87 – Grim Reality

As the world is battling to fight with coronavirus, not just people around the world but most of the world leaders are also worried about the unprecedented time ahead. Economic activities to run the country is at a halt. Different countries facing different problems and figuring out a cure before they face a worst-case scenario, which we call, recession.

Every industry is facing a grim situation, especially Airline, Tourism, and Hospitality industry, what worrisome for the industries is the migrant workers and labors on which most of the factories and inventories depends, they have moved back to their native places.

China, where it all begins, in the Wuhan province, the government is slowly lifting imposed lock-down restrictions, malls, and public places are opened for the public but citizens are still scared to step out. Shop and restaurant owners have to pay the rent to the owners, and as people no longer prefer so visit restaurants, food vendors offering home delivery just to make some bucks and survive.

The USA, which is the worse affected by covid19, with over 700,000 cases, state governors requesting to stay indoors and maintain social distancing, thousand of protestors, protesting on the streets demanding to re-open the states and lift the lock-down measures.

What future holds for us is no one knows. We just have to wait and watch.

84 – Countries and COVID

It’s going to get worse before it gets better. While the whole world is going through a crisis, we have to keep our faith alive and believe in this line, that things will eventually get better by time.

The situation is grim and dark clouds of Covid19 hovering over the world. Everyone is waiting for a ray of hope, in this blog, I will explain how some of the major countries of the world fighting with the worse pandemic of history.

Novel coronavirus which is now a global crisis dismantled some of the strongest countries, some of the countries still coping up and figuring out how to deal with it and some countries are leading with an example by implementing strict measures to stop the pandemic.

South Korea – WHO advise countries to test, test, and test for coronavirus, some of the effective measure which was taken by the government praised globally. South Korea installed several phone booths at different locations to test people quickly, where people don’t have to wait for so long just to get their tests done. They don’t even have to wait to get their results, health officials send the report directly to their contact number.

The USA – The United stated of America which has now reportedly more cases than any other country, surpassed China, Italy, and Spain, failed to tackle the situation and took things lightly, government officials failed to impose a travel ban on time, which leads to the first case which was reported in Seattle. After six weeks when the first case was reported, officials realized to imposed a travel ban. When the other countries restricted large gatherings and asking citizens to follow social distancing, Officials continued with the spring break festival of Florida were teenagers partied together.

80- Brands and COVID 19

A viral disease outbreak which turns out to be an epidemic to a pandemic, COVID 19 or novel Coronavirus as WHO(World Health Organization) declared, it took the world by storm. China, South Korea, Italy, and Iran are amongst the hardest hit countries because of COVID19.

Impacting globally, it becomes a high level of concern and a threat across the world, cities are locked down. Major conferences and sports events like Facebook F8 developers conference, NBA and India Premier League postponed or suspended.

Major brands faced a catastrophic hit because of COVID19, let’s deep dive into and see how brands are tackling and fighting against the deadly menace of coronavirus.

Amazon – Surgical facemasks and hand sanitizers two of the most essential products to keep ourselves safe from the virus are running out of stock from the stores, whereas some of the online sellers selling it on Amazon at an exorbitant price. As a preemptive measure Amazon warned and blocked the sellers who aren’t adhering to the fair price policy.

Facebook – Following Amazon’s footsteps, Facebook banned the sale of surgical face masks on its platform.

Delta airlines – When it comes to a crisis, a company’s most prominent stakeholders are its consumers. As most of the countries put the travel ban, the aviation industry hit the most and when it comes to boosting the morale of the consumers, Delta ‘s CEO Ed Bastian is the person we look for, Mr. ED circulated an email to the customers explaining how the airline is taking effective measures to curb the current outbreak. He breaks down the strategy in pointers

“We’ve Prepared”

“We’ve Learned”

“We’ve Taken Action”

Uber – Ride-hailing app Uber announced, it will delist or suspend accounts of drivers and passengers who are exposed to COVID-19, the company will also provide free disinfectants to the drivers to keep their vehicles germ free and clean.

Microsoft, Facebook, Linkedin, Amazon all the major companies ask their employees to work from home.

