Flight chartered by ‘Expertise’ repatriates stranded Saudi Kannadigas to Mangaluru along with employees

Bengaluru, Mar 25 : Karnataka recorded its highest single-day tally to date, as 10 people tested positive, taking the total number of cases to 51 in the state.

“Till date 51 COVID-19 positive cases have been confirmed in the state which includes one death and three discharged," the health department said in a statement on Wednesday.

The rise in cases adding to the growing national tally of people who have tested positive for COVID-19.

The daughter of a former union minister from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from Karnataka has also tested positive.

Bengaluru accounts for 32 of the total 51 cases recorded in the state so far,including three who have fully recovered and released.

Dakshina Kannada has five confirmed cases, Chikkaballapura and Kalaburagi has three cases each, Mysuru has and Uttara Kannada has two cases each and four other districts have one case each.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced a 21-day lockdown of the country to keep people indoors and contain the spread of the virus in the community.

The government has also been trying to scale up testing.

Medical education minister K.Sudhakar on Wednesday told Mint that Karnataka will scale up testing by 10-fold with the help of government and private labs approved by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).

A total of 2,438 people have been tested in Karnataka and 2242 have tested negative, according to state health department. 214 people are lodged in medical hospitals.

Bangalore , Mar 24: Bizom, India's leading retail intelligence platform, announced free subscription of its retailer app and tele-ordering solutions for consumer businesses in India and other emerging economies. Both solutions enable retailers to send their orders directly to the brand.
In COVID-19 times of social distancing and prophylactic measures, brands are conscious about the safety of their salespersons. Also, retailers don't want travelling salespeople to enter their premises. Consequently, many retail stores are facing stockout situations of fast-moving product categories. Bizom's self-ordering solutions help brands to avoid stockouts of their products.
Bizom trends, which analyses consumption and demand for consumer brands, showed how a near-complete shutdown during the Janta Curfew followed panic buying in early March. The asymmetrical demand and a lack of salespeople for order-taking are driving the industry towards social-distancing-based store-stocking mechanisms.
Bizom provides social-distancing-based store-stocking solutions for consumer businesses. They include the Bizom Retailer App and the Bizom Tele-ordering.
The Bizom Retailer App enables self-ordering for a brand's key retail outlets and can be implemented in under two weeks. The mobile app, a B2B shopping app, is a simple installation for retailers. It lists and groups the brand's products as per its product categories. The app's interface is no different from that of leading e-commerce apps. All the user has to do is select the preferred SKUs and add them to their shopping carts.
The app also allows brands to customize the app to meet the requirements of their continually changing product categories. For instance, if an SKU runs out of stock, the brand can disable the given SKU from the app.
With the Bizom Retailer App, brands can take orders directly from retailers instead of the traditional order-taking approach, which requires high-touch from a salesperson. Some of the key features of the app are, the ability to provide product information directly through retailers including SKUs, competitor comparison and pricing.
It also enables self-ordering from the retailer to maintain the flow of products as per demand, enables scheme rollout information through a notification on the app rather than through salespeople, tracks delivery of goods to the retailer and enables incentive payments to retailers directly rather than through distributor claims.
With Bizom Tele-ordering, as the sales teams go remote, the tele-ordering solution will become useful for brands who want to get salespeople to take orders from retailers, remotely. It ensures continued service to outlets despite not being physically present in the market.
Here, salespeople can discuss product requirements with retailers and enter orders based on specific outlet types (grocery, chemist etc.), outlet class (Class A, Class B etc.) or based on their beat or as per a distributor.
The key features of the Bizom Tele-ordering solution are, its ability to help salespeople collect orders from retailers remotely and enter it for fulfilment into Bizom using a tool, the flexibility offered to salespeople for remote servicing of retailers as per outlet type, beat, distributor area etc., secondary schemes get applied automatically, variable discounts will get applied as applicable at an SKU level.
"At Bizom, we are conscious of our responsibility to help brands run faster during these COVID-19 times. Our solutions of Bizom Retailer App and Bizom Tele-ordering have been built to ensure that brands can leverage this situation of low direct touch with retailers to enable a better way of working, remotely. I am trying to help brands go live in a few days so that they, in turn, can serve consumers better during these testing times," said Lalit Bhise, CEO, Bizom.

Bengaluru, Mar 6: In the face of unprecedented economic difficulties, Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa has chosen to hike the prices of fuel and liquor to fund development in his 2020-21 Budget, which tries to offer something for everybody with the available resources.

Yediyurappa announced a 3% hike in the rate of tax on petrol and diesel. This will result in the prices of petrol going up by Rs 1.60 per litre and diesel by Rs 1.59 per litre. This is expected to fetch the government Rs 1,500 crore.

By hiking additional excise duty on Indian Made Liquor (IML) by 6%, the government hopes to mop up Rs 1,200 crore.

In essence, Yediyurappa, the finance minister, pointed fingers at the Centre for the state’s fiscal woes. He said Karnataka’s share in Central taxes has come down this fiscal by Rs 8,887 crore. Plus, Rs 3,000 crore GST compensation will also be reduced as collections from the GST cess are not on expected lines, he said in his Budget speech. 

“It has become difficult to reach the 2019-20 Budget targets due to these reasons. To manage this situation within the bounds of the Karnataka Fiscal Responsibility Act, it has become inevitable this year to cut down the expenditure of many departments,” he said.

Under the 15th Finance Commission, Karnataka will see a reduction of Rs 11,215 crore in the state’s share of central taxes in 2020-21, Yediyurappa said. He also pointed out that expenditure on salaries, pensions and loan interest payments had risen by Rs 10,000 crore. “Serious difficulties are being faced in resource mobilisation efforts of the state. The state never faced economic difficulties of this magnitude in the previous years,” he said.

But in an attempt to please all, Yediyurappa made announcements across sectors and communities. Instead of the usual department-wise announcements, the CM chose to divide the Budget into six sectors: agriculture & allied activities; welfare & inclusive growth; stimulating economic growth; Bengaluru development; culture, heritage & natural resources and administrative reforms & public service delivery.

Farmers will get additional incentives under PM-KISAN costing Rs 2,600 crore and a waiver of interest on loans they have borrowed from cooperative banks worth Rs 466 crore.

The CM has earmarked Rs 500 crore to start work on the Kalasa-Banduri canals under the Mahadayi project. Also, Yediyurappa has given Rs 1,500 crore to commission the Yettinahole drinking water project.

This project will cater to the districts of Hassan, Chikkamagaluru, Tumakuru, Bengaluru Rural, Ramanagara, Chikkaballapur and Kolar.

For Bengaluru, the CM has made an allocation of Rs 8,772 crore. This includes Rs 500 crore for the suburban rail project, an electric bike taxi project and bus priority lanes.

Significantly, Yediyurappa has not made any allocation to mutts. However, the government will spend Rs 100 crore on the Anubhava Mantapa at Basavakalyan, Rs 66 crore for a 100 ft Kempegowda statue in Bengaluru and Rs 20 crore on a 325 ft statue of Basavanna at the Murugha Mutt in Chitradurga.

The CM has given Rs 305 crore for the development of various communities — Christians (Rs 200 crore), Upparas (Rs 10 crore), Vishwakarma (Rs 25 crore), Ambigara Chaudaiah (Rs 50 crore), Arya Vysya (Rs 10 crore) and Kumbara (Rs 10 crore).

Also, nearly 22.5 lakh government employees and their dependents will get cashless treatment facility for surgical treatment procedures at an estimated annual cost of Rs 50 crore under the Jyothi Sanjini scheme, the CM said.