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The world’s largest religious carnival, the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/Top-10-crazy-stuff-companies-doat-the-Kumbh-Mela/articleshow/48185752.cms">Kumbh Mela</a> in Nasik, will have a footfall of around three crore people this year. Apart from being a crowd puller, the magnificent event has also become a centre of attraction for<a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/Companies-dive-in-for-a-bite-of-the-Kumbhpie/articleshow/48124752.cms"> tech companies</a> like MIT, Nokia, Wikipedia, the Tata Center for Technology and Design, the IITs and Reliance Innovation Lab. 
 The trendsetters and researchers from such tech giants are looking forward to the event-‘<keyword id="2577221" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Kumbhathon">Kumbhathon</keyword>’, an opportunity to work with the masses—a larger test group—to study the stress of rapid urbanization and create disruptive solutions in the domains of health, housing, food, payments and transportation. Kumbhathon, a 365-day project, has been set-up by few organizations to come up with solutions to address the challenges like stampedes, an ordinary concern during such events. 
 
The 30-day period will become a golden goose for them to test out frugal innovations that will, in the future, power the smart cities of developing economies. 
 Sophie Vandebroek, chief technology officer and president of the <keyword id="6490330" type="CITY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Xerox">Xerox</keyword> Innovation Group, in her address to the Kumbhathon members, said, "Our research team in Bengaluru is looking forward to collaborating with MIT during the Kumbhathon in Nasik, to pilot innovations that will make a positive difference for rapidly growing communities. Researchers at Xerox are addressing a wide range of urban challenges using a combination of mobile sensing, crowd-sourcing, and prescriptive analytics to create actionable insights for cities and their citizens." 
 Not just this, religious leaders like <keyword id="1197765" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Swami-Chidanand-Saraswati">Swami Chidanand Saraswati</keyword>, founder of Ganga Action Parivar, along with Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswatiji, secretary-general of Global Interfaith WASH Alliance, too, are working to strengthen PM Narendra Modi’s renewable energy initiative. To make <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/Maha-Kumbh-to-generate-a-whopping-Rs10000-Crore-in-revenue/articleshow/48022906.cms">Kumbh </a>clean and energy-friendly, the spiritual leaders will use their clout among devotees to promote the use of solar lamps sold by Urjakart, an Indian startup. 
 
Under the guidance of tech companies, students are hoping on to the Kumbh bandwagon with their ideas for startup. The two apps developed by them so far are Epimetrics and Meditracker. While Epimetrics attempts to curb the spread of epidemics by digitizing doctors' logs across the city, Meditracker acts as a '911' service alerting medical personnel in case of any serious injuries. 
 
Another innovation gaining momentum at <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/Shortage-of-condoms-raises-fears-of-spread-of-HIV/AIDS-before-Kumbh-Mela/articleshow/47937531.cms">Kumbh </a>is the concept of crowd steering with the help of mobile towers, a real-time system that not only shows the density distribution of a large crowd but also tracks the flow, allowing people to be redirected away from saturated areas. There are also low-cost pop-up housing systems that use industrial racks from cold storage to create multi-level habitable spaces for people, and Annadan, an innovative supply chain that diverts food donated to temples to those who are hungry, thus reducing food wastage. 
 
