Some have the power to move markets, while others move communities, engaging with crypto users, educating them, and alerting them to the latest opportunities within the space. While the names of the top crypto influencers changes, as new figures enter and exit the game, their mandate doesn’t: to form the hype men and women responsible for onboarding millions to crypto. Here are 10 of the best.

Bohdan Prylepa

Where Bohdan Prylepa goes, the market usually follows. As CEO of metaverse exchange QMall, Bohdan has his finger on the pulse and is instinctively aware of the narratives that will drive the next crypto cycle. The WeWay co-founder is a crypto entrepreneur with an uncanny knack for capturing the zeitgeist and shaking it by the scruff of the neck. Which is to say he’s usually ahead of the curve and it pays to keep tabs on his projects. Both WeWay and QMall were voted top projects of 2022 according to Cryptorank. Proof, lest it were needed, that Bohdan Prylepa’s influence runs deep.

Mykola Udianskyi

A bonafide blockchain galaxy brain, Mykola Udianskyi has a lot going for him. Listed in Ukraine’s top 100 rich list, Mykola has made his money by being early and being right. Whether it’s identifying the hottest startups to invest in or the most promising crypto projects to build, when the entrepreneur swings he doesn’t miss. In addition to being the founder of Bitcoin Ultimatum – an innovative Bitcoin fork – Mykola is CEO of the global marketing firm PRMR, co-owner of Parlament Media Group, and a budding scientist and philanthropist in his spare time. 

Yawn Rong

Few crypto projects can justifiably be called game-changing, but STEPN is one such contender. It literally changed the game by rewriting the rule book for crypto incentivization and tokenomics. The world’s first move-to-earn app, STEPN inspired a clutch of x-to-earn copycats that have failed to match the success of the dapp that started the trend. Co-founder Yawn Rong is a serial entrepreneur who’s built two successful brands in Australia before entering the crypto industry in 2017. In 2021, he started STEPN with his neighbor Jerry and the rest, as they say, is history.

Sunny Lu

Supply chain management is the milieu of Sunny Lu. An engineering graduate of ​​Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Lu’s first job was with IT company Netstar, and the experience he gained in this role paved the way for Vechain. Nestar played a pivotal role in developing a vehicle tracking and recovery solution in South Africa. Vechain has subsequently focused on working with automobile manufacturers, while a subsequent job with Louis Vuitton China further prepped Lu for what lay ahead. The Vechain founder is today one of the blockchain industry’s best known Chinese entrepreneurs, with close ties to the business world where his technology is utilized by global brands and major corporations.

Hayden Adams

As the genius behind Uniswap, the first Ethereum AMM, Hayden is DeFi royalty. The New York founder of Uniswap Labs worked as an engineer at Siemens before diving down the Ethereum rabbit hole and emerging with a concept that has been more widely imitated, cloned, and forked than any other crypto protocol. By 2020, at the height of DeFi summer, Uniswap was pulling in more daily volume than Coinbase. The subsequent release of the capital efficient Uniswap v3 has shown that Hayden Adams hasn’t lost his ability to innovate.

Sergey Nazarov

Chainlink’s founder and CEO is a smart cookie with an army of memetic wizards at his back. The Link Marines may be responsible for transforming Chainlink into the most viral community in all of crypto, but its leader is the one who made it all possible. In 2017, Chainlink’s solution to “the oracle problem” was proposed in a whitepaper by Sergey Nazarov and his fellow authors. Two years later, the Chainlink network launched, by which time oracles were big business and Chainlink’s founder was the man whose likeness had birthed 1,000 memes. 

Jaynti Kanani

Originally known as Matic, the Ethereum scaling solution co-founded by Jaynti Kanani has evolved into the blockchain powerhouse that is Polygon. Not only has its network grown into a viable alternative to Ethereum in its own right, and boasts more daily transactions and active users than Eth, but it’s since released its own zkEVM. Kanani was inspired to create Matic Network by the congestion surrounding the viral success of CryptoKitties on Ethereum. Today, he oversees a multi-billion dollar network that’s inked partnerships with the likes of Starbucks and Disney. It’s been a remarkable journey and Kanani has plenty more in the pipeline.

Emin Gün Sirer

Turkish-American computer scientist Emin Gün Sirer is happiest when tinkering with blockchain consensus models – or debating them with the crypto community on Twitter. The giga-brain researcher created the consensus protocol powering Avalanche and is the CEO of its lead development company, Ava Labs. Since graduating with a computer science degree from Princeton, Emin hasn’t looked back, paused for breath, or possibly even slept. Avalanche was born in 2019 and rapidly risen to become one of the leading EVM-compatible networks.

Sébastien Borget

The Sandbox is a metaverse primitive that provides the foundations – or rather the land – for everything that’s built next. Its co-founder and COO is Sébastien Borget, a bright spark who’s capable of seeing the big picture without drowning in the details. He paints a compelling vision of the digital world in the near future, when the metaverse has become a living reality. With more than 170 brands having already snapped up plots in The Sandbox and half a million active users, Borget is well on his way to positioning himself as the king of virtual reality real estate.

Juan Benet

Even if you haven’t heard of Juan Benet, you’ve almost certainly benefited from his inventions. The InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) creator is the daddy of decentralized storage. Benet is the founder of Protocol Labs, the research firm responsible for maintaining IPFS and Filecoin. Juan Benet studied Computer Science at Stanford University and is known for his passion for tech and science in all their myriad forms. Thanks to his efforts, web3 users have greater privacy and security in abundance.

