Martand Singh, PR head of Karan Mahal, Srinagar joined NewsX for an exclusive interview as a part of NewsX India A-list. In the exclusive interview, he spoke about Karan Mahal in Srinagar, the history behind it and much more. Read excerpts:

Talking about his and his family’s decision to open Karan Mahal for the tourists of J&K, Martand said, “We opened up Karan Mahal for select and discerning tourists and travellers to Kashmir, about a year ago. It is a very unique property. It has been the royal residence of my great grandfather and my grandfather. It is a heritage property. We have about eight guest rooms. I think, to do justice to the place and allow people to have the same experience from such a unique location in Kashmir, that would probably be one of the main reasons for opening it up.”

When asked what sets it apart from other properties and the history behind the Mahal, Martand responded, “When our guests enter Karan Mahal, the first thing they do is, they run to the front lawns, which is overlooking the private orchard in the state of the forest and after that the Dal Lake and the snow capped mountain range. The first thing they do is they go there and they start taking pictures, videos and face-timing their family members to show where they are. I think the main USP would be the unmatched location the property has in the valley. Coming to the history, it was built for my grandfather Maharaja Dr. Karan Singh Ji. He moved there when he was four years old. It was built by his father Maharaja Hari Singh ji and then he grew up there. His entire childhood was spent there. Subsequently, he became the crown prince of J&K princely state. Thereafter, he became head of state and governor. Subsequently he was cabinet minister in Former PM Indira Gandhi’s cabinet.”

He further added, “He has had an illustrious career as many would know in public life and in public service, so that was his residence and he conducted all his activities from there. We have had many distinguished visitors including heads of state of the Soviet Union. Many illustrious personalities of our country as well, have visited and stayed with him there. Coming to the property itself, it has a lot of heritage elements as well. In a way, it is a testament to Kashmir’s arts and crafts and all the famous things it is known for- from the carpets to the handcrafted wooden ceilings. It has a European element as well with the art deco furniture. All the rooms are very unique. Each room has its own special traits. There are some suites opening up to balconies, verandas and private gardens. It is a very unique property within Kashmir itself and, as you know, Kashmir has a lot of fabulous properties.”

The global market for EdTech is likely to cross USD 400 billion by 2025 as per HolonIQ. The pandemic has accelerated the growth and adoption of EdTech with online homework solutions seeing immense growth.

The market leader in the segment is TutorBin, which was founded by Ankit Gahlawat along with Parveen Lather and Vishal Kumar. It has a product portfolio across social enterprises, cloud accounting, e-learning, content intelligence, analytics and social networking domains. “We are driven by the global impact achieved through international outlook of our products that foster and nimble the agility required behind doing businesses these days,” says Ankit.

With offices in US and India, when Ankit started TutorBin, he realised the importance of merging education with technology to provide its end-users with the best help, as quickly as possible. He decided to aid and enhance the level of education in a productive platform, which will help students and universities to use the predictive and planned elements within their products. They wanted to let their users utilise every area of education using the best technology.

“Entrepreneurship can be a change agent in business and academics. TutorBin helps students with an entrepreneurial spirit in the science, engineering, arts, thesis and other areas of study specialties develop the knowledge and connect with mentors who can help them become more skilled in their academic tasks. In just four years, TutorBin has become an integral part of the student experience and key to strategic direction,” said TutorBin Managing Director Ankit Gahlawat.

Private Tutoring can really help. Education has been essentially designed to be a one-to-many solution. No two individuals are the same. In fact, many people learn differently. There are some who are excellent at self-learning. There are some who need hand-holding.

Ankit adds, “Private tutoring requires tutors to adjust according to the learning needs and preferences of individuals. There are many tutors who are excellent at understanding their students and tailor their sessions according to them. Once they engage the students to help apply the knowledge on their own, they start seeing success. Our job is to keep them interested and help them understand the concepts. They will keep getting better with each passing day.

There are many reasons that people struggle in their studies and benefit from private tutoring. There are plenty of foreign students who would perhaps struggle with the language and rigor of learning. The schooling system across the states is also very different and many students struggle when they start in the universities. I personally don’t find the schooling system to be as challenging as the university system. Hence, the drop-out rates are significant in university students. Some students also need support during their schooling.

