Fuit-a-thon Challenge

This is not just delicious, its healthy-licious! Washington Apples and USA Pears conducted the coveted Fruit-a-thon challenge for their second season!

Most of us know that junk food is unhealthy and yet our fast paced life is laded with kilos of junk throughout the day. We know that poor nutrition is related to heart problems, high blood pressure, and a host of other health ailments and yet, we crave for all of them.

Even when some of us are consuming a healthy diet, we most often forget an essential part of diet, i.e Fruits. They are not just refreshing, healthy and ensures of our well being; they provide high nutritional value, guard us against diseases and gives us more energy.

A fruit doesn’t need to be boring; fruits can be incorporated into your lifestyle in the most interesting ways! Like the ordinary Apples and Pears are a delight to make shakes, dips, salads and even desserts from!

Washington Apples & USA Pears introduced the concept of fruit eating in a fun manner and this time it witnessed enthusiastic participation from the people. The challenge entailed participants from 15 to 35 years of age and were asked to relish various lipsmacking fruit recipes prepared using USA Pears and Washington Apples.The contestants had a crazy competition where in they were divided into three teams with four participants each naming Fruit king, Fruit Tella & Fruit Maniac.

One member from each team had to participate in one round of the competition, the #USFreshFruitathon that had 4 challenges:

1.    Shake It Up– A large jug of heavenly apple milkshake! No surprises here! Be the first to finish it and get your team to win!

2.    Salad Salsa– A large bowl of apple and pear salad deliciously sinful you couldn’t tell its healthy!

3.    Dip-a-licious– Eat as many crackers with the creamy apple dip that will leave you wanting more and more

4.    Muffin Topper– Healthy apple cinnamon muffins that you can eat to your heart’s content without feeling guilty!

The pictures tell an awesome story of the challenge that I am craving for and hope you all are too! An urge to the organisers would be to conduct the challenge at the country level or may be scaling it to multiple cities for all the foodies to enjoy.

Vodafone Knows How to Keep the Fun On!

Since mobile has transformed from merely a communication tool to social tool, it has been successful in gauging the attention span of the youth over the globe. Youth which is socially active, growing and super demanding at times.

Vodafone India launched plan U that especially caters to the college goers and generation Y audience as it comprises of wide array of benefits enabling the mobile users to be connected to friends, fun and internet. In the language of Sandeep Kataria, Director Commercial, Vodafone India- Plan U is perfectly poised to be the Enabler, Connector and Entertainer.

To tell you in detail, Vodafone U brings complete fun in varied fun in comprising of the following benefits:

Data Allowance: Gives you an option to use data based on your consumption from the available packs of Large and small. Vodafone U even gives you a dedicated night allowance.

Buddy Lifelines: Vodafone U pack allows you to choose 3 special friends from your friend-list to call them at the rates of as low as 20p/min.

Data Loan: This is the most unique feature which I love. You can take a loan upto 60 MB of data free which will be deducted from the allowance of the following month. This is surely a way of keeping the FUN ON.

To explore the real fun, you can visit the Vodafone U website and to know about all the fantastic features of it, click here. To connect with Vodafone U on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

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The launch of Vodafone U happened in the Hard Rock Cafe which was hosted by famous Youtube stars like Kannan Gill, Raftaar and The Viral Fever making it totally awesome and exciting for all the attendees. It is one of the first kind when all these stalwarts have come together for a collaboration as cool as this.

 

 

 

Thrilling Thela Experience in Cafe Format- Rekadi Cafe

Bite, gulp, slurp & hoard. The cutting chai, your longest brain freeze, guiltiest dessert, ever spicy vada pav, and the messiest rolls on the rekadi.  Mind you, we are still just on the outskirts. If you are in the mood to tantalize your taste buds, fall in love with Mumbai all over again, find your excuse to scrape that diet, or  are juggling to find what more does this city has on its menu- the foodie next door, you are just about to discover the right place!

From pizzas to golas, Rekadi Cafe is keen to give you thela experience in a scintillating café format. This is the place for golas as they offer variety of them varying from 25 ranges of the colourful iced dessert (Now you understand the brain freeze!).

The aura of the restaurant is just awesome, they have set up a real street cart with colourful syrup bottles to give you the rustic yet fancy Rekadi vibe. You can also try their chilled pani puri, sandwiches and flavoured fries for a total street-style meal. Do visit on weekends  to check out the other innovative dishes on the menu.

Specialities: Malai Gola, Sandwiches, Panini Chaat & flavored fries.

Address: Rekadi Cafe, Shop No. 14, Opposite Tara Singh garden, Swapna Nagri, Mulund West, Mumbai

 

The Moo-ving Experience at Go Cheese Factory

Last week I got the opportunity of visiting Go Cheese Factory, a good 2 hour drive from Pune operated from Manchar amidst Maharashtra’s Western hills. This is a home grown dairy farm and Cheese factory owned by the one of the pioneers of dairy products in India, Parag Milk Foods. The brand portfolio entails various dairy products from brands like Gowardhan, Pride of Cows, Topp Up and Go.

Dairy Products

On arrival we were offered Chaas (Buttermilk), Lassi & Badam Milk as welcoming drink and were briefed by the management team of the stories of establishment and unique innovative inventions in the Indian dairy industry.

The itinerary included to visit the home grown dairy farm, cheese factory and understand behind the scenes of the manufacturing of the delicious milk products. We started with the Bhagyalaxmi Dairy farm visit owned by the company where around 3500 cows are taken care to produce variety of milk and cheese products.