Image: indiatimes

Here’s how tech companies are exploiting the Kumbh Mela this year

<ul><li>Adar Poonwalla, CEO of the biggest vaccine manufacturing company in the world — Serum Institute of India (SII) — believes India’s COVID-19 vaccine supply crunch will last at least another two months.</li><li>He claims that he is getting blamed for the shortage even though the impetus to be prepared for the second of COVID-19 infections is on the government.</li><li>This comes at a time when India’s daily increase in new cases of COVID-19 continues to remain above 300,000 per day and the vaccination drive is now open to nearly a billion people.</li></ul>Not only has the number of COVID-19 cases surging in the world’s second most populous country but there aren’t enough vaccines to go around, to keep the infection at bay. Not only are an estimated one billion people waiting for the vaccine in India, but the supply shortage is also unlikely to be resolved, any time soon. Chief executive of the world’s biggest vaccine manufacturing company, Serum Institute of India’s (SII) <keyword id="383467" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Adar-Poonawalla">Adar Poonawalla</keyword>, told the <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/01784671-3834-49d8-9640-fc5d95f92eaf">Financial Times</a> (FT) that the severe vaccine shortage is likely to continue until the company can increase production. And it needs time at least till July to go from its current 60 to 70 million doses to 100 million doses a month. And even that may fall short of India’s total requirement since it has now opened up its vaccination drive to everyone above the age of 18 years — that’s an addition of 600 million people to the 400 million who were already eligible before May 1. As of May 3, only 154 million people have received the vaccine. Of that, only 27.5 million have gotten <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/science/health/news/covid-19-vaccine-india-needs-a-separate-queue-for-second-dose/articleshow/82304003.cms">the second dose</a>. <div type="image" title="vaccine line_edited" msid="82366910" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Local people waiting for vaccination as they break social distance rules at the NMC Gandhinagar Vaccine center at Nagpur, Maharashtra&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div> That’s two more months of people lining up in queues outside vaccine centres, where social distancing is difficult to maintain, increasing the likelihood of them catching the disease while not even getting the dose because stocks ran out. Many are questioning why the Modi administration chose to increase the demand for vaccines at a time when supply was already insufficient and ramping up production would take time. Others are maligning vaccine manufacturers, like Poonawalla, for creating a ‘<a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/india/news/covid-19-vaccine-price-sc-wants-the-indian-government-to-explain-about-covishield-and-covaxin-pricing/articleshow/82272913.cms">seller’s market</a>’ for the vaccine. <cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="Who’s to blame for the vaccine supply crunch?" comment="subhead" text="Who’s to blame for the vaccine supply crunch?">Who’s to blame for the vaccine supply crunch?</cmsannotation> SII is in charge of manufacturing the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine in India under the name Covishield. The government placed an order of 21 million vaccines at the end of February without any indication that more will be needed. In March, it asked for another 110 million doses as the number of cases in India started to surge. <div type="ExtQuote" text="“I’ve been victimised very unfairly and wrongly… there were no orders, we did not think we needed to make more than one billion doses a year.”" auname="Adar Poonawalla told the Financial Times"></div> According to Poonawalla, the impetus is on the government to prepare for such a crisis, not the company. “Everybody really felt that India had started to turn the tide on the pandemic,” he told FT. He said he is the one getting death threats from politicians and the common man alike. In another interview with the <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/adar-poonawalla-aggression-over-covid-vaccines-is-overwhelming-everyone-expects-to-get-theirs-first-bfqbgcm96?utm_medium=Social&amp;utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1619853834">Times of London</a>, Poonawalla claims he chose to stay back in London for a few extra days because the situation back at home was getting worse. “Just because you can’t supply the needs of X, Y or Z, you really want to guess what they are going to do,” he said. Meanwhile, experts believe that the disregard for COVID-19 appropriate behaviour at the massive <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/india/news/kumbh-mela-attended-by-3-5-million-pilgrims-as-india-becomes-the-second-most-covid-19-affected-country-in-the-world/slidelist/82044773.cms">Kumbh Mela</a>, which was attended by 3.5 million people, and the huge political rallies in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala should have been <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/india/news/around-1700-people-test-positive-for-covid-19-in-hardiwar-kumbh-mela-from-april-10-14/articleshow/82083199.cms">addressed better</a> by the government. <div type="image" title="modi election crowd_edited" msid="82367018" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Massive crowd gathered in Kolkata to hear Narendra Modi addressing a public rally ahead of West Bengal state elections in April&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div> India also <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/science/health/news/india-has-authorized-the-sputnik-v-shot-russia-says-this-mean-its-covid-19-vaccine-is-now-approved-for-40-of-the-worlds-population-/articleshow/82047563.cms">authorised</a> the production of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine in India and said it would do the same for vaccines approved by the UK, US, Europe, and Japan. However, local manufacturers who have partnered to produce the Russian vaccine say it will be months before they’re in a place to actually start rolling Sputnik V off the lines. One of the reasons being how fast the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/international/news/india-will-receive-the-first-batch-of-russia-covid-19-vaccine-sputnik-by-may-1/articleshow/82269061.cms">technology transfer</a> — the instructions on how to actually make the vaccine — occurs. <cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="India pumped up demand when there was already a vaccine shortage" comment="subhead" text="India pumped up demand when there was already a vaccine shortage">India pumped up demand when there was already a vaccine shortage</cmsannotation> Registrations for the vaccine opened up to those between the ages of 18 to 45 years on April 28. After an initial delay from midnight to 4:00 pm, the CoWIN servers — one of the portals used for vaccine registrations — crashed due to the sheer number of people <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/apps/news/cowin-website-is-back-up-after-an-early-crash-finding-a-vaccination-slot-may-still-be-difficult/articleshow/82291583.cms">logging in</a>. The few lucky individuals who were able to get past the hurdle of registering themselves found only disappointment on the other side, as actual appointments were still restricted to those above the age of 45 years. Over the course of the next three days, many states put their hands up to say that they will be unable to open up slots for those between 18 to 45 years due to the shortage of vaccines — priority will be given to those waiting for their second dose. On Saturday, May 1, India crossed the threshold of 400,000 new cases of COVID-19 within a span of 24 hours. That was, ironically, the same day that India kicked off its vaccination drive for people between the ages of 18 to 45 years old. Despite the assumption that India was out of the woods when it came to the COVID-19 pandemic back in January, the second wave of infections is now hitting India harder than any other. SEE ALSO: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/stock-market/news/tata-power-says-it-has-no-such-decision-on-an-ipo-for-its-renewable-energy-business/articleshow/82365533.cms">Tata Power says it has ‘no such decision’ on an IPO for its renewable energy business</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/india/news/amid-covid-19-vaccine-shortage-indian-government-promises-to-provide-56-lakh-doses-to-states-and-uts-in-three-days/articleshow/82354079.cms">Amid COVID-19 vaccine shortage, Indian government promises to provide 56 lakh doses to states and UTs in three days</a>

