn't how dystopian it sounds, but rather how prescient it's already proven to be.
From the spread of deadly, antibiotic-resistant superbugs to the destruction of habitats that are home to critical life-prolonging drugs, Goodall was right on the money.
Here are three main predictions Goodall made that are already coming true:
<h2>1. People will be fleeing their homes</h2>
"Environmental refugees," <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/06/22/opinion/global-agenda-magazine-the-earth-in-2050-interactive.html">Goodall told the Times</a>, "will have fled their destroyed homelands, flooded by the rising seas or buried by the encroaching deserts. Many people will be starving as they fight for access to water and land."
Last year, more than <a href="http://www.unhcr.org/pages/49c3646c10a.html">22 million people, many of whom live in the world's least developed countries, were displaced by natural disasters</a>. A large portion of these countries have the double burden of being located in climate change hotspots - places along the equator, the coast, and elsewhere <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/14447171">where the effects of global warming will be magnified</a>.
<img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/53b56bde69bedd016f29f2b2-1200-800/rtxyvwu.jpg" border="0" alt="flooding Mississippi river clarksville, Missouri">REUTERS/Office of Missouri Governor Jay Nixon/Handout Flooding is seen along the Mississippi River in Clarksville, Missouri, on April 21, 2013. </img>As the world gets warmer, the lives of the people who reside here will become bleaker: If they do not move, <a href="http://www.who.int/globalchange/environment/en/chapter6.pdf">rising floodwaters and warmer temperatures will leave them more susceptible to pests and disease</a>. The economic value of their lands will decrease and they will become poorer. Those who do migrate away will also struggle - these people will have to take on new, possibly different jobs for which they may lack the proper training or education.
<img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/52c2f9556da81129679e16f1-800-1411/nightmare%20bacteria%20threat%20bigger%20infographic.jpg" border="0" alt="CDC Nightmare Bacteria Threat bigger infographic.JPG">CDC</img>
<h2>2. Infections will be harder to control</h2>
"Medical <keyword id="41551" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="100" keywordseo="science">science</keyword> will be unable to cope with new infections," <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/06/22/opinion/global-agenda-magazine-the-earth-in-2050-interactive.html?_r=1&amp;">Goodall said</a>, "as bacteria build up resistance to more and more antibiotics and the tropical forests where so many medical cures are sourced are destroyed."
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Tom Frieden sounded the alarm bells in 2013 <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/cdc-warns-of-post-antibiotic-era-2013-9">by saying we'd soon be in a "post-antibiotic era."</a> Since then, newborns in India <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/antibiotic-resistant-superbugs-are-causing-bacterial-infections-2014-12">have begun dying at alarming rates</a> from infections that were once curable. The same deadly "superbugs" responsible for these deaths are spreading rapidly around the globe.
They've already come to the United States, fueled in part by our country's overuse of antibiotics <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/10/american-meat-has-more-antibiotics-than-ever/381100/">on farms</a>and <a href="http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-living/consumer-health/in-depth/antibiotics/art-20045720">in hospitals</a>. Last year, <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/drugresistance/threat-report-2013/pdf/ar-threats-2013-508.pdf#page=13">23,000 Americans</a> died from bacterial infections that didn't respond to antibiotics. Certain strains of <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/nightmare-bacteria-infections-are-on-the-rise-2013-3">"nightmare bacteria"</a> kill up to half of the patients they infect, and cases are becoming increasingly common across 42 states.
Several diseases the US has kept in check with antibiotics (at least until now) <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/r-how-to-fix-a-broken-market-in-antibiotics-2014-06">have also developed antibiotic-resistant strains</a>, including gonorrhea and tuberculosis.
Multi-country outbreaks of viral diseases like Ebola have also proven difficult to contain. More than <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/outbreaks/2014-west-africa/case-counts.html">19,000 people have been sickened by Ebola</a> worldwide; more than 7,000 have died.
Scientists suspect the <a href="http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1404505#t=abstract">two-year-old child who was Ebola's patient zero</a> became infected after coming into contact with a fruit bat. The likelihood of people getting animal diseases <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781118297469.ch5/pdf">increases as humans are forced to move into new areas</a> (often destroying animal habitats in the process). Scientists suspect these were driving factors behind the emerging diseases including the <a href="http://www.niaid.nih.gov/topics/emerging/Pages/introduction.aspx">2011 SARS outbreak and the recent US monkeypox outbreak</a>.
<h2>3. Devastating impacts of continued deforestation</h2>
<img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/529df338ecad04d1472d6bac-1200-800/450397443.jpg" border="0" alt="450397443">Mario Tama</img>Goodall also predicted the destruction of the rainforest, which has only accelerated since she initially spoke about it to the New York Times in 2012. Each year, <a href="http://www.fao.org/forestry/fra/76871/en/">we lose a chunk of rainforest the size of Panama (18 million hectares</a>, <a href="http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/40893/icode/">up from 13 million in 2010</a>) to deforestation, the vast majority of which is caused by logging and farming.
The loss of these lush forests won't just affect the animals and plants who live there or the people who live in their immediate vicinity. We get <a href="http://www.nybg.org/files/scientists/mbalick/Ethnobotany%20and%20the%20identification%20of%20therapeutic%20agents%20from%20the%20rainforest.pdf">a large portion of our medicines</a>, including the drugs we use to fight deadly diseases like cancer, from the rainforest. The popular cancer drug Taxol, for example, was <a href="http://cam.cancer.gov/newsletter/2013-spring/a_conversation_with_spring2013.html">originally isolated from the seeds of the Cowtail Pine</a>, a small tree that grows only in deep, partially-shaded soils like the kind fostered by the giant trees and sheltered canopies of the rainforest.
"Mother Nature is resilient," <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/06/22/opinion/global-agenda-magazine-the-earth-in-2050-interactive.html?_r=1&amp;">Goodall told the Times</a>, "but the time is fast approaching when she will be battered beyond her ability to restore herself. We must make a choice."

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Street kid thrown out of McDonalds or a rotten mass in Tropicana; negative publicity does not impact the brands' revenues

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