Quality standards should be introduced to develop Ayurveda and yoga in Ukraine, according to Ambassador of the Republic of India to Ukraine Partha Satpathy. Satpathy said that the standardization is need so that Ayurveda is recognized in the same way in India, Ukraine and other countries.
“The government of India pays attention to the implementation of quality and standardization. Quality applies to both Ayurvedic products and services so that the effectiveness of Ayurveda is 100%. The combination of these [standardization] principles will allow the effective distribution of Ayurveda in the world,” he said at a press conference at Interfax-Ukraine on Wednesday.
The ambassador said that the government of India intends to spread Ayurveda throughout the world and make it generally accepted. “Ayurveda is a very old tradition in India. According to statistics, it is practiced by approximately 70% of families in India. Therefore, our government is focusing on spreading Ayurveda around the world to make it generally accepted,” Satpathy said.
Satpathy said that in India, the business sector that promotes Ayurveda (natural medicines, Ayurvedic services, including various types of tourism: medical, anti-stress, spa) reaches $4 billion. “Ayurveda is so important because, according to our estimates, the level of this sector, when it comes to medicine and business, is about $4 billion, and this figure can grow to $10 billion by 2022,” the ambassador said.
However, he said that the Indian authorities are paying much attention to the promotion of yoga, as “yoga is more popular, and Indian practice is based on a combination of yoga and Ayurveda, which will achieve harmony in life.”
In turn, Board Chairman of the Ukrainian Association of Ayurveda-Yoga Kundan Sandwar said that by the middle of 2020, a Yoga Institute and an Ayurveda Institute would be created in Ukraine.
“Ayurveda and yoga are widespread in different countries. In Dubai, they created a yoga program in schools. There is a pilot in the U.K. There are many Ayurvedic centers in Europe. In Ukraine, there are about 30 Ayurveda and 150 yoga centers. Two institutions will be created by the middle of next year. One has already been created. This is the Ukrainian Institute of Yoga. We are waiting for accreditation, and there will be an Ayurveda Institute,” he said.
The Bolt taxi ride service (earlier Taxify) is launching the electric scooter ride service in Ukraine and by spring 2020 the service will be available in the text mode in the UNIT.City innovation park, Bolt Country Manager Taras Potichny said during the presentation of the new service in Kyiv on Thursday.
“We are the first in Ukraine to launch a service that is popular in many cities around the world. I am glad that we are changing the market, changing the look of the city, making it even more modern. Electric scooters really solve many problems. It often happens that moving around the city center by car is quite difficult, but driving a few kilometers on an electric scooter is easy, fast and brings pleasure,” Potichny said.
The cost of using electric scooters in Kyiv will be published after the full official launch of the project.
“The price has not yet been formed. In Eastern Europe, it amounts to 60-70% of the average check for the cost of a taxi. In Kyiv, it is UAH 100-110. Accordingly, the average trip on a scooter will cost UAH 60-70. The price will be formed from the opposite: EUR 1 usually costs the scooter unlocking itself, and one minute – UAH 1-2. This is the framework in which we will determine the price,” the country manager said.
At the same time, he added that for the test period the price will be significantly reduced, then it will be regulated depending on the demand of the service.
The Bolt fleet has Segway NineBolt ES4 electric scooters with a maximum speed of 25 km per hour and a range of 45 km.
To start using the service, you need to find a scooter, unlock it using the QR code in the application, get to your destination and leave it in any convenient and safe place. The service can only be used by persons 18 years or above: when registering an account, the user will have to indicate the date of birth.
“The rent price for an electric scooter will include the unlock price and the price per minute of use. For cases where it is planned to travel a lot and payment per minute is unprofitable for the client, Bolt will set the price for renting a scooter for the whole day. No matter how long you drive around the city, your card will not be charged more than the set price,” the company said.
Places where you can rent a scooter will be located in the city center, usually near transport hubs and the most visited points. You can see where the nearest scooter locations are in the same application as for ordering a car.
It is planned that in the evenings, Bolt employees will collect scooters around the city and put them on charge so that the next morning they can be found in familiar locations.
“We are proud that the first electric scooter rental point in Ukraine appeared in UNIT.City. This is fully consistent with our idea to build an eco-friendly city in a city,” UNIT.City CEO Dominique Piotet said.
According to Potichny, after a successful launch in Kyiv, the company plans to launch the service in other cities of Ukraine.
“We would love to expand further. There are many more tourist sites with fairly closed centers: the same Odesa or Lviv, where you cannot get around the center by car. First we test this on the streets of Kyiv and will gradually expand and develop in others cities,” he said.