Tagged with: QMall, Bohdan Prylepa, Mykola Udianskyi, Yawn Rong, STEPN, Vechain, Netstar, Sunny Lu, Hayden Adams, Chainlink, Sergey Nazarov, zkEVM, Jaynti Kanani, Ava Labs, Emin Gün Sirer, Sandbox, Sébastien Borget, Juan Benet, Protocol Labs, IPFS, FilecoinCrypto Thought Leaders 2023, Crypto Leaders 2023, Crypto Thought Leaders, Crypto Leaders,

For organisations to thrive and succeed, they need to encourage their staff to generate and develop ideas in order to create a culture of innovation.

Golden rules for Organisations and New Hires

As an organisation, primarily you need to remove any element of fear and create a culture where all leaders are hands down as well as solution oriented. Until and unless the organisations don’t show open doors towards the inflow of ideas from any level of employee, you can’t expect a sudden influx of connectivity and inclusion from them.

One needs to create a culture where people and their ideas are welcoming and as leaders your culture is of involving people in various projects. It shouldn’t matter whether the solutions are being poured from tenured employees or new hires; if the idea is logical, then it should be accepted.

And it’s not an easy play for the new hires too to create a level of credibility amongst the company’s lords where their new age ideas are welcomed. At first they need to first display courage and conviction of their ideas. And Ideas become powerful only when they are backed with financials, so they should back their idea with broad cost benefit analysis.

Industry veterans are of the view that before presenting your ideas and solutions to the leaders, they should search for cross functional buddies in the organization so that they understand organisation’s target audience. They should bounce the ideas through several other colleagues before presenting, just to get a confirmation of their viewpoint too and if the solution lies in accordance with the problem or not. 

And this step requires leaders hand-holding the new joinees and helping them know inside-out of the organisation they are working with. 

You should know of your TG, why are you catering to them and what is the ethos of the brand you are working for. You need to have the knowledge of the larger purpose of your organisation.  

Combining both New and Old School thoughts

We should keep in mind that there is a huge gap between the tenured and a new hire, as both hail from different school of thoughts. 

There is a pre-occupied or preconceived notion that whatever a tenured person says will always be correct as they are speaking out from experience. Hence, the ideas from new age work forces are generally ignored.

The newbie’s may lack experience but they might present a million dollar idea at times which we generally cannot think of. Tenured professionals and employees with old school thought always wish to take the road which is travelled by and fear from taking risks.

The newbies are known to be updated and well informed in the wake of a digitalized era of social media. They are well acquainted of the new industry norms and are also the ardent followers of social media platform, hence they know what new initiatives are being deployed in companies. 

The new hires who have been directly deployed into office culture form campuses, tend to take their own jolly time to settle and get used to the nuances of the corporate culture. 

But it all depends upon the companies as to how fast they help them in gelling into a company’s culture. Companies should actually design some programs for these newbie’s where they have the liberty to move around and test various departments before they are sure of the best fit for them and in the meantime the managers too can gauge the best department for each one of them based on their potential.

The new hires should be made to indulge with the leaders more often both formally and informally. They should also be made to attend few high level meetings where the leaders present with talk point of the issues pertaining to various departments. 

The new hires shouldn’t be designated only to their respective departments and make them work in silos. They should be provided enough space to converse with leaders on formal pandemonium but also into informal gatherings like coffee chats, town hall meetings, etc. People should feel a sense of belonging, they should feel relevant and imp, their ideas should be considered a mandate. 

Jain opined that, “in order to make them comfortable initially, they should be pushed by their respective managers to put forth their ideas in whatsapp groups which will help them stand-out with confidence in physical meetings too. And post that if their ideas are applauded then they should present it with full confidence.” 

Further, the trainees should also work upon establishing the credibility of their ideas and talk points. They should support their views with numbers and examples. Not every day you get a chance to share your thoughts with the company lords, hence they should always work on establishing the credibility of their talks with proper numbers, examples and proper hypothesis. Be well researched, articulate it well, put numbers, back with authentic data and then present it.

Don’t just make a statement to the leader that ‘we should do this.’ Bring some arms and legs to your convo to prove your point and that how will it add to the solution to the existing problem. 

Also one should be mindful of the fact that what worked as a solution in you previous firm, might not work here unless you have put you full research into it as to how can it be clubbed with the present company’s working style and ethos.  

The commercial real estate area is facing the worst onslaught of COVID-19 with malls, theatres, offices, under lockdown  and the prospects of attracting footfalls seems a pipedream.

While major IT giants like TCS claim that, over 75% of their work force would be trained to work from home and only 25% will joining offices post the upliftment, clearly slates the sign of new wave that work-from-home will be the ‘new normal’ from this decade onwards. But what will to the commercial workplace owners? If over 70 per cent of the employees will be asked to work from home and that companies won’t rent these spaces for the employees, then what will happen to the prices of commercial workplaces?

Workplace Scenario

The commercial real estate market is already witnessing re-negotiations of existing rentals and rent waivers from landlords as businesses have been affected due to the ongoing nationwide lockdown to check spread of coronavirus disease, according to property consultants and developers.

“While ‘work from home’ will be the new wave of the working model but won’t last long,” claims Harsh Gupta, Director, Anthurium under Sundream projects. Today the demand is less because people are not moving out of their cocooned shells, but they cannot stay indoors forever, right!

Gupta is of the view that it’s only a matter of six to eight months until the need for office spaces will emerge again. For instance, if the demand was 100 per cent till last year, its 20 per cent now but the demand hasn’t wiped out. There was a recession in 2008 as well, which we claim as the great depression; but when it regained the momentum, it touched the highest peak and same will happen to corporate real estate too.

“Actually the Indian houses aren’t designed in a manner where both the spouses can carry on with their office work from home as an average Indian can afford mere one bed room house, where there are no studies for them to work.”