No human likes falling behind others. When they are unable to cope-up, they may also lose confidence and lag behind even more. As per my experience, most students are able to build acumen to cope up and be more regular in their studies, there are some students who need more support than the others.

Private tutoring works very well. In fact, it works so well that I have been able to make a good business out of it. TutorBin started as a small initiative to help students that were falling behind others. Now we have a roster of thousands of teachers that are helping students with their private tuition and homework. In almost 100 percent of the cases, we have seen a significant increase in the grade of the students.”

CREATING TUTORBIN

Ankit Gahlawat, Vishal and Parveen have known each other for over nine years now. Impressed by the fact that Ankit was one of the early adopters of the Internet in India, the founders decided to work more closely with each other to bring a revolution in the education sector with the best technological use. Thus, they decided to launch TutorBin in India in 2017.

TutorBin is a global online homework help provider. It basically deals with assisting students in completing the assignments with the help of expert guidance. TutorBin has over 45,000+ expert tutors, connected globally. It aims to provide the best academic support and solve problems quickly in real-time and make sure the student never misses his deadline. Being a 4 years old company, it has enhanced its expertise in Engineering, Maths, Science, English, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Computer Science, Lab Reports, Essay Writing, and other areas of support needed by the students.

Constant pressure on creators to tailor their content to appease advertisers and ensure steady revenue streams has evoked the need for platforms having a “no-fees” environment, where donations, either one-time or recurring, can be made directly by fans.

A report titled “From dependence to independence” prepared by the Nonfiction Research and Bodacious Strategy Studio, which covered 1,624 creators, states that 65 percent of the creators feel overworked and/or underpaid and only 35 percent of the surveyed said that “they’re earning a reasonable income and putting in an acceptable amount of time and effort”.

Raj Kapoor, Founder of India Blockchain Alliance and Chief Growth Officer at Chainsense Ltd says popular platforms require 30 to 40 percent of the user-donated funds to maintain the platform operational. “What is needed is a platform trying to solve these real problems. A platform that understands the pitfalls that content-creators face with current platforms, and it wants to provide a friendly alternative that would ease their lives. Lace this with a reward incentive through a tokenised process, secured on the blockchain. Now that would be something to look forward to,” said Kapoor.

Aliasgar Merchant, Developer Relations Engineer at Tendermint said an alternative to mainstream content channels, that can bridge the gap between the audience and content creators is the need of the hour. “Currently, most platforms charge exorbitantly high fees that make the creation of quality rich content unviable. On top of this, content creators are literally at the mercy of algorithms that want consistency. When you look under the hood at a creator’s business, the foundation is shaky,” said Merchant.

Zachary Bys, Co-Founder of ad-free entertainment ecosystem Vodra said, “Blockchain technology has allowed us to build an ecosystem in which all users are fairly rewarded for their participation so that creators benefit directly from the growth of the platform.” He added that, unlike other models, Vodra’s primary users are its foremost stakeholders, which ensures that the platform serves their interests rather than faceless shareholders.

Additionally, Vodra makes it easy for creators to earn without having to leverage third-party and sometimes manipulative advertising models. Instead, creators have control over their content and are driven by a direct creator to audience relationship rather than creator to an advertiser to the audience, he said.

“Creators are constantly under pressure to tailor their content in an effort to appease advertisers and keep their content monetised,” said Conner Romanov, Co-founder of Vodra. “Vodra allows creators to monetise their passions without sacrificing creativity as they would have to while contending with the existing advertising-based model. Our decentralised platform is shifting online entertainment compensation towards a direct creator-to-audience participation model; this brings the interests of both creators and audiences to the forefront.”

Creator profiles are designed to be linked to existing entertainment platforms such as in a video description, creator bio, Livestream panel, or pop-up. Alternatively, audiences can browse through popular creators and projects directly on the Vodra Platform. Creators will also have the option to showcase leaderboards with their top fans and designate certain rewards for their primary supporters. These options encourage a direct, fee-free connection between audience members and creators, which is mutually beneficial.

