Walmart India opens first store in Visakhapatnam

Business & Economy, Records, All, World Opinion

The ‘Best Price’ store in the city has integrated with the e-commerce and will facilitate the needs of all kinds of stores such as general stores, hotels, restaurants, houses, and the like.

Visakhapatnam :

Walmart India has opened its first B2B Cash and Carry store in the city, with the inauguration of ‘Best Price’ store, fourth in Andhra Pradesh and 23rd in the country on Wednesday.

“We are planning to expand Walmart with seven more stores in Andhra Pradesh which would be opened in Tirupati, Kurnool, Kadapa, Nellore, Kainada, Vizianagaram, and the second store in Visakhapatnam,” Krish Iyer, Walmart India CEO, said.

The ‘Best Price’ store in the city has integrated with the e-commerce and will facilitate the needs of all kinds of stores such as general stores, hotels, restaurants, houses, and the like. The Walmart will ensure convenient payment options, door-step delivery services which leads to create over 2,000 jobs locally (directly or indirectly), said the CEO.

Iyer further said that the company will invest to develop supply chain and to ensure growth of small and medium manufacturers in the State. Local clusters would be formed to outsource coconuts, melons, red chilli, vegetables, and other agriculture produce directly from the farmers to avoid middlemen. While the farmers get the double price of the produce, but, the price for customers would be best, he said.

Walmart earmarked $4 million in order to improve market access for small scale farmers in the State. The vision is to develop a chain with fruits and vegetable farmers and providing them access for training and more productive crop varieties, said the CEO.

He said the Best Price store will have over 5,000 items on display which include a wide range of fresh, frozen and chilled food items, fruits and vegetables, dry groceries, personal and home care items, hotel and restaurant supplies, apparel, office supplies, electronic goods and other general merchandise items.

Krish Iyer said that they have signed an MoU with Girijan Co-operative Corporation (GCC) to source Araku coffee and other products. He said four of the seven proposed stores would start functioning from next year. Whereas for other stores land still have to be identified which will take three to four years. He revealed that their focus is now on tier II and tier III cities. Punjab has the highest number of Walmart stores now and by next year AP will dislodge Punjab by having more stores, he said.

He said “we got good support from the State government and hence we are expanding our activities in the State.”

source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Business / by ANI / November 01st, 2018

ZBNF revolution sweeps village in Andhra Pradesh

Agriculture, Green Initiatives / Environment, Nature
ZBNF growers preparing cow-based fertilizer at Padarthi village in Prakasam district. | Photo Credit: KommuriSrinivas
ZBNF growers preparing cow-based fertilizer at Padarthi village in Prakasam district. | Photo Credit: KommuriSrinivas

Farmers on cloud nine over dramatic turnaround in fortunes

D. Rama Rao, like other farmers, had been using chemical fertilizers and pesticides recommended by shopkeepers at Kothapatnam. Despite heavy investments, the yield had not improved and his losses kept mounting.

However, after attending a workshop on Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF) at Kakinada a couple of years ago, the farmer from Padarthi village in the coastal Kothapatnam mandal switched to the environmentally-friendly practice.

Seeing for themselves the result, a majority of the farmers in the village also returned to the traditional way of cow-centric agriculture made popular by Subash Palekar.

“About 70% of the villagers have now turned ZBNF farmers. We will make our village a model one by persuading the rest of the farmers to take to chemical-free agriculture,” he says in a conversation with The Hindu.

“Now, we prepare cow dung and urine-based concoction with ample use of neem and other natural products for various purposes starting with seed treatment to plant protection,” says another progressive farmer Koteswara Rao, who has taken up groundnut cultivation in sandy loam.

Undoing the damage

“We spray diluted cow urine to get blemishless colocasia crop,” says yet another another armer, Srinivasa Rao. It took two years to restore the soil health damaged by use of chemical fertilizers, adds the proud farmer showing the good number of earthworms in his farm, thanks to adoption of mulching technique.

Large tracts of land once used to be fallow in the village in the absence of assured irrigation.

Now, a variety of crops, including organic vegetables, are grown throughout the year by installing micro irrigation system, they say, adding “we are able to get a better price for the produce from the ZBNF store in Ongole and other places.”

“We will take the natural farming movement to other villages in the mandal,” they say, adding that Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu, who wants to bring six million farmers under ZBNF fold, is their inspiration.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> States> Andhra Pradesh / by S. Murali / Ongole – October 31st, 2018

Parkinson’s: SVIMS helps poor patients with DBS

Records, All, Science & Technology
SVIMS Director and Vice-Chancellor T.S. Ravikumar interacting with a Parkinson’s patient in Tirupati on Friday.
SVIMS Director and Vice-Chancellor T.S. Ravikumar interacting with a Parkinson’s patient in Tirupati on Friday.

Surgery being done at reasonable price, says V-C

Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS), a path-breaking procedure for Parkinson’s disease, has proved to be successful at Sri Venkateswara Institute of Medical Sciences (SVIMS) hospital.

Parkinson’s disease normally affects one in 1,000 persons and hampers mobility if it remains unaddressed for five to six years. DBS comes into the picture here, as this procedure can be employed to treat the movement-related disorders. At present, lakhs of such patients are waiting to be treated across India.

The super-speciality hospital has performed 25 such surgeries in the recent past and all the patients are on the path to recovery. There are only a few institutes across India that are capable of performing this surgery, which also comes at a prohibitive cost of nearly ₹20 lakh. “At the TTD-run institute, we do it at a very reasonable price,” says SVIMS Director and Vice-Chancellor T.S. Ravikumar, who produced the patients at a media conference here on Friday. The surgery is currently performed on poor patients, with financial support from the TTD’s Pranadanam and the State government’s NTR Vaidya Seva schemes.

“All neurological cases need not require surgery and some can be treated with drugs, if the patient gets the right guidance and medication from the specialist,” B. Vengamma, SVIMS former Director and a professor of neurology said. Dean B.C.M. Prasad and neurosurgeons Ramesh Chandra and Naveen said the hospital, equipped with the required infrastructure, was always ready to treat more patients if the State government or the TTD came forward to meet the expenditure.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> States> Andhra Pradesh / by Special Correspondent / Tirupati – October 27th, 2018