Shweta Taneja | Shweta Taneja

March 15, 2019September 30, 2018

For success, learn to listen well

Listen well and you will know the truth. Over a cup of coffee in February, Akash Manohar, the director of engineering at Synup, a Bengaluru-based marketing start-up, made a suggestion to its millennial founder Ashwin Ramesh—change the work timings, because late hours don’t allow the team to pursue hobbies.

“The norm for most tech start-ups is to start late and end late,” says 26-year-old Ramesh. “However, I thought there’s no harm in implementing it and seeing how it goes.” Two days later, Ramesh changed the reporting timing for the tech teams, asking employees to come at 8am and leave by 5pm sharp. He was surprised to see a 20% increase in productivity within a few weeks.

Listening is a skill you must acquire

Ramesh is glad that he picked up the skill of listening to colleagues, and making collective decisions, early in his entrepreneurial journey. In 2016, he also implemented advice on using networks and contacts for hiring rather than advertising on job portals; the suggestion came from Raison D’Souza, also director of engineering.

March 8, 2019September 30, 2018

How to make a career with drones

Working with drones is still not a career for most. Take Bhavesh Sangani for example. While studying at an engineering college in Tumkur, Karnataka, in 2009, Bhavesh Sangani bought a small toy: a remote-controlled helicopter. Before he started flying it, he tied it with a thread, just like a kite, scared it might land somewhere else. Something worse happened—the flight crashed and the toy was wrecked.

Bhavesh Sangani with his drones. Photo: Hemant Mishra/Mint

Drones is cutting-edge tech

What remained with Sangani, however, was the desire to fly something with a remote control. The same year, he started a club in college that made DIY remote-controlled flights or drones. “By the time I graduated in 2011, we had built 36 remote-controlled electrical planes, all self-taught through the internet,” says the 28-year-old. The hobby helped Sangani land a job as an engineer with Quest Global, an engineering services company based in Bengaluru, straight out of college.

March 1, 2019September 30, 2018

Setting up a start-up, straight out of college

In 2012, when Sachin Gupta graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Roorkee with a job offer from Google India, he faced a conundrum. He and his college mate, Vivek Prakash, had been building a software system, HackerEarth, for engineer recruitment. They had an offer from GSF Accelerator, a Bengaluru seed-funder for technology start-ups.

It came with a caveat: GSF wanted the two in Bengaluru, working full-time on the start-up, if they were to get the initial money. “That was our first challenge,” recalls Gupta. “If we wanted to do this start-up, and we so did, Vivek had to miss a semester in his degree while I had to leave my job.” Prakash wanted to get his degree.

February 22, 2019September 30, 2018

How to make it as a trailing spouse

Being a trailing spouse can be stressful as you quit your job to follow your partner’s career. However, with perseverance it can work.

When Saba Menezes, 32, decided to marry her childhood sweetheart Richard, a petroleum engineer with Shell, they knew one of them would have to give up their career.

Menezes, a Delhi-based litigation lawyer, had been unhappy with her job, and decided she would take a break. After marriage in 2013, the couple moved to Rio de Janeiro; by 2015, just as she was becoming proficient in Portuguese, Richard took up a job in Brunei. “Even though I knew this was going to happen, it took me time to accept that law as a career option for me was over as we are going to keep moving,” she says.

Shruti Khattar with her husband Saket Kumar in Switzerland.

According to a September 2017 study released by InterNations, an international community of expatriates, only 45% of the spouses who move with their partners to a new country end up finding work. More than 80% of the spouses are women. Work permits, education degrees, language, or the career itself are some of the challenges these trailing or travelling spouses, as they are known in business parlance, come up against.

February 15, 2019September 30, 2018

How online learning is the way forward

Online learning is the new way millennials are educating themselves. When Lucky Gautam decided to take the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) during his final year as a BTech student at Amity University in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, he was worried about the stiff competition he would face from students of India’s premier engineering institutions.

On a friend’s suggestion, he signed up with the National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL), an online platform that offers free courses (but charges a minimal fee for an exam for certification), to brush up on topics like analogue circuits and the principles of signals and systems.

Online learning has become the norm

A government-funded initiative by seven Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), NPTEL helped Gautam earn an all-India rank of 58 in GATE and a job offer from Indian Oil Corporation. “Sometimes books and a library just aren’t enough. With this platform, I could learn from the country’s top faculty at my own pace,” says the 25-year-old.

One needs to be a lifelong learner to stay relevant.

Other than providing high-quality content in high-demand fields, online courses are affordable and flexible, and therefore easier to access.

Cognitive computing, automation and globalization are impacting the nature of jobs and the skills required. One needs to be a lifelong learner to stay relevant. “We can’t afford to stop learning and still expect to grow in our careers. Online platforms are the most accessible for this purpose,” says Raghav Gupta, director for the India and Asia-Pacific region, Coursera.

The formulaic framework of online courses or webinars can be a millennial’s best friend. “Millennials have an intrinsic trust and connect with technological tools and advances, adapting to new technology rapidly,” says Andrew Thangaraj, professor, electrical engineering department, IIT, Madras, and NPTEL coordinator .