Youngsters from Britain and India are creating the world’s largest bubble wrap painting. With this artwork, these youngsters are aiming to break the Guinness World Record. Although the aim is to break the world record, there is also a motive behind this artwork and that is to help the families in India who have been facing financial difficulties as a result of Covid-19. This team is not only trying to make a difference by helping these families but they also want to donate to the PM Cares Funds in India through registered Indian charities.

Nachiket Joshi, Event Organiser

Nachiket Joshi, who is a youth leader and social worker, came up with the idea of the artwork and is organising the event for this noble cause. Creative Art Campus and Palan Foundation, a charity in the UK, have jointly organised the project. The artists’ team is led by Jignesh Patel, Akshay Pandya and Yash Patel. Khushboo Shah is leading the other volunteer team and is managing coordination. The team has worked with 10 to 15 volunteers in London to complete the painting which they had inaugurated in June this year and it took the team three months to complete this gigantic artwork.

Since the onset of Covid-19, Nachiket has been a covid hero and has helped needy people not only in India but across the world. He came to the rescue of many who needed help during the first wave and also during the second wave he contributed in whatever way he could. He also had a team of volunteers working round the clock helping people find hospital beds, plasma, oxygen cylinders, medicines, and any other help which was required. They have helped more than a thousand people during the pandemic.

“The artwork features Prime Minister Narendra Modi; he is a global leader and has shown himself as a saviour to the world particularly in this pandemic situation by helping almost 100 countries with vaccines. He is the most popular leader across the globe. He has been successfully running the world’s largest and fastest vaccination campaign in India and has achieved the ‘100 crore milestone’. This is our way of showing him respect for what he has done for the world. The other notable personalities in the artwork are Ratan Tata, Bill Gates and JK Rowling, they came forward when needed and helped the world during the pandemic situation. Ratan Tata donated almost US$ 220 million during the Covid crisis in India. Bill Gates foundation donated more than US$ 1 Million and committed an amount of US $4 Million for R&D in India during Covid. JK Rowling donated almost £1 million through various Indian charities to help Covid struck families in India. We have chosen these heroes to inspire the younger generation so they can become like them. We are trying to create history and achieve the world record”, said Nachiket.

Similarly, Jignesh was a part of a 15-member group that cycled a total of 123 kilometers from London to Brighton and raised funds for charity in May this year. The group bought oxygen concentrators and donated it across India. He has earlier successfully broken four world records performing different forms of painting. “The painting has been worked on in different venues in London and many members of the public joined in and injected a few bubbles. Each participant has a separate area to practise on, before injecting the main piece of art. All participants may receive a Guinness World Record certificate. The final piece will be displayed by the end of November when officials from Guinness World Records will be informed. It takes me 300 bubbles per hour, and I have practised significantly. There were around 200,000 bubbles to fill so teamwork played a crucial role,” said Jignesh.

Vijay Goel, Senior Partner, Singhania & Co, and Chairman, Indo-European Business Forum, has been supporting and promoting the project in the UK. “I am very excited about this project as it portrays Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi and promotes his achievement for the country. The team led by Nachiket and Jignesh has been working voluntarily and doing a great job for a noble cause and I fully support them,” said Vijay.

“Our team of volunteers has been helping us complete the painting. We are injecting bubbles across the bubble wrap using 200 shades of liquid wall paint, with syringes. Each bubble is numbered which corresponds to a particular shade of paint. Approximately 200,000 bubbles have been filled in total. The work was completed in separate pieces which have been assembled together and will be displayed as a large 15 square-metre painting that may eventually be auctioned. We had to ensure that the bubbles are filled with the right colour and not damaged, which we have successfully done.” said Yash. “These notable personalities inspire us to do more, to live our best life and to go after what our heart desires. More than anything, they inspire us to have and pursue our passion in life. My guru, Pramukh Swami Maharaj, lived by his life motto ‘In the joy of others, lies our own’. This spirit and these values motivated us to embark on this project.” said Akshay.

Ivana Perkovic recently joined NewsX for an insightful conversation as part of NewsX India A-List As part of the interview, Ivana opened about her journey and how it is being a woman who is traveling around the world. Sharing about all of the things she juggles along with content creation, Ivana said, “I am a storytelling workshop organiser, next to being a content creator. I am a public speaker, with a TED talk that has over half a million views and I am also an international business consultant.”

