Lockdown made Bengal Inc Sons Bond with Dads

Kolkata: For Umesh Chowdhary, vice chairman of Titagarh Group, it is the longest stay in his home town after almost 25 years while for Rudra Chatterjee, MD of Luxmi group, this is his longest stay in the City of Joy ever since he had left school for higher studies. The story is same for Sanjay Budhia, MD of Patton, Neetish Sarda, director of Sarda Group, and Saket Mohta, MD of Merlin Group.

The Covid 19-induced lockdown and the ban on international travel became an opportunity for Bengal Inc to spend some time with family, especially on the Fathers’ Day.

Rudra Chatterjee, who is a frequent flier to US for his business, said he was enjoying his stay in the city. On Father’s Day he had cup of tea with his father Dipankar Chatterjee in the morning. “I have been eating my favourite home-made dish every day for the last three months, apart from spending time with my daughter and teaching her mathematics. Rest of the time is spent in doing some webinar related to business,” said Rudra. Umesh Chowdhary said, “It was probably for the first time since my son was born that I could spend three consecutive months in Kolkata with my family. My son, my father and me, celebrated Father’s Day together.” Neetish Sarda, son of top jute industrialist, Ghanshyam Sarda, was stranded in Kolkata due to the lockdown. “I am with my father for the past 90 days,” said Neetish. For Saket Mohta, too, it’s a new experience in life. He and his father Sushil travel 60-70 days a year.“There are very few common days when both of us stay together in the city,” he added.

Budhia said he has been with his family and daughter Preeyam for three months. “We are together at home and I don’t remember whether the same happened earlier.”

Credits: TimesofIndia

Galloping away to Glory!

Equestrian sports and horse racing has been an integral part of Kolkata’s culture for centuries. During the winter races are held in Race Course located at the southern end of Kolkata Maidan.

The races shifted to Kolkata in 1812 roughly as the same location as today. Calcutta Turf Club (CTC) also known as the Royal Calcutta Turf Club (RCTC) was official formed in 1847 to govern the rules and regulations concerning racing and protecting the interests of the turf in Calcutta.

The Indian Navy has always taken great pride in associating with the equestrian sports throughout the country and has actively patronized these events.

The Navy’s association with RCTC goes back to more than four decades when the formal institutionalization of dedicated races became the norm. The Navy has been endorsing two prestigious races at RCTC, Kolkata namely the Navy Cup and the INS Hooghly Cup.

The INS Hooghly Cup is named after the Indian Navy establishment which was commissioned in Calcutta in February 1954 as INS Hooghly, now known as INS Netaji Subash.

The INS Hooghly Cup was instituted in 1994 on the 40th anniversary of the Naval establishment at Kolkata.

Although the Navy Cup and INS Hooghly Cup are new compared to the long history of horse racing in Kolkata but they do attract a large number of eminent Kolkatan's.  The Navy and INS Hoogly Cup boost the Indian Navy’s efforts to popularize the sport.

Saumya Sarda, German Counsul Olaf Iversen, Ghanshyam Sarda and Neeta Sarda during the Navy Cup and Hoogly Cup held at the Royal Calcutta Turf Club in the city.

There were several famous personalities joined the event to boost the Indian Navy's effort.

Mitra: The ‘Made in India’ robot in a show at GES Hyderabad

Mitra is an indigenous robot developed by a two-year-old startup Invento Robotics in Bangalore.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Ivanka Trump, daughter, and adviser to the US President, inaugurates the Global Entrepreneurship Summit 2017 in Hyderabad

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Adviser to US President Donald Trump Ivanka Trump on Tuesday inaugurated the three-day Global Entrepreneur Summit in Hyderabad by pressing a button on an indigenously developed robot called Mitra.

Mitra has been developed by a Bangalore-based startup Invento Robotics that was set up in October 2015. The company has been founded by Balaji Viswanathan, who has previously worked in Silicon Valley and technology companies such as Microsoft. Viswanathan was recently in news for being the most followed person on Quora.

The company has been closely working with National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) and Associated Chambers of Commerce of India (ASSOCHAM)

“Mitra has been completely designed and developed in India. The idea behind the robot was to provide customised and contextual information to people,” Kaundinya Panyam, a senior company executive told Hindustan Times.

The indigenous Mitra runs on a propriety operating system. The company sells multiple versions of the robot, customised for different sectors such as corporates and banking. It uses different chipsets depending upon the customisation and integrations that are incorporated within the humanoid. In some versions, it uses Qualcomm’s chipsets.

Featuring fibreglass body, the humanoid comes with a touchscreen on its chest which comes in handy when there’s a lot of ambient noise, the executive said. On a single charge, Mitra can deliver a back up to 8-10 hours.

Invento said it has deployed a fully functional robot at a Canara Bank in Bangalore.

While the company is pushing the device primarily as a smart customer support assistance, it also sees other various use cases as well. For instance, the robot could be used as a party photographer, smart DJ or just a live tweeter.

Mitra also features a facial recognition technology which the company says is quite accurate, allowing the robot to quickly identify the person and deliver the customised services.

The humanoid also understands multiple languages. At the moment, Mitra supports Kannada and English but the company says it is soon going to add support for Hindi as well.

“Our robots can recognize speech in multiple languages and engage customers with smart conversations to provide better customer engagement and increase sales,” said the company on its website.

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Manavjit Singh Sandhu - The trap gold in National Shotgun Championship

Manavjit Singh Sandhu shot 117 out of 125 to qualify for second position for the finals of the men’s trap event at the National Shotgun Championship.

Former world champion Manavjit Singh Sandhu defended his national men’s trap title when he overcame the challenge of UP’s Anwer Sultan 45-43 at the ongoing 61st National Shotgun Championship in New Delhi on Saturday.

Manavjit, representing Punjab, shot 117 out of 125 to qualify for the finals in the second position, the same score which got him to the finals last time in Jaipur.

India international Zoravar Singh Sandhu, who had topped qualification with the same score as Manavjit, shot 33 in the final to bag the bronze medal. Silver winner Anwer had shot 116 in qualification to be the fourth final qualifier out of six.

In the junior men’s trap, Haryana’s Lakshay Sheoran bagged top honours beating Rajasthan’s Vivaan Kapoor 41-39 in the final.

Maharashtra’s Ashutosh Sardar Murkute won bronze with a final round score of 31. Lakshay was fifth to qualify for the finals with a score of 113 in qualifications, which was topped by Rajasthan’s Aman Ali Elahi with a score of 116.

Aman, who has had a great outing, qualifying for both the senior and junior men’s trap final, was not denied a gold, as he eventually teamed up with Vivaan and Manavaditya Singh Rathore to bag the junior men’s team trap gold with a combined score of 336.

Haryana, with 326, and Madhya Pradesh with 318, won the silver and bronze, respectively.

In the senior team men’s trap, Manavjit and Zoravar exchanged medal colours with Zoravar bagging gold for Air India along with teammate Birendeep Sodhi and SM Faisal.

Their combined total of 329 was one better than Haryana’s 328, while Manavjit’s Punjab also finished with 328, but won bronze in the final classification.