The founder and chief executive of insydo says she’s used her background in marketing, finance and technology to build a search-centric product that provides people with curated recommendations and the best businesses in the city.

“We launched on the Web in January this year and released our native iOS and Android apps in October, and the traction we have seen so far has been really exciting. We have a growing community of over 300,000 people using insydo every month and our apps surpassed 10,000 downloads just last week,” Dizadji told Khaleej Times.

In a typical month, people across the UAE make over a million searches for various services in Dubai. With this background, Insydo is fast being considered as a definitive digital guide to Dubai and recommends its users the best of everything in the city. From top gyms and restaurants in Dubai to the best beach clubs and restaurants, it claims to offer unbiased reviews as well as help in finding anything from furniture stores and movers to car rental companies and other everyday essentials.

“In a nutshell, insydo is your go-to app for the best of everything in Dubai. We work undercover [like a mystery shopper] and test every business anonymously to give people ‘The Good, The Bad and The Tips’. So, whether you need an emergency plumber or you want to plan an action-packed weekend, you’ll find it all on insydo,” Dizadji said.

“To help businesses reach even more people, we have now built insydo+. This is our new ad tech platform, which allows featured businesses to boost their page with unique digital content and features to their insydo page,” she added

Information overload

Citing an excess of fragmented information available online, Dizadji says it can be hard to filter out what the user is actually looking for. “Insydo solves that problem by guiding people to the best of Dubai, so they can find specific services, products, and activities to save time and make the most of the city.” Dizadji, who is among one of the UAE’s 50 most influential Brits, said insydo is constantly adding new features. Users can search, filter and create personalised ‘Pick Lists’ that they can refer to any time they want.

“We have also added ‘Playlists’ and ‘Vibes’ that inspire users to discover more about their city. There are many other features on the way. We are in the process of integrating reservations so that people can book directly through insydo.”

To a question about what gave her the idea, she said she identified a gap in the market. “There was a ‘need’ and insydo became the solution to an everyday problem that we all face. How often do you turn to page two on Google? If you’re anything like me, rarely. Wouldn’t life be easier if you could search for anything in your city and have the top recommendations at your fingertips? Yep, and we’re the app for that.”

Startup strategy, challenges

Dizadji is keen to expand in the UAE and said Abu Dhabi will be coming soon, with other cities to follow in 2017. “It’s not something we take for granted. We’re constantly reassessing our aims; we’re an ambitious team and know the importance of being agile to ensure that we meet both the needs of our users and the businesses. ”

To a question, she said insydo is expected to raise funds to expand its base in the UAE and the region. “Yes, we are in talks with VCs [venture capitalists] at the moment; it’s a very exciting time for us.”

Human capital, she says, is one of the primary challenges she faces. “One of the main challenges I faced was building the right team. Your team is everything; they need to harness your energy, motivation and passion for building a winning product. and it’s extremely hard to find those individuals who will go that extra mile. Recruitment can seem time-consuming and incredibly draining, but I think it’s one of the most important factors when it comes to the success of your startup.”

Dizadji said Dubai is advancing rapidly and the government is investing in setting up an infrastructure that harnesses talent and entrepreneurship. “You see how Dubai will thrive as a knowledge-based city and, potentially, a digital powerhouse on the global stage,” she said.

“When it comes to forward-thinking cities and entrepreneurial environments, Dubai is definitely making its mark on the global map. Like every ambitious startup, the city moves forward at an accelerated pace and we’re lucky to be led by such visionary thinkers.”

– muzaffarrizvi@khaleejtimes.com

The post Seek and ye shall find…. success appeared first on KT10.

World trade growth would be slowing down, even without Trump in office. Its growth was already flat in the first quarter of 2016, and it fell by nearly one per cent in the second quarter. This continues a prior trend: since 2010, global trade has grown at an annual rate of barely 2 per cent. Together with the fact that worldwide production of goods and services has been rising by more than 3 per cent, this means that the trade-to-GDP ratio has been falling, in contrast to its steady upward march in earlier years.

This disturbing trajectory, argue the mavens of globalisation, reflects the resurgent protectionism manifest in popular opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), and now in Trump’s electoral victory. It means that the benefits of openness and specialisation are being squandered. Causality in economics may be elusive, but in this case it is clear. So far, slower trade growth has been the result of slower GDP growth, not the other way around. This is particularly evident in the case of investment spending, which has fallen sharply since the global financial crisis. Investment spending is trade-intensive, because countries rely disproportionately on a relatively small handful of producers, like Germany, for sophisticated capital goods.