SII’s Adar Poonawalla estimates two more months of COVID-19 vaccine shortage in India — and the blame game is heating up

<ul><li><keyword id="163007" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="muthoot-finance" source="Orion">Muthoot Finance</keyword> is one of the largest <keyword id="130134" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="gold-loan" source="Orion">gold loan</keyword> NBFC in India and it has been using its <keyword id="6354839" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="marketing" source="Orion">marketing</keyword> strategies effectively to make the brand a household name.</li><li><keyword id="9213956" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="abhinav-iyer" source="Orion">Abhinav Iyer</keyword>, GM, Marketing &amp; Strategy, Muthoot Finance tells us all the brand has been doing to not only grow its business but also to grow the category as a whole.</li></ul>It is no secret that Indians love gold. In fact, gold accounts for a large part of most Indian family’s wealth. While for years, securing loans against jewellery was looked at as a last resort, the last few years, especially the pandemic, has brought about an attitudinal shift in Indian consumers. Gold loans have been on a consistent rise over the last few years and this growth is coming from both micro enterprises and individuals. The pandemic hit many businesses and while things have been slowly moving towards normalcy, a lot of sectors still remain impacted, and people are still trying to find the balance. In such a scenario, gold loan has come up as both a convenient as well as a quick option to get cash. Over the years, there has been a shift in perception when it comes to taking a loan out on gold jewellery and one brand that has been trying to help the segment grow by trying to fasten this change is Muthoot Finance. Over the last few years, the brand has consistently stayed in the public consciousness with its marketing strategies. <keyword id="6357912" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="amitabh-bachchan" source="Orion">Amitabh Bachchan</keyword> has been a face of the brand for four years now. It has also been the Principal Team Partner for Chennai Super Kings, having turned it into a trusted, household name. <div type="Youtube" id="WZl9-VYIErY" title="Muthoot Finance - Haathi Pe Bharosa Karogey Toh Pakka Jeetogey - 2.5 Lakh Customers" thumbUrl="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/WZl9-VYIErY/mqdefault.jpg"></div> <div type="Youtube" id="ZpFUp9_P4X8" title="Muthoot Finance- Haathi Pe Bharosa Karogey Toh Pakka Jeetogey!" thumbUrl="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ZpFUp9_P4X8/mqdefault.jpg"></div> We recently caught up with Abhinav Iyer, GM, Marketing &amp; Strategy, Muthoot Finance to understand how the pandemic impacted the company’s business and the role the brand has been playing in not only educating consumers about the sector but also helping the sector grow. Muthoot Finance’s growth story While the pandemic was not kind to many sectors and businesses, Muthoot Finance was able to sustain its growth, Iyer tells us. The consolidated AUM has grown by nearly 80% in the last three financial years from 2017-18 to 2020-21. Its consolidated net profit has grown by 114% during the same period. In other words, it has more than doubled during the said period. “We have grown considerably when it comes to our book size in the last few years. This year too, we are looking at growing our book size by 15%. We have made similar growth in terms of percentages when it comes to our profitability too. We serve over 2.5 lakh customers every day through our network of over 5000 branches. Contrary to common perception that we are a South-based brand, we are today a national brand, and grown consistently over the last decade,” shared Iyer. The brand has also been on an expansion mode. Over the last 2-3 years, it has added over 200 branches across the country. “If stock prices are a testament, we have made a healthy northward stride. From every stretch of imagination, we have grown, in terms of our physical branch presence, our customer base and our profitability over the last two, three years. And our marketing strategies have contributed considerably to this healthy and sustained growth,” added Iyer. Creating a winning marketing strategy It is often said that during times of crises, marketing budgets are usually the first to get slashed. We saw a lot of brands that stopped communicating with its consumers during the pandemic. However, Muthoot Finance is one brand that does not believe in this. In fact, it believes in staying in the public consciousness, staying constantly engaged. It has a half-yearly marketing strategy where it comes up with a high decibel campaign every six months, a strategy that has worked well for it. The brand recently launched its campaign ‘Hathi pe bharosa karoge toh pakka jeetoge’, featuring Amitabh Bachchan. The brand also recently launched the second season of its radio campaign called Muthoot Finance Sunheri Soch. At a time when more and more brands are steadily increasing their spends on Digital, while decreasing spends on traditional mediums, Muthoot