There is bound to see a deep cut in the commercial real estate prices, till at least the end of 2020. “The prices are bound to dip by 10-15 per cent but maintenance will see a splurge when people will be back in offices. While, earlier the maintenance cost was a bare minimum of 8-9 rupees per square feet in the corporate spaces, it will rise upto 13 rupees as there will be increase in the regular sanitsation practices within a day” opines Gupta. 

“In any case the prices will still be minimal keeping in mind that cash flow hasn’t been much in market from months and if they shoot the prices then people won’t be able to afford those spaces. And from a long term perspective too, they wouldn’t want to lose clients,” claims Nishant Madhukar, CHRO, Ferns and Petals

Ritesh Malik, Founder, Innov8 co-working space, on the other hand holds a different view point. 

“If you look it at short term the usual price costing wouldn’t change much, especially in commercial real estate giving out office spaces, there won’t be much fluctuation in already signed leases. Though there will be a slight loss to the landlords. But once we come near the vaccine discovery period that is when we can expect things coming back to normal eventually.” 

Madhukar explains that “the real estate prices are directly proportional to the area being used. There are certain organisations which have very spacious working ergonomics while certain others have a very compact setup. Now, that for a period of six months, less than 50 per cent of workforce will travel top office for work, so the need for compact spaces will emerge.” 

Malik explains that there won’t be much need of renting new spaces going forward. Companies like Tata consultancy services (TCS) who have the force of over a lack employees across cities in India and if mere 25 per cent is what they are thinking of calling to work, then they can easily accommodate them with proper distancing facilities as the spaces designed are for huge forces. 

He also opines that “employers might even shut their existing huge work spaces if the work-from-home module works for them. Now when 75 per cent would be working from home, then you see there won’t be much of high demand of commercial real estate with wide arena.”

Drift in design aspect of Corporate Spaces

Months down the line, even if the office culture gets back to normal, convincing the workers that the buildings they use are healthy and safe, will in itself be a tedious task for developers, building managers, and office tenants.

Raman Sikka, Associate Principal of Sikka Associates Architects is of the viewpoint that, there will be immense amount of renegotiating upon the workspace rentals when employers begin to rent the spaces again. Expansion plans will be put to hold in name of cost cutting and there will be huge flattening of curve for whole of real estate

“Now builders and designers will only make and show the corporate spaces if the employers become outspoken. It will only be on need basis where users will need to come up to the builders voluntarily to ask for spaces and rethinking as to how they are going to use it.”

The corporate designer fraternity claims that the culture of office cubicles will emerge again, diminishing the culture of open offices. As per the government norms, the workplaces will be termed as ‘Six feet offices,’ maintaining a minimum gap of 6 feet between seatings of each employee.

Usually office spaces have been a showbiz for the owners and their employers, hence going forward expenses will be cup upon any fancy décor and the makers will lay more emphasis upon the sanitsation and distancing norm laid by the government.

Road Ahead

Professionals believe that instead of looking at whether the cost of commercial space will go up or down, one should pay attention that this crisis will mend some ways and will lead to some permanent steps in the existing operational model.”

There will be changes and disruptions in the existing paradigms and working models. The physical proximity which was essential where world was slowly moving towards remote working at different locations and diff time zones; that will get accelerated. It will lead to best of proposition, both for employer and employee because they will get the flexibility of having resources and working at their own pace.

While there is a requirement of a source only twice a week, why will the company bear the cost of that source for five full days in a week? On the other hand it is even beneficial for the source where he gets the time to invest his skill at some other place too the rest of week. This trend will get accelerated and hence remote working will become a norm in which people will only work for those companies who have such formats.

Strengthening economies, e-commerce, and restocking are the three factors responsible for a global trade environment that saw air cargo demand outpacing supply by more than six percentage points for all four quarters of 2017.Air cargo is a relatively higher-cost transport mode, requiring a clear Return on Investment (ROI) and that is speed.

The year 2017 was a volatile year for the air cargo business due to consolidation in ocean freight, frequent strikes in Europe and airlines cutting down on scheduled freighters among other factors. This resulted in massive delays in airfreight.

“However, post Mid Dec we have seen it stabilizing and there are clear signs of it recovering soon. So, looking at current stability and forecasting that we are getting from our Global partner Airlines we can say that gradual shift to air cargo will reduce dwell time in logistics along with adding predictability and security to supply chain,” says Oliver Bohm, CEO, Schenker India.

The need for even greater security is likely to continue to dictate practices, operational processes and systems development in the industry. Comprehensive, shared electronic data will become more and more important. The air traffic in India has witnessed a significant growth by 18.9 per cent during the year 2016-17 along with air cargo growth at the rate of 9.3 per cent. Looking on this positive trend, the financial year 2017-18 also looks to be on optimistic end as far as India’s air cargo growth is concerned.

Importance of Air Cargo

The air cargo logistics plays a vital role in the economic development of a country.

As Tony Tyler, Former Director General and CEO, International Air Transport Association put it in the IATA Economics Briefing, “Air transport is one of those industries that have transformed the world. Providing rapid connections between the world’s cities by air has enabled the globalisation that has shaped modern business and the experiences of individuals. Airlines and the wider air transport supply chain clearly create substantial value for consumers and the broader economy. That value creation is why, over the past forty years, air travel has expanded ten-fold and air cargo fourteen-fold, compared to a three to four fold rise in world GDP. Yet over this period airlines have only been able to generate sufficient revenues and profit to pay their suppliers and service their debt. There has been nothing left to pay investors for providing equity capital to the airline industry.”

