The philanthropic arm of Infosys, known as the Infosys Foundation, felicitated the winners of the third instalment of the Aarohan Social Innovation Awards at a ceremony on Wednesday, August 23.The awards are meant to recognize outstanding accomplishments in education, healthcare, and women's empowerment. Out of a staggering 2,400 entries, eight recipients were selected, each receiving a prize of Rs 50 lakh.
The awardees were evaluated by a panel of experts including Arvind Gupta, a renowned toy inventor and science expert, along with Dr Pratima Murthy, Director and head of the department of psychiatry at NIMHANS, among other notable figures.
In the healthcare segment, Subrahmanyam Prasad Muddam and Akitha Kolloju from Hyderabad won the prize for their invention 'nLite 360' – an innovative, battery-powered smart phototherapy apparatus that offers tailored treatment for severe and dynamic jaundice conditions.
In the education segment, Seetharam Muthangi from Bengaluru was honoured for developing 'Smart Vision Glasses' – an assistive device accompanied with artificial intelligence. This gadget aids individuals with visual impairments in object and person identification, distance estimation, currency detection, and reading books and manuscripts in various Indian regional languages.
The award for women's empowerment went to the Pune-based NGO Shelter Associates, acclaimed for its 'One Home One Toilet' project. This data-driven initiative focuses on furnishing sanitary household toilets in homes of disadvantaged urban women. Aside from these three winners, five other projects garnered the jury's special award, each carrying a prize of Rs 10 lakh.
These recipients included Swaasa, an AI platform for screening and diagnosing respiratory ailments, SickleCert, a point-of-care test for sickle cell anaemia, Portia, a self-contained portable oxygen generator, Emvóli, a battery-powered refrigeration device designed for the last-mile conveyance of vaccines and the Modha Pedal Operating Machine, an innovation aimed at alleviating the challenges faced by handloom weavers.
Feting the winners, Sudha Murty, the brain behind the Infosys Foundation, said that while technological innovations tended to receive more attention, the Aarohan awards celebrated the pivotal role of social innovations in addressing the challenges of the present day. “While social innovations are not as recognised as technological, they are what the country needs today, which is what the Aarohan awards encourage," she said. She added that the agricultural sector was a sector that languished because of lack of technological innovation, which had the potential to make the lives of farmers that much easier.
Speaking on the importance of having vision in young innovators, she said, “When you innovate something that helps only one or two people, it is no innovation at all. Your initiatives should impact many people. For that you should have vision, understand where the challenges are and whether you will be able to make it or not.”
Sumit Virmani, a trustee of the Infosys Foundation, said, “We laud all the participants and winners who have worked so ardently to create a better future for those in most need of the support. We hope that several others are inspired, by the Aarohan Social Innovation Awards, to contribute to this project to make a difference. The high calibre of social innovations competing for the third edition of Aarohan Awards deeply impressed the jury members and led us to introduce the ‘Jury’s Special Awards’ to support these innovators and bring much-needed impact to more people and communities.”