February 8, 2019September 30, 2018

Smart speakers aren’t ready to take over your home, yet

Artificial assistants in smart speakers can do some tasks for you to make your life easier but they are a long way off from turning you into a couch potato. Vinay Ram, a 30-year-old product manager, bought his Echo Dot (Rs4,499, Amazon.in) as soon as it was launched in India in November. “I’d seen an Echo a year ago when Alexa could only understand the American English accent, but mine is very responsive to Indian accents, switching seamlessly from Odia, Malayalam and north Indian English accents,” he says.

How smart speakers work in India

Ram who works for a Bengaluru-based smart-home automation company, Silvan, has set up the TV set-top box with Alexa and now asks the device to change the channels for him. Alexa also controls the air conditioner and room temperature and is automated to switch off all lights if the device hears “Good Night”.

Ram’s wife, Sapna who works from home, plays interactive games like Hangman with the smart speaker, and streams music from Saavn. Together, they give Alexa up to 50 commands in a day. Though he loves it, Ram reluctantly admits, “It’s a luxury rather than a necessity.”

According to data released in January by Amazon, Alexa smart speakers now offer integration with more than 12,000 skills tailor-made for Indians using its digital voice assistants, including the ability to play devotional songs, interactive games, services like Housejoy, Zomato, music apps like Saavn and informational apps like ESPNcricinfo—all of them free, without any subscriptions.

Vinay and Sapna can’t do without their Echo Dot.

February 1, 2019September 30, 2018

Kitchen gadgets that will make the food themselves

Kitchen gadgets that will practically make the food themselves

It’s time to try something new kitchen gadgets. Retire your drab old whistle-cooker and wok, and bring home smart appliances that use the best of technology to make cooking easy. We tell you of the best ones.

Kitchen Gadget: Prepd pack

The Prepd Pack lunch box is a smart one with an app that helps you plan and prepare your lunch, and track your food’s nutritional value so you can control what you eat. The start-up began as a Kickstarter project to raise $25,000 and ended up raising more than a million dollars for reimagined lunches.

The main case is an elegant rectangular box that can house a versatile modular system of containers with smart magnetic cutlery. The highlight is, of course, the app (free for iOS, Android) which helps you prepare lunches in advance. Prepd has tied up with chefs and nutritionists to create a library of prep-friendly recipes tailored for a broad range of diets, appetites and health goals. The app also makes a shopping list based on your choice of lunches for the week, and tracks calories. It can connect to other health apps like HealthKit on iOS, to track your health and fitness.

January 25, 2019September 30, 2018

How to use a chair to workout

We love our chairs. However according to a study published in September in the Annals Of Internal Medicine, longer bouts of sitting are directly correlated to greater risk of death. “However, you can use the same chair as a tool,” says Paul, “if you can take out 20 minutes in your day during office hours and stretch those muscle groups.” Our experts list a few exercises that enable you to use your chair as a prop.

Soften those shoulders

Thoracic extension: Hold the back of your chair with your hands. Keeping the arms straight, push forward, expanding your chest by squeezing your shoulder blades. “Now try and look back on either side,” says Kamal Chhikara, owner and head coach, Reebok CrossFit Robust, a fitness studio in Delhi, “and you’ll open up your chest, reducing shoulder pain.”

Image result for chair exercises — Do this while sitting on your chair

January 18, 2019March 28, 2019

Green vegetables boost your immunity

Green vegetables include not only the commonly known fenugreek, spinach and lettuce, but also a variety of herbs like parsley and cilantro, and also kale and Swiss chard.

“They are stark green in colour due to the abundance of chlorophyll, which is structurally similar to haemoglobin, making them a natural blood-building food,” says Luke Coutinho, doctor of alternative medicine and founder of the health start-up Pure Nutrition. The multi-vitamin dose in these vegetables keeps the weight under control, maintains blood pH, improves vision and nervous control, supports heart and liver health, dental and bone health, fights cancer, purifies blood, and increases haemoglobin, thus boosting immunity.

Parsley is definitely recommended for healthy bones and nerves.

For an adult, the suggested dose of greens is one to two servings a day, says Ritika Samaddar, chief dietitian, Max Healthcare, Delhi. However, people with chronic kidney failure, calcium oxalate kidney stones, high uric acid or gout should avoid taking greens due to their potassium restrictions, she says, adding that if you are taking anti-coagulants like warfarin or acitrom, you should avoid greens for they are a rich source of vitamin K, which causes blood to clot. Here are some of our favourite greens.

January 11, 2019September 30, 2018

Run your business with these apps

With clients across the world and in different time zones, Delhi-based chartered accountant Shitij Bahl, who runs his own taxing and accounting firm, needs to keep a lot of information handy on his phone when he’s travelling.

“You never know when I will get an urgent request from a client to see all their documents. The whole 30 MB of it,” says the 33-year-old. He relies on mobile apps to respond quickly and efficiently—Google Suite to organize team schedules and track projects; Zoho Invoice to send GST-integrated invoices quickly; and Dropbox, where he keeps all client data so it can be shared efficiently with just a link. If, like Bahl, you tend to travel on work, here are a few essential apps to keep handy.

Listening is a skill you must acquire

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Drones is cutting-edge tech

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Online learning has become the norm

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How smart speakers work in India

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Kitchen gadgets that will practically make the food themselves

Kitchen Gadget: Prepd pack

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Soften those shoulders

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