Tyler also explains how this matters in the grand scheme of things. “Well, now that 75 per cent of the world’s airlines are at least majority owned by the private sector, it should be a concern that today’s returns on invested capital do not justify retaining the existing capital invested in the airline industry. Of even more importance is the need to attract $4-5 trillion of new capital over the next two decades to buy aircraft to meet the needs of the expansion in the AsiaPacific and other emerging regions. Improving the efficiency of use of existing capital, and the returns it generates for investors, will be essential to attract new investment to the industry,” he explains further.

Being a very export-oriented country, Germany relies on an excellent infrastructure and connectivity – of course also by air, says Felix Kreutel, Senior Vice President for Cargo Development and Management, Fraport AG.

“Thus, Frankfurt Airport (FRA) is often even considered as the backbone of the German industry. Almost 50 per cent of all German air cargo is flown via FRA. In order to streamline a powerful international air cargo supply chain, it is very important that all players work together and commonly drive international standards, like for example the implementation of eAWBs.”

Air cargo industry must undergo digital transformation

Air Cargo works as the main nexus to connect to the world’s trade. The traditional air cargo process is very fragmented and characterised by many individual players. With their integrated logistics concepts, integrators have been disrupting the market for a while now. Also, sea freight is catching up with new product offers and of course in much lower rates compared to air cargo. Digital development provides us the opportunity to offer faster, more efficient and more transparent processes in order to stay competitive as an industry as a whole.

The air cargo industry must go through digital transformation to stay competitive, and Fraport AG is committed to help customers go through the necessary processes, Kreutel tells CargoConnect.

He adds, “One example of cargo digitisation at FRA is Fair@Link. Today, Fair@Link represents one of the most advanced cargo community systems at any airport in the world. The system enables the electronic exchange of data between participating companies. It digitally networks the players in the airfreight chain and, thus, improves the physical processes between them – not just within FRA’s CargoCity, but, also, well beyond its perimeters.”

In order to push this collaboration, the Air Cargo Community, Frankfurt can be seen as a perfect example on how we could work together in future. The association brings together all the players involved in the air cargo business on site and is dedicated to promoting the interests of air cargo-related companies at FRA and to optimizing logistics processes.

“Only together, we can leverage the chances that new technologies provide us with. Underscoring our position as innovation leader, end of September, we again invite the most influential thinkers in the business, the wider industry and the research sector to the next ‘Frankfurt Air Cargo Innovation Lab’ in order to discuss the future of logistics and engage in dialogue with one another on how to respond to current trends in the air cargo business. Our website innoFRAtor.com offers the industry a platform to get informed about new developments and exchange ideas so that we can actively pursue topics, Kreutel informs.

Booming E-Commerce

The traditional air cargo volumes though in the growth sector is likely to be in the low single digit while the main growth will come in double digits (likely to be 15-25per cent) in e-commerce/etail space, says an expert. This will ensure good growth in the overall air cargo industry. Traditional way of doing business will have to change. The likes of Flexport and Freightos etc are already bringing in the changes. All transactional will have to move into go on to electronic platform making all the processes transparent and more cost efficient. “Those who control the efficient last mile delivery (LMD) will be the winners of tomorrow. Changing consumer behaviour denotes that the industry has to change to cater to the new environment. Google, Amazon, Alibaba, Uber etc are the folks which will force the changes in the air logistics industry,” adds he.

The air cargo business is a dynamic industry and there are always new challenges to deal with – rising fuel costs, increasing competitors, over capacity in tonnage etc. Ram Menen, Retired Aviation and Air Cargo Executive shares his take on whether he believes the gradual shift to air cargo will reduce the dwell time in logistics.

“Technology like mass production via 3D printing which will allow design at a central location and producing (printing) at point of requirement in itself, will reduce the traditional volumes of movement of components, as well as, finished product. The good news is that e-tail business within e-commerce will grow in double digits. Of course, this business is predominantly producing great volumes in the regional arena. The growth in the transcontinental business will depend on how the governments regulate the e-commerce business. All in all, it will find its own flow and boost the air cargo business. It is the ocean side of cargo that might be seeing shrinking volumes as early as, in the next decade. Overall growth in air cargo business, driven by the activities in the e-tail business, is going to be higher than ocean. The biggest challenge for the air cargo business will be trying to take further costs out of the chain as e-commerce is extremely a competitive arena where volumes are going to be big but margins are going to very low. Consumers today have got used to free delivery to door. So, the cost of logistics will have to come out of the e-tailer’s margins and as the likes of Amazon and Alibaba will wield tremendous buying power and also get into the transportation and logistics business in order to control their own destiny.”

As far as the significant trends in the airborne freight and cargo services are concerned, Bohm believes there has been a shift in demand scenario from low to extremely high.

“Thankfully, our long term contract with Global Partners helped us to maintain our high service levels,” shares Oliver Bohm.

Also, a new class of cargo which is basically e-commerce is getting top priority of airlines and this will only increase going forward and will massively impact air traffic routes. Another upcoming epoch making trend to shape up the cargo service in the next couple of years is digitisation in terms of end to end paperless operations, Bohm agrees.

MultiModal Transport to facilitate optimising air cargo procedures

Felix Kreutel, Senior Vice President Cargo of Fraport AG shares how multimodal ways can facilitate optimising the air cargo procedures across the country.

“Road, rail and sea cargo play a very important role when it comes to transporting goods within the country or even within Europe. For cargo coming from or going to FRA, trucking is the most common way of transport. The road feeder services to and from FRA are massive,” he says.

“We have over a thousand trucks serving our cargo cities every day. Here again, it is crucial that the different players within the whole supply chain work closely together in order to have a smooth process when handing over the goods. Therefore, we also connect truckers to Fair@Link. Our gates are equipped with a license plate recognition system that indicates handling agents and forwarders that a truck has arrived on site. Regarding rail transportation, we have a dedicated railway line going directly into our CargoCity area. However, it is difficult to bring airfreight shipments by train to airports, with the frequencies and volumes necessary not available.” Adds Kreutel.

