by Suman Gupta
#IgnitingInnovations with 7 winners IDENTIFIED across technology, healthcare social impact spaces
Mumbai, March 2nd, 2023: Known for unearthing first-to-the-world innovations through the flagship ‘Innovation for India Awards’ – Marico Innovation Foundation (MIF) announced 7 winners in its 9th edition. Innovations were recognized across two broad categories – Business & Social. The Business category entailed India-based “for-profit” organizations, including start-ups and corporate innovators, and the social category included India-based “not-for-profit” individuals or organizations.
Business Category Awards
The innovations recognised at the Awards in the business category are solving for critical societal and health challenges while introducing world changing future technologies that can have a lasting impact beyond today to reshape our view of the future too.
The 4 winners from the Business category
Social Category Awards
The remarkable social category winners are focussed on empowering the communities around them in a meaningful manner, such that, an equitable future led through innovative thinking is no longer a pipe dream but can be turned into reality
The three winners in the Social Categor
Global Game Changer | coWIN
The Awards recognised CoWin (Covid Vaccine Intelligence Network) as the Global Game Changer this year. CoWin is the Indian government web portal for COVID-19 vaccination registration, supply chain management that is owned and operated by India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
The platform not only rolled out the COVID-19 Vaccination with excellence, but also provided the world’s first solution in the arena of vaccination against diseases with tremendous potential to scale, a solution coveted by many countries.
Witnessing the inspiring innovations, Mr. Harsh Mariwala, Founder of Marico Innovation Foundation and Chairman of Marico Limited, said, ‘’ It is a moment of pride to witness such exemplary solutions from the next-gen Indian innovators who are tirelessly working toward the growth and development of our nation. The world is changing faster than ever, and businesses need to be constantly innovating to stay ahead of the curve. MIF proudly honours such disruptive innovations and believes that with the right support and nurturing, every business has the potential to create scalable impact for a future-ready India.’’
The business category saw applications from 20+ sectors, including Healthcare/Med-Tech, Agritech, Waste Management, Robotics, Manufacturing, and others. On the other hand, applications in the social category presented solutions for 15+ social challenges across education & training, women’s development, health and well-being, sustainability, and others. The applications also saw women innovators apply in significant numbers this year, with considerable organizations featuring women -only and at least one woman founder.
Mr. Amit Chandra, Honorary Chairperson – Governing Council – Marico Innovation Foundation and Chairperson, Bain Capital India Office, added, “One path-breaking innovation has a domino effect in changing the entire ecosystem and our Global Game Changer CoWin truly exemplifies this. India is at the precipice of providing world first solutions and some of the innovations identified this year are a true testimony to this readiness.’’
The 9th edition winners were shortlisted and selected from applications across the country post an extensive outreach phase. Praxis Global Alliance played the role of the advisor for 2023 and shortlisted, evaluated and conducted a thorough due diligence process for all the applications received. The shortlisted applications were then further evaluated through two rounds of deliberations by two sets of eclectic juries comprising of industry leaders from the corporate, investment, and social worlds. The final winners were selected based on four pillars- uniqueness, impact, scalability, and sustainability.
About Marico Innovation Foundation: Marico Innovation Foundation was founded in 2003 by Harsh Mariwala at a time when innovation was not a focus of the government or corporates. The Foundation aims to nurture innovation across business and social sectors. ‘Innovation for India’ Awards – Incepted in the year 2006, it’s a biennial platform that has become the benchmark for recognition in the country with the most prolific leaders and thinkers coming together to handpick and recognize undiscovered innovations in our country. This is the first of its kind platform that not only showcases the innovations but also provides them access to relevant ecosystem stakeholders (such as investors, industry and business leaders) to help accelerate their growth journey.
The seven innovations recognised at the Innovation for India Awards 2023
| Organisation | Founder Team | Innovation |
| Category: Business [For-Profit] | ||
| Dhruva Space | Sanjay Nekkanti, Krishna Teja Penamakuru, Chaitanya Dora Surapureddy, Abhay Egoor | Dhruva Space is India’s 1st private technology start-up aimed at developing indigenous capacities in the domain of satellite technology.
The organisation helps underdeveloped countries by providing guidance with respect to aerospace technology. Their technology is adapted by the Indian transportation ecosystem, their satellites are used in various government Projects. The work by Dhruva Space mainly comprises 3 stages of aerospace- ground, launch and space segment. |
| Ishitva Robotic Systems | Jitesh Dadlani, Sandip Singh | Ishitva builds AI-powered sorting machinery to sort large volumes of waste faster. Its high-quality automated sorting mechanism can recognize brands and has full color recognition including the color ‘black’. The product is easy to install in existing facilities due to modular component and reduces manual sorting. It reduces health risks that waste sorters incur while manually sorting through hazardous materials. It is a MADE IN INDIA innovation and is comparable to international counterparts. It is extremely cost effective – brought cost of sorting from INR 11-13 per kg to INR 2-4 per kg. |
| Dozee | Mudit. D, Gaurav Parchani | Dozee is a healthcare company focusing on contactless service. The company had a huge impact during covid 19 as it helped family members to keep track of their loved one in quarantine without getting infected. It tracks the health status of a designated person through body vibrations captured in sensors. Dozee’s early warning system helps to compute risk and raises a timely alert by sending a message to the caretaker that the patient is experiencing health issues. It has a positive impact on the hospital’s coordination system as many workers can have access to 1 patient’s health simultaneously. Workers can remotely monitor a patient’s health thus saving their time. 100 Dozee beds can save approx. 144 lives every year. |
| Qure AI | Prashant Warier | Qure.AI is an AI driven startup which helps to detect various abnormalities in lung and brain via X-ray and CT scan. It can quantify the disease within a few minutes, which would have taken weeks to get detected and diagnosed thus initiating the curing process faster. Qure.AI has helped radiologists to save time on diagnosis and their product helps in pointing tumours in CT scan and x rays and mentions its severity. It has impacted many lives by detecting cancer at stage 1. |
| Category: Social [Not-For-Profit] | ||
| India Development Review |
Rachita Vohra, Smarinita Shetty, Devanshi Vaid | IDR is India’s 1st independent platform for development of community. It provides access to valuable development lessons, insight, & decisions through their articles. IDR is a community, making people literate in terms of social knowledge. The aim of the organisation is to create a sector that is better informed, which enhances critical thinking and individuals to function better. They publish thought provoking articles that are rooted in facts and the articles have impacted youth to think and act for any problem wisely. |
| Rythu Sadhikara Samstha (RySS) | Vijay Kumar, G. Muralidhar | RySS is a farmer’s empowerment organization that promotes natural farming which helps to solve multiple problems like soil erosion, nutrition depletion from soil, groundwater contamination. RySS Believes that farming should be done in harmony with nature. They provide training to local farmers and guide them how to overcome any agricultural problem. The teams have impacted the lives of many farmers by motivating them to become entrepreneurs. |
| Khushi Baby | Dr. Ruchit Nagar, Mohammed Shahnawaz | Khushi Baby works in rural India to uplift the lives of families belonging to the underserved population. Their digital integrated community health platform has helped many pregnant women and their infants to get access to healthcare. The platform has helped public healthcare workers to detect and monitor any high-risk woman or her child. The aim of the organisation is to make primary health care accessible to all thus reducing the risk of any life. |
