IndiPR – New Kid On the Block

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I have never published a Press Release before as most of them turn out to be boring. What would you do with dry information and specifications about a new product launch? Thousands of businesses, products and services are launched everyday across the world. When these products go live, a Press Release is usually the first order of business. These are sent to media professionals, PR agencies, bloggers, influencers and a sundry lot. Most of them have nothing to do with the product/business being launched. They are bored, go ahead and delete the invitation via mail. There are a few influencer platforms that target specific bloggers for different kind of products. IndiPR has arrived with the idea of making Press Releases cool and connecting businesses to influencers seamlessly.

Businesses of various sizes, including start-ups, can now have their Press Releases published by relevant influencers in less than 72 hours. Isn’t that great?

The Process

IndiPR.com was built to make it extremely simple for a business to get their Press Releases published by top bloggers. All a business has to do is upload their Press Release and the ‘Automated Influencer Targeting Engine’, or ‘AITE’ for short, proceeds to accept applications and automatically shortlists bloggers based on various factors including internal ratings and rankings. Once shortlisted, the influencers do their research and publish their articles.

Anoop Johnson, Co-founder & Director of Marketing at IndiBlogger, adds, “With a starting budget of just USD 150, a business of any size will be able to get their press releases published by influential bloggers with a few clicks.”

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Honey, I Shrunk The Carbs!

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One of my friend’s sister went to a slimming center days before her wedding. They promised great results and an ideal weight loss for her with crash diet including supplements and protein powders instead of natural food. When I met her at the bridal shower two days before the wedding ceremony, she looked shrunk, totally. The girl I knew, all of 80kgs was looking ill and haggard, flustered at what happened to her. She had relied on them for a makeover to look like a princess on her most special day, and the result was horrendous. I don’t know if she had mentioned this crash diet plan to her would-be husband, but since then I’ve been wary of crash diets and their promises.

It’s true that weight loss has been the agenda of most youth in India with increasing obesity and related diseases due to our sedentary lifestyle. Long hours of desk work and junk food have been culprits in turning us into a nation full of obese and weight-obsessed people. To eat or not to eat – is the question now. What to eat and what not to – comes next. Struggling with the issue of obesity, I’ve tried many regimes of diet including natural food, fruits and at times, honey. Yes. Even I was surprised to know that honey is healthy. We associate everything sweet with unhealthy and unfriendly. But Dabur honey is a lot healthier than sugar and has properties that will astonish you to no end.

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Surf It All With UC Browser

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I’ve been disconnected from cricket since quite a few years now. From being an avid cricket fan and following every ODI and test that India played, I’ve been reduced to watching the occasional IPL match now. The reason being heavy workload and the breakneck speed at which life is rushing by. There isn’t much time to watch a full ODI match and follow each over, but thanks to superfast technologies, each ball can be followed now at the touch of your fingertip.

Yes, there’s UC Browser for your smartphone which has UC Cricket incorporated to let you be connected to cricket at its best. Our smartphones already have their respective default browsers depending on their operating systems, but UC Browser is a single platform which lets you connect to all the apps that you otherwise download in your phone. With a single click you can connect to all your favourite apps – Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, news channels and websites, games and everything else you need – including the cricket world. UC Cricket helps you navigate all the latest and past matches, upcoming ones, scores, schedules, photo gallery and each gossip or news you’d want from cricket.

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Untold Ray of Hope

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Last week was categorically difficult for us. With our passport renewal process being initiated, it was a huge mess of documents – to be verified, attested, photocopied, arranged in order and filed neatly in separate folders for M and me. Once the appointment was through, we heaved a sigh of relief in unison as you know how exasperating these Government processes are. A little celebration was on its way in the evening when we received a call post dinner. One of M’s uncles had to be admitted to a hospital near our place owing to severe abdominal pain.

Things turned astray, anxiety crept in as uncle is above fifty years old. What’s strange was, we had met him just the weekend ago and he had seemed to be totally fine. We rushed to the hospital early in the morning and found him sedated, just okay to talk to us. Aunt-in-law was obviously distressed, and the fact that she was inexperienced in handling these corporate hospitals added to her nervousness. M and I tried to tackle the situation. It’s quite tricky, if you’ve dealt with any of the new age private hospitals in India.