Finance is one brand that has been consistently using mediums like Print, Radio and Outdoor. Speaking about its latest radio campaign, Iyer said, “Storytelling is the oldest form of teaching’ and we also believe that radio has always been seen as a credible and authentic medium of communication, hence we chose it as our primary medium of communication to reach out to our target audience and new customers. We also wanted to have a female voice this season and bring freshness to the table, hence this year we are extremely delighted to partner with <keyword id="6355846" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="madhuri-dixit" source="Orion">Madhuri Dixit</keyword> for Season 2. We have extensively researched and customized our series to be launched via radio alongside strong amplification across all prominent digital channels. We recorded a significant increase in our new customer acquisition and queries post the launch of Season 1. Thus, we did not hold back ourselves in investing again in radio and celebrating the art of <keyword id="282281" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="storytelling" source="Orion">storytelling</keyword>." On why the brand continues to invest on traditional mediums while also investing on newer mediums like Digital, Iyer added, “We are a national brand with around 5440 branches across India. More than 70% of our branches are in semi-urban and rural areas. We have served nearly 70 crore customer (including repeat customers) since our inception. So from all those parameters, we are a large, spread-out, national brand. So its important that some of these mass mediums are always there as part of our media mix. It would never be possible for us to do away with any of the mass mediums because the reach from mass media is critical for us. Meanwhile, digital is also a very important cog in the wheel. In the last three years, our digital and our IT teams have been working tirelessly to ensure the technological upgradation of our products and services. We launched our Gold Loan at home offering during the pandemic. That was a huge value-add from a technology perspective. There was a time you had to visit a branch to repay your loan interest. Today, you can do that using any digital payment platform, our chatbot or our WhatsApp business account. So today, it is not compulsory for people to visit the branch physically for availing loans or paying their interest. We are also investing substantially on digital marketing. Atleast 10% of our marketing budget is invested into digital marketing.” He also added that TV still makes for the largest chunk, between 40-45% of its marketing budgets. On what it got right when it comes to its marketing strategy, Iyer said it was a combination of a few things. “In the last few years, we have been on a marketing transformation journey. Firstly, partnering with Mr Bachchan has helped us cut across geographies, gender and age groups. Secondly, we partnered with Chennai Super Kings in 2018 when they were just coming back after a short break. <keyword id="6354832" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="ms-dhoni" source="Orion">MS Dhoni</keyword> is also someone who enjoys almost the same stature that Mr Bachchan does in Bollywood. He’s a trustworthy, dependable and balanced individual. So our partnership with CSK helped us in the Tamil Nadu market where we have about 900-950 branches. We have also been using transit medium very effectively and The Greater Kailash metro station and the Nandanam station in Chennai have our branding and it has completely transformed the stations. We also came up with a unique initiative during the Kumbh mela when we created huge gold lockers to help devotees keep their valuables at a safe place. This campaign helped us win numerous awards. Lastly, over the years, we have created a culture of launching half-yearly campaigns, new communications to bring about an attitudinal change in the minds of people. We try to be present throughout the years on all major ATL and BTL mediums. I believe these strategies have helped us grow as we are also trying to grow the category.” Owing to its presence in smaller towns and cities, the brand also focuses a lot on regional communications. The brand puts out its communications in 11 languages to ensure its reach is far and wide. Future areas of focus In what the scope for the segment is in the future, Iyer said, “Overall there are around 25,000 tonnes of gold (household jewellery) in the country and less than 5% of it is monetized. So there’s a huge potential for growth, both for us and the industry as a whole. So the focus would be on getting new customers to try and opt for gold loans. Its also a very simple product, you only pay interest for the number of days for which you have availed the loan. There is a whole lot of customer benefits which can help people benefit from the product. So our primary objective, even from a marketing perspective would be to grow the category significantly and help the category prosper by itself. We will also constantly keep working on bringing about an attitudinal change in people through our marketing and communications,” concluded Iyer.