Earlier Bolt launched a courier delivery service by a driver in Ukraine.
As reported, Тaxify was launched in Kyiv in 2016 under the franchise agreement. In June 2018, the company relaunched the project in Kyiv with own local team, promising to enter other large cities of Ukraine.
Early March 2019, Тaxify changed its name to Bolt.
Germany’s Deutsche Investitions- und Entwicklungsgesellschaft mbH (DEG) has approved $20 million financing to Astarta agricultural holding.
“The project will help the company to secure long-term working capital financing and capital expenditure program,” the company said in a report on the Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE).
According to a posting on DEG’s website, the financing is long-term one, but no other details are presented.
The German corporation said that some funds will be sent to buy newest equipment and modernization of production technology to cut natural resource consumption.
DEG is a subsidiary of Germany’s KfW development bank.
Astarta is a vertically integrated agribusiness holding operating in eight regions of Ukraine. The holding includes eight sugar factories, agricultural enterprises with a land bank of 243,000 hectares and dairy farms, a biogas plant and a soybean processing complex in Poltava region.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky believes that Ukraine can build warships on its own, and not just order them abroad.
At a press briefing in Ochakiv on Wednesday night following the examination of three warships returned by Russia, the head of state told reporters that a contract between Ukraine and France on the production of a batch of patrol vessels and technical support services for them is important to Ukraine, however support for domestic shipbuilding should be a priority.
“I’ll be honest, this contract was prepared before my presidency. Today I support this contract. Anyway, our own production is more important to us, [we should] support Mykolaiv and the region so that professionals, who have left because nothing had been constructed here for many years, return home,” the president said.
Zelensky added that Ukrainian Navy Commander Ihor Voronchenko presented him a shipbuilding development strategy.
“We are planning to build corvettes. We have a plan, although you know that any plan should have a real deadline and be supported by the budget,” he said.
In turn, Voronchenko recalled that Ukraine is planning to build four corvettes by 2028.
As reported, a new version of the Corvette State Program approved by the government in November 2017 provides for the construction of four corvettes for the Ukrainian Navy by 2028. The construction of the lead ship will be finished in 2022.
Metinvest, the largest Ukrainian mining and metallurgical holding, is forced to reduce the implementation of its investment program in 2019 due to the severe global crisis over the past ten years. According to a company’s report, metallurgical industry is entering the toughest global crisis in ten years. Many metallurgical companies in the world are already operating with losses and are forced to cut production and personnel.
“Given a lack of financial resources and disappointing forecasts regarding further steel prices, Metinvest Group has developed an action plan that will help overcome the difficult economic situation with minimal losses,” the report says.
It says that Metinvest is forced to reduce the implementation of the investment program in 2019: the implementation of certain projects, except for critical ones provided for by the technological strategy, and projects with significant environmental effects will be suspended. In addition, an optimization program will be implemented to reduce fixed and administrative costs.
The group is forced to suspend staff recruitment for existing vacancies and limit the recruitment of people to the position of employees who have decided to quit, with the exception of critical professions. The matter does not concern mass cuts in production: optimization measures will concern, first of all, the administrative staff and the management company. At the beginning of 2020, administrative staff will be reduced by 30%. At the same time, employment programs for employees will be developed jointly with the city authorities.
The Polish fashion retailer LPP Group, managing the brands Reserved, Cropp, House, Mohito, Sinsay, in July-September 2019 increased sales in Ukraine by 39.2% compared to the same period in 2018, to PLN 127.6 million (about $33 million). According to the company’s financial report, LPP’s total revenue from sales in the third quarter grew by 14.9%, exceeding PLN 2.3 billion (about $605.6 million). At the same time, one of the highest sales growth dynamics was recorded in Ukraine.
In general, over the nine months, LPP increased sales in Ukraine by 33.1%, to PLN 321.8 million (about $83 million), while sales of the entire group grew by 12.6%, to PLN 6.389 billion ($1.65 billion).
In addition, it is reported that in September the retailer opened an online store of its own brands in Ukraine, which became the 13th e-commerce market for LPP Group.
“Adapting to the prevailing trend associated with the increasing popularity of online shopping, we are taking steps to further develop this sales channel. We implement this development through our own online stores. This gives us direct access to clients, control over goods and the absence of intermediaries. In the second half of 2019, the group launched an online store for all EU countries and for Ukraine,” the report said.
LPP S.A. was established in 1995. The first store (Reserved) was opened in 2000.