When asked about how she managed to divide her time from content creation and then also doing the other things that she did that are probably day jobs or extracurricular, Ivana said “I am a hardcore productivity freak. In the past, that has worked very much against me but in due time I have learned how to manage it in a healthy way. I love to work in time blocks. Whenever I am doing content creation, for instance, I know I have to finish the video before Wednesday, I will block a few hours of my time on Monday and Tuesday for that activity. For instance, the afternoon hours will be blocked for other activities but I am not a huge fan of multitasking at all. I just don’t do multitasking because you lose your focus while you are like juggling too many things at the same time. My biggest productivity hack has always been to work in time blocks and just focus on one at a time.”

Speaking about the experience of being a woman traveler, she expressed, “I think until I was 23 years old, I had never travelled alone in my life. I was absolutely terrified of it. I thought it was for those super free spirits, who are willing to do incredibly adventurous things. Like in so many of our lives, I ended a relationship and I was totally in our lost state of mine. I was like I need to get out there. I need to see more of the world, but then rightfully as you mentioned, there are certain things that we have to take into account for as women. I decided to do something that I now recommend every single woman who wants to travel alone or at least try it out keep it as safe as possible for yourself”.

 “Don’t go venturing out in the middle of nowhere just because you see other people doing that on Instagram. Look at a trip that would feel safe to you. For me, that was a trip to Barcelona, a shopping trip during still time because all my friends were just busy with their jobs and their kids. My boyfriend, at the time, like obviously we had broken up so that was not an option. I decided to go to a city that I’ve always wanted to visit. I definitely didn’t venture out on some kind of mountain top, where you know I wouldn’t know how things would workout. I just kept it as safe as possible for myself,” she added.

 Lastly she mentioned, “You can look at simple things like doing a staycation in your own city. You can even venture out to market for a day on the other side of your town if you have never been alone. I think that’s already adventurous enough. Don’t get caught up with Instagram and seeing people do crazy things because that doesn’t always end well and I don’t think that always ends up being fun so keep it as close your own needs as possible.”

Travel Content Creator Radhika Sharma joined NewsX for an exclusive interview as a part of NewsX Influencer A-list. In the interview, she opened up about how she got into content creation and her experience in traveling and more. Read excerpts:

Speaking about her experience of creating travel-related content and how she manages to do so, she said, “I was actually working full-time. I worked full-time for three and a half years in a corporate setup. I was a business resource analyst, but that kind of job wasn’t working well for me. I quit my job back in 2018, started doing youtube and Instagram full-time. It has been a very interesting journey. I’ve been able to explore so much because of this and traveled outside. Ofcourse Covid came and there was like a huge full-stop and a huge hold in it. This has been majorly my journey. Now, I’m focusing on YouTube, creating videos on travel and trying to help people who are really looking to do budget travel and get into adventures and all sorts of stuff.”

When asked about how she manages to travel and keep up uploading content regularly, she said, “I try to manage both the things. Instagram is not that difficult. You can post everything on the go but YouTube takes a lot of effort because it’s a long format content, so you have to shoot a lot. You have to spend at least a day or two in editing, so right now I am looking to expand my team and hire a couple of people who can edit videos for me. For now, what I do is I try to manage my weekend in such a way that, let’s say, if I am travelling four days then at least there are two days of break in between. I can sit in some hotel or in my Airbnb and focus on editing and that storyline. If it’s a long term travel then I plan my videos or edit it well in advance so that I am at least consistent and posting weekly but at times I miss posting but then I try my best doing.”

Radhika went ahead to share her best travel experience till date and said, “I went to Maldives on my birthday and it was such a wonderful experience. The dive centre with whom I dived with, their name is Fulido and we had a underwater birthday celebration where they took me under water and opened the happy birthday card. There were sharks all around, manta rays and sting face, so it was amazing. I came back to my hotel and the hotel people decorated the entire room and everything, so that was something very special, which the locals of Maldives organised for me. This was very recent and my first international trip after two years because of all the Covid.”