He also believes that air cargo should always be viewed as a multi-modal process, because it relies on fast and efficient transition from air to ground and vice versa. This requires innovation; the ability and knowledge to work with regulators and Customs bodies in order to encourage them to facilitate rather than hinder freight flows; investment in resources; and the installation of digital management systems that monitor transitions and highlight potential problems.

“Every location has its own unique features and characteristics, that dictate the intermodal options – but the underlying processes of putting it all together are always the same, and the key is always communication and collaboration among all stakeholders. Again, airports are in a strong position to create communities that can overcome local obstacles,” adds Whitehead.

Sandeep Chatterjee, Senior Manager, Deloitte on the other hand thinks that in India, the multi-modal mix is heavily skewed and not much thought has been given to why some things are done in a particular way.

Thus, it is important that we optimise the routes and if needed analyse whether a combination of rail, road and air is the most optimum option, feels Chatterjee. “Right now, there are multi-modals between rail and road but not much with air as these are three different players and it usually comes to trust issue why people do not want to collaborate. In India, labour is cheap, so, material handling is cost-effective when we weigh the savings in time and money in a multi-modal mix. The operators need to collaborate for maximum savings as it is very unlikely that the same player will have the facilities for all mode transportation,” says he.

Smooth multi-modal connectivity and movement is the ideal situation, states Menen. Though there is good interaction between Air and land; (Ocean > Road > and Rail), Direct interaction between Air and Ocean interaction is still a challenge, thinks Menen. “Having said that, since the highest growth is in the e-commerce space and for some of the changes I alluded to earlier, this is going to become less relevant in the future,” he says.

Recently, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways and Shipping, Government of India, has involved Aviation Sector while framing up Multi-modal Logistics Hubs policy with a view to provide thrust to air cargo sector. The strategy involves a reset of India’s logistics sector from a ‘point-to-point’ model to a ‘hub-and-spoke’ model, which involves railways, highways, inland waterways and airports to put in place an effective transportation grid. Multiple initiatives to improve logistics efficiency are already underway including building of economic corridors apart from multi-modal logistics parks.

The multi-modal integrated logistics are likely to increase India’s export with reduced logistics cost, as also will provide employment opportunity for the country viz-a-viz making goods cheaper in the domestic market, he notes.

To support and strengthen multi modal connectivity, DELHI Cargo is strategically focusing on –

•             Transshipment cargo handling facilities and processes

•             Process simplifications involving Customs to further improve efficiency

•             Unbroken cool chain for movement and handling of perishable and pharma cargo

•             Enhancing cargo infrastructure and development of on-Airport Logistics facilities

However, the real challenge Edward believes, would be to create a smooth chain to make multi-modal successful, as in India all the business segments have their own aspirational developmental plan. Hence, integrated multi-modal operations plan and strategy are required to be meticulously devised to have seamless and sustained operation system.

The Way Forward

Ever since 2014, the incumbent Central Government has brought about numerous positive changes in the rules, regulations and procedures in multiple sectors. A large number of outdated regulations have either been abolished or updated to make them contemporary and suitable to the needs of industry, trade and business in the new millennium. This is a trend that should continue in a major way during the next few years to come to revamp the statutes across the board to make India a global hub for not only the airfreight industry, but also for trade and business, notes TA Varghese.

Throwing some light on the significant trends in the airborne freight and cargo services in the years to come, Felix Kreutel says that the industry forces us to increase efficiency and offer data transparency. Digitization and new technologies will therefore shape the industry in the long run, feels Kreutel. But, also Big Data and especially block chains will definitely have a huge impact by improving security and transparency throughout the supply chain. Interfaces have to be aligned and we need to implement data platforms where we integrate the whole supply chain. “Block chains can support the building of logistic data backbones by cloud solutions or other data networks. We must come to a point where all the community systems at various airports are able to communicate with each other – we need a network of trusted networks,” he adds.

Mark Whitehead stresses on collaboration as the main key to the industry’s future development. The task of fostering, setting, enforcing and maintaining acceptable standards across the entire global industry is too big for any one body. A viable alternative route is to foster the creation of local air cargo communities, generally led by airport owners, which will facilitate the sharing of information, ideas and best practice, ease communication and cooperation with local regulators and official bodies, and mobilise effective marketing efforts. “There are several examples of this policy in action, such as Hong Kong: and the results are highly positive, and demonstrate that more can be achieved by a team than by individuals. And, this practice should be promoted to increase the importance of Air Cargo across the country,” Whitehead signs off.

The world’s emerging market and regions are also expected to deliver the fastest growth in air cargo volumes over the next five years, led by the Middle East and Africa, observes Sanjiv Edward from DIAL. “Strongest forecast growth is foreseen on trade lanes between Asia and the Middle East, within the Middle East region too, and between North and South America due to several initiatives impelled worldwide to provide momentum to the freight and cargo services, especially in the new era of e-commerce and globalised economy,” he adds.

Chatterjee from Deloitte throws considerable light on the significant trends in the airborne freight and cargo services in the years to come. “In the coming years customer tolerance time will reduce further and we are already seeing a major shift towards mass customisation. The delivery lead times will be the key and, hence, airborne freight and cargo services are going to expand significantly. There will be specialised carriers who will be able to transport both passengers and cargo in the same plane (which happens mostly as we still do not have much of dedicated air freight carriers in India). We expect to see disruptions in business model in this sector,” he explains.