In addition, slower trade growth reflects China’s economic deceleration. Until 2011 China was growing at double-digit rates, and its exports and imports were growing even faster. China’s growth has now slowed by a third, leading to slower growth of its trade. China’s growth miracle, benefiting a fifth of the earth’s population, is the most important economic event of the last quarter-century. But it can happen only once. And now that the phase of catch-up growth is over for China, this engine of global trade will slow. The other engine of world trade has been global supply chains. Trade in parts and components has benefited from falling transport costs, reflecting containerisation and related advances in logistics. But efficiency in shipping is unlikely to continue to improve faster than efficiency in the production of what is being shipped. Already, motor-vehicle manufacturers ship an automotive transmission across the US-Mexican border. At some point, unpacking that production process still further will reach the point of diminishing returns.

So should we worry that trade is growing more slowly? Yes, but only in the sense that a doctor worries when a patient runs a fever. Fever is rarely life-threatening; rather, it is a symptom of an underlying condition. In this case, the condition is slow economic growth, also known as secular stagnation, caused by depressed investment, which in turn reflects financial problems and policy uncertainty.

This, then, is the underlying condition. Trade agreements like the TPP and TTIP address it only obliquely. Increased spending on infrastructure by governments to boost investment and growth directly is more to the point. But whether the Trump administration and the new US Congress can design and implement a programme of productive infrastructure spending remains to be seen. More generally, a political consensus is needed on growth-promoting policies, so that investment is not held hostage to political infighting.

Barry Eichengreen is Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. – Project Syndicate

The post Rising protectionism is taking a toll on global trade appeared first on KT10.

Most people would say that malaria or even HIV/AIDS are the leading child killers. In fact, diarrhoea and pneumonia top the charts as the biggest threats to child survival – as they have for the more than 30 years that we have been tracking them. According to the recently published 2016 Pneumonia and Diarrhoea Progress Report, the two diseases caused 1.4 million child deaths last year, and one-quarter of all deaths of children under the age of five. They exact their highest toll in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Tackling the two biggest killers of children worldwide may seem daunting, but we have all the knowledge we need to mount an effective response. Indeed, we know which viruses, bacteria, and parasites we need to target; which interventions are likely to work; and which countries need them the most.

Just 15 countries account for 72 per cent of childhood deaths from pneumonia and diarrhoea. These are the countries on which the Pneumonia and Diarrhoea Progress Report focuses. Its analysis of national efforts shows that, while most countries have made improvements over the last year, improvement in some of the largest countries has been minimal, and a few countries have not made any progress at all. Most deaths happen in the first two years of a child’s life. To change this, governments need to step up their efforts to prevent pneumonia and diarrhea, including by ensuring that parents have access to the information they need to protect their children. Here, it is critical that ordinary citizens stand up and hold their governments accountable.

The good news is that there are three relatively simple interventions that could make a big difference.

The first is breastfeeding. An age-old, no-cost intervention, breastfeeding exclusively for the first six months of a baby’s life is one of the easiest ways to prevent both diarrhoea and pneumonia. Breast milk has all the nutrients babies need to grow, as well as antibodies that boost their immune systems, thereby protecting against illness and helping to accelerate recovery.

The Progress Report estimates that about half of all diarrhoea episodes, and about a third of respiratory infections, could be averted by breastfeeding. Yet rates of exclusive breastfeeding during a child’s first six months remain low. In ten of the 15 countries evaluated in the progress report, fewer than half of mothers exclusively breastfeed their children. To increase breastfeeding rates, governments need to ensure that mothers receive the guidance and help they need. That means training health workers; establishing community-level support networks, such as mother-to-mother groups; investing in behavioral-change campaigns; and creating a culture in which breastfeeding is welcome and encouraged.

The second critical intervention is improved water, sanitation, and hygiene in homes and communities. Globally, according to UNICEF, around 2.4 billion people still do not have access to modern sanitation, and 663 million do not have access to safe water sources. Many kids still lack clean drinking water, access to basic toilets, and good hygiene practices.

Poor water quality and lack of reliable sanitation systems to treat human waste play a big role in spreading diseases. UNICEF reports that something as simple as hand washing with soap can cut rates of diarrhoea and respiratory infections by more than 40 per cent and 25 per cent, respectively. By investing not only in systems to provide clean drinking water and sanitation, but also in educational programmes that encourage better hygiene practices and toilet use, governments can break a vicious cycle of diarrhoea and malnutrition that causes irreversible physical and cognitive damage. The children they help are more likely to be able to attend school, and grow into healthy, educated adults.