“What we know is a drop. What we don’t know is an ocean”

77 – Virus Attack

Ebola, Nipah, Sars, Coronavirus all of these deadly viruses created havoc in the past few years. While China is still fighting to curb the menace of coronavirus and quarantining the cities, issuing an advisory to the travelers and keeping an eye on the outbreak.

While we wonder about where do all these viruses come from, where is it all begun and why these viruses turned out so fatal. We can take a look back at the Ebola outbreak which created havoc in Africa 11,000 deaths were reported. Sars which is known as a severe acute respiratory syndrome, began in China in 2002 which killed 800 deaths. Coronavirus outbreaks in China which reportedly killed 1,500 people.

In all of these epidemics, one thing is common, it all comes from the animals and to be precise from the bats and it’s not the bat’s fault its the fault of us, we are the ones who are invading in their territories and consuming them. In Malaysia spreading commercial pig farms in the bat inhabited territory was the main reason for the outbreak. In Africa, bushmeat is very famous were fruitbats are hunted, sold and consumed.

Bats do appear to carry more human-killing viruses than any other animal, around 60 human infecting viruses. Guess we can love batman but not bats though.

74 – China and Corona

It’s the time of New year and celebrations, I am not talking about India’s, I am talking about China’s, it’s a rat year or year of the rat as they call it. Chinese people celebrate their new year on the 25th of January according to the Chinese calendar. Chinese people plan their travel and holidays to enjoy and celebrate the new year with their family in a different city or country but this year thing turns around when news breaks about a deadly disease which is effecting, spreading and even killing the people who got in contact with the virus, corona-virus.

According to South China Morning News, because of Coronavirus 40 people have been died and 1400 people are infected, the first case of coronavirus is surfaced in Wuhan province of China, the outbreak is spreading fast and WHO (Wolrd Health Organisation) planning to call it Public health emergency as the virus spread across the countries and has sickened people in Taiwan, Vietnam, Japan, Thailand, South Korea, and the United States.

China declared an emergency and canceled all the new year celebration programs, Chinese police officials quarantined Wuhan province and locked down all the roads, airports and transport ways, so no one can go in or out of the city to prevent the virus from spreading. According to news portals, science journals Coronavirus is a group of viruses that can be found or originated in bats or civets and can be transmissible from animals to humans and humans to humans, no medicine or vaccines has been developed to cure the diseases which makes it a lethal one.

70 – Mentors

A mentor is someone who sees more talent and ability within you, than you see in yourself, and helps bring it out of you.” — Bob Proctor

I met a person, a long time ago who told me, you need to have a mentor in life. I wondered why and how a mentor can change the life of a person. Then started reading and get to know the stories of the people whose lives have been changed when they found a mentor.

I was reading about Masayoshi Son, CEO of Softbank and I get to know, with the help of a mentor he reached the path of success. Tadashi Sasaki who was also known as “Rocket Sasaki” was a Japanese engineer, worked as a vice president for Sharp Electronics.
In 1978 when Masayoshi developed an electronic translator and looking for an investor who can back him, Tadashi Sasaki supported and helped him.

M.S Dhoni

The world best finisher, who won us World Cup, T20 World Cup, Champions trophy but not many of us know that M.S Dhoni was a footballer he was a goalkeeper but things changed when his mentor saw his skills and asked him to try wicketkeeping and look where he reached now world best wicket-keeper who amazed the whole cricketing world with his unorthodox wicketkeeping skills and now he is mentoring Indian and CSK for IPL.

And Under a lot of players have worldwide gain recognition, Suresh Raina, Ravindra Jadeja, Rohit Sharma, Dipak Chahar.

67 – Double 11 – Biggest Shopping Event of the World

An analysis published in December by The Nielsen Co. found that 39% of Chinese consumers are willing to “buy products of better quality with relatively more soaring prices. “On the other hand, 24% of consumers in China will seek good deals on the products they want.