The governments should be investing in creating industrial parks and make land available for building facilitation centres around the airport areas. They should also invest in creating a good road transportation network for efficient distribution. Road transportation is a very critical component of air cargo. The government should also work on reducing bureaucracy and pull down the hurdles created by border control processes. Everything that the governments do should be done to facilitate trade and distribution rather than policing it. Today, there is no room for traditional way of doing business. In the air transportation business, the future will belong to fully autonomous aircraft. Cargo drone startups like Natilus will lead this space with large commercial drones ploughing the traditional air routes at much lower operating costs.

There have been many startups which lead a good route only because of their flexibility. CGroupon is one such example. It started as ‘The Point’ a platform that gathered like minded people around shared interests and goals that aim to make a difference in the world. It was originally included in the business plan as a possible way for The Point to make money. But the idea of group buying wasn’t seriously considered until a group of users of The Point gathered up to save money on a product they all wanted to buy. The Point led to the pivot and focus on Groupon with customer insights, market conditions at the time in 2008 and mediocre traction .

Sometimes the vision doesn’t change, but the way problems are solved does change. Yelp was created to solve the founder’s challenge of finding a good doctor. It learned that the hypothesis of making users exchange and publish email recommendations between friends wasn’t what the customers wanted. They wanted to write and read reviews.

What is often seen is that many entrepreneurs naturally start searching for easier paths. It is unbelievable how little startups accomplish in comparison to how much they work for. A simple fact that all of the projects which are started don’t live to see the light of day. Changing ideas and plans every week based on what seems to be an easier path is what is called startup poison.

The evolution is the new trend in market as people want variety but don’t want to lose the trust factor with certain brands. Scaling any business successfully totally depends upon doing the fundamentals and having the stamina to run it efficiently. Even for startups and small medium enterprises there are many learnings which they can imbibe from these FMCG giants learn their successive mantras to be loved by people in market. Some of these learnings are as follows:

• Not hiring outside Models for advertisement purposes: the clear example for this can be Mahashay Dharampal Gulati ji’s MDH spice brand. While interviewing this iconic man, he gave out his success mantra that his face has been the selling point of this brand and therefore he never hired any models for the advertisement purpose. This is what he even wishes to convey that your brand is your own baby and no outside person can perform your brand with a similar diligence as the owner himself. Therefore, as part the marketing gimmick one should never invest much to grab in outside glamour, rather the individual should stick to their brand value.
• Customer centric packaging: the packaging of the product should be such that it helps strengthening a customer connect. Today we all recognize the Parle-g biscuit or Kisme toffee branding with their age old packaging. Seeing that dancing girl on pack of biscuits, a kid, adult or an aged person can clearly make out the name of this biscuit brand. Morover, for over ages the packaging and quality has been kept same and this goes as another learning for these SME brands to not play around with product’s packaging quite often. 

• Employment retention: Employer should always make extra arrangements to retain that employee lot which has been associated with the brand since the inception days, because they were the ones who made your brand what it is today. They has seen and faced all those hardships while building this brand. Just like the brand Himalaya, the corporate communication manager Byas has been with the brand for over many decades now. He has become the face of this brand and whenever anyone wishes to know the ‘inns’ and ‘outs’ of their brand, people straight away reach out to Byas. This shows that how happy the company has kept its employees they the employees are not in favor of leaving this brand. This way they get married to the company’s culture and stay on for decades.
• Quality Control: The basis of such long existence of FMCG products in market has direct relation to uncompromised quality. Let’s face it how many of you use salt of any other brand than TATA. This ‘desh ka namak’ has conquered all hearts and people when it comes to one trusted brand. In today’s fast paced world its very important to eat healthy and stay healthy and therefore people have become extra conscious of their intake. People blindly trust TATA ‘namak’ for their daily usage and because of its impeccable quality standards, this brand has never let down consumer’s faith.

• Contain your cost: Lastly, cost does matter. In a country like India where according to the recent census, 92% of men and 94% of women are jobless, its very important to maintain decent price of various necessities. Today if a packet 8 glucose biscuits is made available at Rs. 4 and filling stomachs of many then that product will automatically be a chosen choice of many over other satiety eateries

The FMCG biggies’ next leg belongs to these smart and sharp SME owners who are on the stance of developing and innovating great new products targeted towards the current generation. As a matter of fact, why do you think these SMEs need to be bought out strategically by an old laggard, when they can self-sustain themselves and create sustainable business all by themselves? The answer lies in their successful existential years in market. More and more SMEs should look up to the successive mantras of these giants and follow their footsteps for acquiring a safe place in the minds of consumers. Buyers shouldn’t even think twice before buying out your products. We wish to create many such sustainable brands within the fast moving good’s portfolio.

Talking about age old businesses like Dabur and Himalaya, their management has been working in a steady manner and the legacy seems to be running at a consistent level since time immemorial. The pattern toward an employee-tailored workplace is fast gaining a lot of importance, and if you aren’t in trend with the change then you may need to change rapidly. HR change has advanced essentially over the previous decade alongside the changing business condition and difficulties—in India and around the globe. Historically, mature HR groups and functions seem to have concentrated on improving working productivity and managerial adequacy. Today, such upgrades are table stakes.

Advanced HR management techniques help in propelling the abilities to adjust HR structure and administrations. Propelled HR abilities empower an association to execute its business technique all the more successfully and improve execution over the whole venture — but not just within the HR function. As of late, HR Transformation has prompted a noteworthy restructuring of HR activities and procedures — transforming the way HR services are delivered. However there is still much work to do. Organizations today face noteworthy HR challenges that scarcely existed a couple of years ago. For example: the concept of paid maternity leaves for working women wasn’t even worth considering as the ratio of working women was next to NIL.