Members of the farm take good care of the cows right from their birth to handing over to farmers (once their milk production reduces) including sanitation, nutrition and survival. Thing which intrigued me was the automation at the farm to reduce contamination and  avoid spread of communicable ailments. Even the rotary belt used to milch cows is fully automated and at a time can milch upto 35 cows. We also tasted the fresh milk that gets packaged in bottles of Pride of Cows to be delivered at various locations across and has been recognised as the best packaged milk.

Rotary belt for milking cows

 

Post the visit, we were offered lunch at the hall that had various products from the milk and cheese manufactured at the factory. There were varieties of Pizza, Pasta, salads and Indian dishes made with milk.

Pizza-Pasta served for Lunch

Now was the time for Cheese factory visit. Started with the dressing for the tour, we were given briefing of the various types of cheese produced and their uses followed by the showcase of various processes and procedures of the manufacturing and packaging. Most of the process is same except for the time required for ripening of the cheese for different kinds. While Mozarella takes 2-10 days to ripe with extreme cold temperature, Cheddar might take quarter to half an year.

Cheese Factory Visit

Cheese Factory Visit

 

The amazing experience came to an interesting end with some interesting interactive session with the factory team followed by Cheese tasting and high tea session. And we did get enough time to ‘Say Cheese’ throughout the tour.

Cheese Tasting

India’s Biggest Online Kids Store

In the last 3 years, the shopping has become very easy and convenient that in spite of heavy technology involved, anyone can use them. And with an innovative approach led application based platform like Flipkart and Myntra have come in handy. Gone are the days when we used to check with the shopkeepers on the availability of the items. Now one can just click and pick ones’ favorite anytime anywhere.

Last Saturday, I attended the #FlipkartKids event at The Blue Frog, Lower Parel. As amazing was the ambience in the restaurant, a place completely different from its surrounding such was the event itself.

The event started with a short brief from the Indiblogger team and Chhota Bheem graced the event by his presence happily willing to take selfies with the audience.

The event then proceeded with a session by Kalpana Behara who spoke about her blogging experience so far some success stories and the impediments she has faced. The session was followed by Launch of Flipkart li’l stars- India’s Biggest Online Kids store and a panel discussion with the experts from Flipkart, Mattel India and Chotta Bheem and Disney India sharing their views on changing trends of online buyers in India.

Flipkart today has established its credential in India today as leaders in ecommerce platform in various categories such as electronics, consumer durables and books. This launch will definitely let them win the heart of kids as well as parents making them leaders in this category as well.

The Ad-Mad competition witnessed several teams putting across creative and innovative ideas of online shopping for kids through Flipkart. Our team had enacted a skit named ‘Indiblogger ka Olta Chashma’ with various kids and their parents from the original TV serial shopping their desires.

And guess what, we WON!

The sign off happened with a musical performance from the in house band of the Indiblogger team, Blunder in the code.

By the way, did you see the trending toys on Flipkart website.

P.S. Some pictures have been stolen from Divya’s blog as she didn’t care to give it to us. 😛 😉

Social Media Week Mumbai 2015

Just imagine being in the same room with Digital marketing idols, creative stalwarts and content gurus. You might have guessed that I am talking about Social Media Week. It is one of the most looked forward event in digital marketing space and I got to attend the 2nd day of the event through Blogadda which is one of the esteemed partners for the event.

The sessions started in the morning with an impressive workshop on ‘Brands and their Social media strategy’ by OgilvyOne. The session was highly interactive based on various real time cases and provoked thoughts on various platforms for enhancing brand presence. It also helped us understand what kind of strategy has worked out in the past and what is likely to work in future.

The session with Gaurav Kapoor, Tisca Chopra and Nikhil Chinappa was a power packed session where topics like digital influence and brand endorsement were discussed. The star studded panel put lights on various pros and cons of endorsing brands on social media. Gaurav kapoor highlighted the use of various platform for different types of content. All the panelists were grounded and conducted an insightful conversation.

Followed by this, there was a session on Digital format and content by Amrita Chowdhary and Amit Gurbaxni which was facilitated by Avid Learning. The session dwelled deeper on the kinds of readers and how digital media these days caters to all of them through various content formats. The other sessions were ‘being relevant on social media’ facilitated by  and demonstrated how making content accessible is an opportunity for the social media to amplify the reach of the content.

The day became insightful with the session on analytics and social media insights. This session was conducted by Germin8 which was the official analytics partner for Social Media Week. The sessions demonstrated how internet is taking over from television the exact way television had taken over radio and there is immense amount of data in the vicinity, one needs to find a pattern in it to make sense and present a story out of it.

Apart from the lively discussions and insightful social media conversations, there were some kickass temptations to keep us engaged throughout the sessions. I say ‘Kickass’ as they had kept a section of getting an augmented picture clicked with Lionel Messi which various people enjoyed. Somehow I couldn’t get the picture clicked with virtual Messi as I satiated myself with the awesome feast by Social Media Week team at Di Bella located at the lower level of ISDI, One India Bulls Center, Lower Parel. Also I got myself a selfie with the Gaurav Kapoor.

I even took part in their road safety campaign named #MySafetyMyLife by taking a pledge of wearing helmet while riding. This campaign is supported by Maharashtra Police and various ‘work for cause’ organisations.

 

 

I forget not to mention, I made most of the opportunity of learning social media and even got featured as one of the top contributors for the event at the session.