Pi Jam Foundation and Strata Enviro Make Pune Proud by Winning at NASSCOM Social Innovation Forum
· Recognized as winners in Educationand Environment Category respectively for NASSCOM Social Innovation Forum – India’s Largest Social Innovation Honours
· Pi Jam Foundation WinsINR 10 Lakh in catalytic grants, national recognition and industry mentorship to help scale-up its impact
Pune, February 21, 2018:NASSCOM Foundation, in collaboration with industry leaderMphasis, today announced the winners of the tenth edition of the NASSCOM Social Innovation Forum – a platform that fosters innovative use of technology to create sustained social impact.
The largest Social Innovation Honours in India, NSIF received over 1900 applications this year out of which, the final winners were chosen after going through a rigorous two level Jury process in the categories of Education, Accessibility, Healthcare, Financial Inclusion, Environment and other socially relevant areas.
The announcement was made at the World Congress on Information Technology – The Olympics of the global ICT Industry. The winners were felicitated by Shri K.T. Ramarao, Cabinet Minister for IT E&C, MAUD, Industries & Commerce, Mines & Geology, Public Enterprises and NRI Affairs, Telangana.
Pune based organizations, Pi Jam Foundation was one of the winners in the education category while StrataEnviro Pvt Ltd. won in the Environment category. Emergence of social innovators like Pi Jam Foundation and StrataEnviro speaks volumes of Pune city’s efforts towards creating an ecosystem to nurture and support innovative social solutions.
Pi Jam Foundationwas chosen as a winner for developing open source training modules on top of a low cost pocket sized computer for students to solve real world problems. These open source technologies are used to foster skills like digital making, problem solving and design thinking. Through their model, students are exposed to real world problems, which they are required to buildsolutions for, using technology and their existing academic concepts. These real-worldproblems lie in the domains of immediate school problems, climate change, pollutioncontrol, food and agriculture and other issues in their own communities.
StrataEnviro Pvt. Ltd. was chosen a winner for its innovation which addresses the problem of increasing outdoor air pollution levels.The Internet of Things (IOT) based units are installed for free at public & private locations to reduce outdoor air pollution with a unique revenue model for sustainability benefiting people commuting on foot, 2/3 wheelers, buses in high polluted zones like traffic signals, high traffic congestion zones, schools, hospitals, tolls booths, railway stations, airports, fuel stations, and similar places. These units suck polluted air from the environment (outdoor), then locally filter the pollutants (particulate matter pm2.5, pm10, dust, petroleum fumes, smog, odour and similar air pollution elements). The innovation is successfully operational in both the private and public sector with clearances of city wide installation by 2 municipal corporations & private locations in 5 cities.
The jury that selected the winners comprised of many renowned industry stalwarts includingDebjani Ghosh, President Designate, NASSCOM; PadmajaRuparel, President, Indian Angel Network; Srikanth Karra, CHRO, Mphasis,P. Balaji, Director-‐Regulatory, External Affairs and CSR, Vodafone India, and Deepak Maheshwari, Director -‐ Government Affairs, India & ASEAN, Symantec.
Mphasis has been a constant supporter for enabling Technology for social Good. Commenting on the occaision,Srikanth Karra, CHRO, Mphasis, said,”Two areas that I am passionate about are accessibility and innovation. The sweet spot of social innovation is more encouraging and invigorating than ever before. T. The quality of innovation we saw from across the country is phenomenal and I am proud of Mphasis’ association with NASSCOM Foundation on this. I am delighted to see the NSIF award becoming an aspirational one for the technology innovators in social space”.
Reflecting on this amazing journey, Shrikant Sinha, CEO, NASSCOM Foundation, said, “For the last ten years, NSIF has been the corner stone of Tech4Good in India. It has seen ideas take shape into industries, people change to adapt to new innovative technologies, and technologies create impact to change economies. Growing from strength to strength, NSIF today is an ecosystem of 2000+ social innovations, awarded 80+ social innovation projects, helped mentor 20+ innovations through its support to scale program and already given overINR 1 Crore in catalytic grants. This is just a start and we hope that our journey inspires development of new frugal innovations to fulfil our ultimate goal of creating a truly Inclusive India using technology for good. We are glad to share this dream with a lot of our partners through the years and would like to thank our long standing partners Mphasis for all the support they have given us”.
Talking about this year’s entries and the winners he added, “It is great to see that social innovators are not shying away from the new technologies but instead are embracing them. Most of the entries we received this year were using new age technologies like Internet of Things, wearables, predictive analysis and self-learning algorithms. Each chosen winning innovation today has a promise to create a country wide sustainable impact and we hope that NSIF can help them make this happen.”
Through the collaborative force of social impact through ICT created in the last 10 years by NASSCOM Social Innovation Forum, NASSCOM Foundation hopes add momentum to the technology wave across the country.