But the present day generation of the original heirs of these brands are brimming with astounding amount of change in their managements. Their focus is relaying more upon their employees and the end goal for them is to fetch best results from the employees and keeping them satiated as well at the same time. They realize that in order to get their firm into the listing of ‘name to fame,’ they have to do something extraordinary, and what better than providing few ethical changes in their management for the employees! So, in order to revolutinalise the HR management of the new-age firms, here are few disruptive changes being worked upon to be adopted by many new-age companies; The Supreme Court’s decision to decriminalize Section 377 has paved the way for companies to openly put in such practices for employees at workplace with an alternate sexual orientation, said HR experts and gay rights activists.

“How cool, ‘WOOOO’-man! The Maternity Benefit Act 1961 finally is being implemented in many organizations. Well, the act was prevalent but the implementation seems to be getting adopted now at work places. Under this act, working mother will be entitled for a 6 months paid maternity leave.

Access to work from home is also gaining fast traction amongst many HR executives of the company. Sitting in front of the desktop for hours doesn’t help giving out fruitful results always. Infact when employees tend to work at ease, they are more productive. Therefore, at many work places, few days of work from home for employees have been mandated.

In comparison to an experienced workforce, younger and smart talent is being hired as younger workforce is more entrepreneurial in their vision, values a solid work-life balance and seeks flexible working structures.

We have full faith that, the Next Generation HR Transformation and disruptive innovations will require a critical change from the present spotlight on the management activities — which are ordinarily planned at 0.5 percent to 0.7 percent of income — to tomorrow’s emphasis on building vital business benefits. Further, it will be interesting to see how HR steps up to the ongoing challenges, and we look forward to adopting these changes in order to succeed the organizations on similar lines. This leads us to conclude in an era of fast changing global macro-economic-social scenarios, the new-age firms would need to adopt progressive human resource policies

Indeed, COVID-19 has sped up the innovative change that was planned to happen in our lives at some point or another. The institutional frameworks have increased a decent balance with past easily, where customary teachers are taking advantage of the advanced resources to keep education for students ongoing.

According to SimilarWeb’s survey on 35 top online learning platforms, the edtech segment has experienced a steady increase of 26 per cent in their user visits between April 2019 to March 2020, as compared to April 2018 – March 2019. Further, the first 28 days of lockdown in India edtech segment saw 128.8 Mn visits (on average, 4.6Mn daily visits) as compared to 102.2 Mn average visits between April 2019 – Feb 2020.

As schools and colleges shifted to online classes and resources to continue educating students amid the pandemic, the engagement metrics of the segments have also improved.

Government initiatives uplifting education standards

The HRD ministry has claimed to have done enough in the name of what’s required in boosting the instructive norm by bringing out different activities. According to Dr Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’, the Union HRD ministry has introduced several policies to improve the teaching sector in the country. The educational policy which has been recently announced remains on the columns like quality, get to, value, responsibility, and moderateness. It goes according to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which means to change the nation into an energetic information society.

The government has also brought about changes in the B.Ed degree structure for the subjective improvement in these training programs for instructors for as long as one year. These projects spread some significant angles, for example, comprehensive training, ICT, sexual orientation, yoga, wellbeing and sterilization, and Global Citizenship Education (GCED). The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (Amendment) Act, 2018 is intended to improve the learning levels of children by intertwining more noteworthy responsibility and improvement as far as quality instruction. The association government in 2018 has incorporated the three plans Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), Centrally Sponsored Scheme on Teacher Education (CSSTE) and Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) as a coordinated plan as Samagra Shiksha for imbuing balance in instruction.

In the name of International exposure, the administration has chosen to take interest in programs like Program for International Students Assessment (PISA), which will be sorted out in 2021 by OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development). The HRD Ministry has built up a stage called DIKSHA (Digital Infrastructure for Knowledge Sharing), which offers quality e-learning material both for instructors and understudies as transferred at the states/UTs on this entryway.

The activity by the administration like Rashtriya Aavishkar Abhiyan (RAA) in 2015 arrangements with rousing and connecting with children of 6-18 years in subjects like innovation, science, and arithmetic by means of perception, experimentation, surmising drawing. The activity likewise discusses model structure through both within and outside study hall exercises.

Ultimately, the assets like e-PATHSHALA and WAYAM (Study Webs of Active Learning for Young Aspiring Minds) have their impact in teaching quality training.

Rising Tide Lifts All Edtech Players

According to the report, before Covid-19 lockdown, seven out of 10 top edtech players were focussed on school-level online learning. Vedantu, LearnCBSE, BYJU’S, Toppr, Tiwari Academy, Meritnation and Gradeup collectively captured 51.25% of the traffic share. In comparison, the two most popular test prep startups Unacademy and Embibe attracted 13.05% of the traffic. Udemy (9.29%) was the only massive open online courses (MOOC) platform to feature in the top 10 list.

Post lockdown during the first 28 days, the traffic share has significantly shifted towards MOOC platforms like Udemy (17.81%) and Coursera (10.10%), who have tripled their paid marketing spends in the lockdown period. This could also be justified by people’s growing interest in taking up online courses to either make use of the extra time or to get upskilled in the changing market conditions.

Coursera has reported a 325% YoY hike in new registration, 284% YoY in overall enrollment and 1747% hike in public health content in the last 30 days till April 3.  However, K-12 learning platforms have the biggest lead when it comes to growth in adoption.

Another interesting trend observed during the lockdown period is the decline in traffic on offline-to-online platforms like Vedantu (5.9%) and Tiwari Academy(1.55%). However, Aakash stood out as an exception by showing growth in online traffic as compared to earlier figures, despite the fact that it is still heavily dependent on revenue from offline coaching.

Is it here to stay or just need of the hour?