Here’s how Muthoot Finance is bringing about a perception change around gold loans with its marketing initiatives

The makers of the drone '<keyword id="116774" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Rancho">Rancho</keyword>' seen in the movie <keyword id="6373971" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="20" keywordseo="3-idiots">3 idiots</keyword> have created several <keyword id="6370270" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="unmanned-aerial-vehicles">unmanned aerial vehicles</keyword> that are being used by Indian defence forces and in intelligence and surveillance ops. 
 
A team of four IIT alumni - Ankit Mehta, Rahul Singh, Ashish Bhat, and Vipul Joshi - started a company called ideaForge in 2007 to give their dream wings. They were working on developing technologies back in college and had many ideas they wanted to convert into products by the time they graduated. 
 
In 2008, recognition from government came to them when they won a Micro Aerial Vehicle competition at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA. Thereafter, they landed with several government projects, one of which wa NETRA – a vertical takeoff and landing UAV built on quadrotor configuration that the team developed in collaboration with Defence Research and Development Organisation. 
 
 This UAV could take off from a small area and could fly over an area up to the height of 400m sending continuous real time videos of movements on the ground. It was this early prototype of NETRA that you had seen during the shoot of 3 Idiots. The movie director of 3 idiots had read about the drone and work by <keyword id="137562" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="IITians">IITians</keyword> in the newapaper. 
 
In 2009, ideaForge developed the world’s smallest and lightest autopilot drone and also came up with India’s first fully autonomous vertical takeoff and landing UAV. In this, a user feeds the GPS location of the required destination, which is then converted into command and instructions and the UAV reaches the location autonomously. 
 The UAV's made by this team are typically easy-to-use, so they can be used easily during emergencies. So far, they have been used by the <keyword id="6354416" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="Indian-Army">Indian Army</keyword> to look for survivors after the deadly Uttarakhand floods back in 2013, to map the positions of militants during defence ops, for disaster management during the Nepal earthquake, and to manage crowds during the Kumbh mela. One of ideaForge’s <keyword id="94769" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="drones">drones</keyword> also helped in tracking a man-eating tigress in Uttarakhand.

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Here’s how tech companies are exploiting the Kumbh Mela this year

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SII’s Adar Poonawalla estimates two more months of COVID-19 vaccine shortage in India — and the blame game is heating up

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Here’s how Muthoot Finance is bringing about a perception change around gold loans with its marketing initiatives

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Here's the stellar work done by four IITians who built 'Drone Rancho' for the famous movie '3 idiots'

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