The third key intervention is vaccination. Vaccines represent the most cost-effective intervention for preventing childhood illness, and they already exist for most common bacterial causes of pneumonia (pneumococcus and Hib) and for the leading causes of diarrhoea (rotavirus). Yet half of the world’s children live in areas where the pneumococcal vaccine is not available through a national immunisation program, and only 15 per cent of the children in the world’s poorest countries have access to the rotavirus vaccine.

By making vaccines available through national immunisation programmes, governments can protect all children from the diseases that are most likely to harm or kill them. Efforts to ensure that families take advantage of vaccination services, including by educating parents about their value, will also be needed. Pneumonia and diarrhoea should not still be taking children’s lives. No single intervention will be enough. But the accelerated and coordinated implementation of the three interventions described here could go a long way toward preventing pneumonia and diarrhea, especially for the most vulnerable children, enabling them to lead healthy, productive lives.

Anita Zaidi is Director of the Enteric and Diarrheal Diseases program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

– Project Syndicate

The post Three ways to keep your child safe from disease appeared first on KT10.

I thought that Saturday, when currency exchange was restricted to senior citizens, would be lighter but instead found standing on the other side of the building on whose ground floor sits the bank. I went at 9am and by 1pm I was inside the door; by a bit after 3pm I received twelve Rs 2,000 notes that are useless because of the shortage of change. Every half hour, the queue witnessed fierce arguments with the executives manning the door. An hour after I got inside there was a scuffle outside, and the guards locked us in; a teller stood up and announced, “All customers to sit silently”.

This was still better than my wife’s experience at the Indian Bank in south Delhi. It’s wedding season and she needed to go to the locker to retrieve ornaments. The branch is in a slum across the road from Delhi’s swankiest malls, on the first floor of a modest commercial complex, and access is by a narrow stairwell that is blocked by a now-permanent queue of working-class men. Though my wife was not going for a cash transaction, they would not let her pass (the guard nervously told her to take permission from the crowd). She gave up and returned home.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that this demonetisation – in which Rs14trillion was removed from circulation, out of about Rs17trillion, or 84 per cent – was to clean the system (or “drain the swamp”) of black money, fake currency, and terrorism-financing. The income tax department’s own data analysis shows that only six per cent of black money is cash. Experts say the rest is in real estate, gold, stocks and foreign banks. Counterfeiting, according to a parliamentary presentation in 2012, was estimated around Rs 25billion. Terrorism-funding, according to intelligence sources, are Rs1.5-2billion (neighbouring countries spend more of their own currency on training camps, arms, food and lodging, etc). Also, captured or killed terrorists are always reported to be carrying Rs300,000-500,000 of fake currency. According to the Ministry of Home Affairs report, in 2015 108 terrorists were neutralised and two caught alive. So the reasons that Modi gave amount to just a drop in a vast ocean.

And even if the black stock is cleaned, the black flow has not been stopped. A friend bought a house and half had to be paid in cash. He asked how the cash would disposed of: the broker said that it would be shown as agricultural income, which is not taxed. Obviously, demonetisation should have taken place along with tax reform – not just in the Goods and Services Tax (GST), but in undocumented areas of the Indian economy. But no government will ever dare tax farmers. So all that has got hit is the recovery of the real estate market, depressed since 2010; experts hoped that it would recover a year after the implementation of GST (expected in April 2017). That expectation has been pushed back another year, close to the 2019 general election.

If banking has become torture for urbanites, imagine what it must be like in the countryside. According to a December 2015 Reserve Bank of India (RBI) report, there are an average of 12,863 customers per bank branch in rural and semi-urban India, while there are only 5,351 customers in urban branches. According to former finance minister P Chidambaram, there are a total 1,34,000 bank branches all over India. Modi’s middle-class supporters have been calling for a few days of individual pain for long-term collective gain.

It now looks like a few months of pain; and in the long-run, we are all dead. One can’t fault Modi for his ideas – after all, it’s his government, his prerogative. But this disatrous implementation is somebody’s fault. RBI Governor Urijit Patel has not given anyone much confidence, least of all Modi, with having incorrectly assessed the logistical difficulty of currency replacement. Finance minister Arun Jaitley did not give his boss the IT’s own data to make a proper decision, but he can’t be blamed too much because demonetisation has long been a bee in the right-wing bonnet. Perhaps the implementation mishap was because of the tight circle of secrecy, which probably included party chief Amit Shah but not Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian, as Chidambaram has alleged.

It is foolhardy to predict how demonetisation will play out. The best barometer will the Uttar Pradesh assembly election, which is scheduled to be held by April-May. Then we’ll know if the dubious gain was worth the protracted pain.

The author is a senior journalist and author based in Delhi

The post India’s cash recall: A note of caution appeared first on KT10.