Looking at the current grim situation in the midst of COVID-19, the utilization of innovation has become the main beam of trust in our kids in order to remain associated with instruction. Nonetheless, it will change in the coming occasions as the danger of the infection evaporates from the world. et, the technology is here to stay for a better and smarter learning experience for our students and the coming generation. The utilization of customary versus innovation based learning is an easily proven wrong issue. The extent of the two may shift, however the truth of the matter is innovation will stay in the instructive division for upgraded and quality learning in the coming future.

In the current difficult stretches of COVID-19, innovation has developed out as a surprisingly beneficial turn of events for both the understudies and instructors.  The use of technology is mandatory to make our learning experience par to the growing competition and need of the market.

With the new Google Feature launched recently, any individual can create an identity card within Google Search. This feature has been term by the company as People Cards (Virtual business cards).

People Cards is a new listing feature of Google that help users create their virtual Visiting or Business Cards and enhance their online presence. This latest unveiling allows individuals to link their website, social profiles, and other relevant pages all to one place. This feature has been in a testing phase for a few years in India and has finally just been rolled out and in English version; and according to the company, they are not looking to expand soon.

Only adaptable on mobile phones and tablets for now, this feature allows users to create their own virtual visiting cards which would make it easier for others to find them on Google Search. People card appears to be Google’s latest step to get more data from people to whom they could sell more; and obviously the data of those who could be sold.

How to get the Add me to Search People Card

The process is quite easy, first step is to sign into your Google Account, then simply search for “add me to Search” and tap the prompt “Add yourself to Google Search” that appears. Subsequently, you would be required to enter your mobile phone number to complete verification process, a description of yourself; links to your website or social profiles; and, if you want; Enter 6-digit Unique Code; Start building your profile on people card by adding your Location, choosing the image, adding description of yourself, adding links of your websites or social media profiles and email address, if any and click on save. According to Google, the more information you provide, the easier it is for people to find you (and even more easier for them to sell you).

Come on everybody, give us your mobile number please 

With this new feature, Google is allowing each user only one People Card and this card must be authenticated with the user’s Google account and a unique phone number. Google requires you to verify using your mobile number to help maintain the quality of information on People Cards. You will be asked for your mobile number so Google can send you a six-digit confirmation code.

Tricking 1.3 billion people? 

For the 1.3 billion potential users, the platform is free to use, but that’s how the digital ads framework works. They tend to have the concept of ‘if you aren’t paying for it, you are the product’. For Google, definitely users are their primary source of income. Obviously they would  want more of them so they can market those products and data generated from their daily transactions. Google is on a race and needs to keep collecting data and improve in order to increase demand for its platform. With the new add me search people cards feature, it hopes to acquire uniquely through its phone number verification, the data of millions of Indians.

Leveraging on its Popularity

Google’s pattern and practice of dominance is due to summation of the resulting perceptions based on the popularity of Google. The users typically have more than an inkling of what they are looking for but like flies get lured/attracted to the light, people tend to get attracted to fancy things like these because of the big name Google has and people don’t realise that they are just leveraging on that factor to compel usage of its services, and often to dominate competing offerings.

Google being Google; always here for the data (to sell?)

For Google, each user creating a People Cards is a data goldmine. It’s a data game where Google learns more about users and targets them. With its multiple, seemingly unrelated platforms, Google’s goal is common for — track and know what people do. This will translate into ads and revenue for Google. Woodward says,

Once Internet companies such as Google have user information, programmatic technology — or algorithmic sale and purchase of ads space in real time — steps in. In this case of Add me to search people cards, data is captured and could be used to ad purposes, we never know. Companies can in turn find multiple ways to monetise — advertise, cross sell, market data. If you have better data, returns can improve.

Of course, nobody is forcing you

As stated by Google, users can remove/delete anything at any time. You can also opt out of the experience entirely – this will stop your card from showing up in search. The question is can it be helpful? Yes, it sure can; No one is disputing the fact that this could be the help thousands of influencers, entrepreneurs, prospective employees, self-employed individuals, freelancers, or anyone else out there need to be discoverable.

But making it mandatory that everyone should share their phone numbers and enable their web and app activity sharing with google; while attempting to get this feature by Google deprive the people’s freedom and raises an eyebrow why it is necessary.

In order for me to investigate this claim and not believe in hearsays, I ordered a 30″ pizza from one of their competitors  and to my utmost surprise, the claim was true, as it was a 28″ pizza as opposed to the 30″ pizza I ordered and paid for. This further buttressed the claim that they have been lying to all of their customers and passing off a 28″ pizza as a 30″ pizza for years. How awful that certain pizzerias could be so comfortable at cheating people out of their hard-earned money and not getting the value for what they paid for.

Needless to say I ordered a 30” pizza from Napoli Pizzeria and I got exactly what I paid for a 30” pizza. Not only that, to my shock they had a 36” pizza as well! Way to up their game. Disclaimer for their 36” is that you need double doors to accept. The dough was perfect and the toppings were fresh. Well done Napoli Pizzeria. 

Below is the link to the initial post I saw that made me investigate this.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CCecagPh3rm/

Below is the link to Napoli Pizzeria website, a place where you can trust your order since 2005.

https://napolipizzalv.com/

I don’t mean to discredit particular pizza places but it is shameful and unfair that pizzerias would pass off a 28″ pizza as a 30″ because they don’t have the boxes or tools for the 30″ pizza. I think everyone should measure their 30” pizza before they “fix their situation.”

Conclusively, I will only be ordering from the place I can trust Napoli Pizzeria who care about their establishment, customers and quality of food. Not others who are looking to cheat their customers for a quick buck.

Publisher’s Media Contact Information:
Name: Lauren Miller
Email: LMilleragency@mail.com

Disclaimer: The opinions and reviews expressed in this category articles are the personal opinions of the author. The facts and opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of Startup Fortune and the platform does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.