Double 11 is started in China, in 1993 known as “Single’s day” or ‘Anti Valentine Day’ in recent years it becomes a global festival day were consumers shop 24-7. Citizens of China give importance to domestic consumption. Alibaba group holding, which is the largest retailer in the world piggyback this event as every year the shopping event breaks previous year sales record.

According to the reports – In 2018 GMV which is the gross merchandising value, it surpassed over $30.8 billion in sales within 24 hours smashing previous year record of $25.4 billion.

Employment is generated through this event as delivery companies hired 40,0000 extra staff to deploy for delivering parcels.

As it turned out as a National shopping festival apart from Alibaba other e-commerce players like JD.com, look forward to leveraging this opportunity. China is the world’s largest e-commerce market; economic growth is booming and with the help of innovation and technology e-commerce sector is growing rapidly.

In India, the e-commerce market is exponentially expanding companies like Amazon and Walmart backed FlipKart facing revenue losses still keen to invest money to lure Indian consumers. Just like Double 11, in India Amazon and FlipKart started similar sale festivals like ‘Big billion Day’ and ‘The great Indian shopping festival’.

66 – Future of Work

The next industrial revolution has begun – Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Big Data. These are words you might be hearing more frequently than ever today. Scientists, policymakers, entrepreneurs are debating how all of these will transform the future of work.

Over 3.5 million people work in the fast-food industry, it is one of the easiest industries to land a job in, experts predicted, the fast-food industry will be affected the most because of AI. In the US and UK, you no longer have to place your order in your favorite restaurant when you are visiting it multiple times, with the help of facial recognition computer will automatically detect your past food order pattern, it will place the order and deduct the amount by locking just using facial identity which is easy, fast and reliable.

Amazon organizes various robotics technological fests and competitions where students design robots to single out a product, grab it and place it on a particular place and the best design is been awarded and then selected to use it for their logistics and product placing department at Amazon.

In a recent piece of news, 18-time world champion, the master of “GO” game, which is an ancient and most popular Chinese game, has decided to retire, as he was unable to beat the google algorithm, he claimed that “AI can’t be defeated.”

57 – Jobless to Jack Ma I

Alibaba is a Chinese company specialized in e-commerce, retail, the internet, and technology founded on 4th April 1999, by Jack Ma. Recently Forbes listed him as the leading philanthropist of Asia after Ajij Prem Ji. He is declared as the richest man of China in 2019.

The success story of JACK MA is seemz like a fairytale, Born on 10 September 1964 in a middle-class family, his parents were musician storytellers. Jack was eager to help his family, and he wanted to learn English, back in those days a lot of tourists used to visit Hangzhou province, where he used to live and Jack used to give them English tours for free. There he met a foreign girl, and she gave him the Jack as it was hard to pronounce Ma Yun, which was his original Chinese name.

Failures are a part of life.
Jack Ma faced a lot of failures in life, in one of his interviews he revealed- In the middle school’s exams he failed thrice, It’s tough to clear entrance exam in China because of the toughness level of the exam, and Jack Ma failed to clear entrance exams thrice, but he didn’t lose hopes, he even tried to get an admission at Harvard University, where he applied more than 10 times and failed every time miserably.

56 – Jobless to Jack Ma II

After his Bachelor’s degree, Jack started to search for jobs but after trying several times in various companies by going through the various interviews process, he failed to land a job. In one of the interviews, he shared an incident which is one of my favorite and motivational. KFC stepped into China and Jack applied for a job, they invited 24 people for the interview and Jack was one of them at the end of the interview they selected 23 people and Jack was the only one who got rejected.

Turnaround Phase-
Jack Ma moved to the US in 1995, where his friends introduced him to the Internet. Curiosity kicks in and Jack started searching online and the first word he searched for was “BEER” which made him wonder that none of the results displayed are from China. That’s when he decided to put China and Chinese people on the internet map and with the help of his friend he made a website and within a few hours, he received an e-mail from a Chinese investor who asked the whereabouts of Jack Ma. Jack realized the value of the internet, and it can help in many ways which lead to the rise of Jack Ma. He began designing websites for Chinese companies. In 1999 Jack Ma with his foreigner friends and started Ali Baba.