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You and Us

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“When being together is more important than what you do, you are with a friend.” – Connie McMartin

I’ve been friends with S for the last 11 years now. Now that’s a bloody long time to know someone, isn’t it? We had begun our acquaintance with peals of laughter on the University staircase, if you’d believe. Both of us are infamous for our laughters, which can easily be compared with flight take-offs. They start with a giggle in unison and end up after reaching a crescendo that has offended a mighty lot of people then and now. But we wouldn’t be us if we had actually cared about that!

After hanging out in University campus for almost three years, we had to part ways. While I flew off for academics, S continued hers in Calcutta. It’s been mostly social media and very occasional meetings for the next few years. We’d plan in advance and meet for a movie and lunch, blabbering away the happenings in our lives, mostly love lives. We had created the record of chatting hours at bus stops before heading for our homes, respectively. There seems to be a throttled river of words that comes to life and rushes along whenever we see each other.

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Veni, Vidi, Vici

Leaving your home, either for education, profession or marriage, is always difficult. And yet, most of us have to take the plunge and spread our wings worldwide, bearing the unbearable. Women moved away only due to marriage till quite a few years ago, but now they fly away for higher education or a lucrative and ambitious job, much before (and sometimes after) marriage. While it is still a debatable topic whether it’s any good to let your children leave home and live elsewhere, in my humble opinion, it is much necessary for every adult to experience this independence and be more responsible.

I had imagined either a job or marriage would let me break the comforts of home and lead to the struggle of living alone, but things came earlier and I had to leave the country for academics. Imagine me, a moderately pampered daughter, deciding to live away for the first time in her life! My parents were probably awe-shocked, so were my friends and relatives.

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Citius, Altius, Fortius

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Health and immunity are the keywords in life when we speculate about ourselves and especially, our children. Immunity, besides being genetic, mostly depends on what we eat, where we live, the air we breathe and the habits we acquire. It is a known fact that while we are being technologically advanced with each decade, even each day, the biosphere where we reside is deteriorating at a faster rate than we know of. I was born in the late 20th century, in a more polluted environment than my parents were born decades earlier. Since the ’90s, global warming and massive pollution have poisoned the world for children these days. Most of us are cognizant of the fact that India ranks quite high in being one of the most polluted countries in the world. Frankly, do we even need any index to prove so? Each of us can feel and are compelled to breathe in the malicious air every time we step out of our homes. Immunity is heavily dependent on pollution, among other factors. It is upto us to adopt correct measures and build a healthy and immune India for the future generations. Let’s take a look at what we can do:

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What is Immunity?

A sneak peak into the coveted word used very often these days – the immune system in our body is made up of a complex network of cells, tissues and organs which work together to protect us against germs and harmful organisms. When a foreign body like antigen enters the body, these cells get together to build antibodies, which are specialized proteins to attack the invaders. These antibodies actually remember their antagonistic antigens and fight them every time. Humans have 3 types of immunity – innate (the one we are born with), adaptive (the one we develop while growing up) and passive (temporarily provided by external factors like breast milk or medicines).

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Eye Care, I Care

I was waiting nervously in the plush lobby of a leading eye care nursing home in Calcutta, whilst my father was being operated ; this one being the second in a short span of two weeks. Ideally, I should have been worried to a culpable extent, given that it was a matter of THE ultimate sensory organ, the eye. But I wasn’t petrified and not panicking anyway, as I was extremely satisfied with the fascinating technology and immaculate care provided by the team of doctors and nursing home staff. While care is something dependent on individuals, technology is not. According to me, technology is a boon which heightens to be a ‘life touching and changing ‘ experience and which comes to us in the form of modern healthcare.

My father being seventy, developed cataract in both eyes which I believe, is a common phenomenon at his age. His case became a tad more complicated as he had a thrombosis in the right eye quite a few years ago and was detected with glaucoma in both eyes. When he informed me that his doctor had suggested cataract removal in both eyes coupled with correction for glaucoma, I was profusely worried, indeed. A simple Phaco-surgery for cataract removal wasn’t going to be the case for him. I could recall the ancient microsurgery experience, which both my grandmothers went through many years ago. There were only a few doctors in Calcutta who conducted the newly invented surgery, in those yesteryears . It was quite expensive and people were highly apprehensive about the outcome because it was a new procedure. Years have passed by and advances in medical research has led to the easier and technologically smarter Phaco-surgery these days. Lucky to be born late in the era of these innovative techniques, I was far less worried for my father than his pile of worries for my grandmothers about twenty years ago.

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