Pune: Winners of PIC’s 12th National Competition for Social Innovators Announced

Pune, 18th November 2024: Demonstrating that great ideas do not take a day off, Pune International Centre’s much-awaited 12th National Conference on Social Innovation (NCSI) was held on Sunday, November 17, 2024, at YASHADA Auditorium, Baner Road, Pune.

Out of the nine innovators who showcased their innovations in three categories – Urban, Rural and Tribal – one winner was announced for each category.

The winners of NCSI 2024 in the 3 categories are:
Tribal Category Winner:
Manthan Sanstha, organisation working with underprivileged communities across 120 villages in five districts of Rajasthan; Founder-Director: Tejaram Mali.

Rural Category Winner:
Rozgar Dhaba; organisation providing one-stop solution for job skilling, safer employment and documentation support to rural communities through offline and online platform thereby helping reduce unsafe migration and unemployment from rural India. Founder and CEO: Ms. Neelam Pathak.

Urban Category Winner:
RATI Foundation for Social Change, organisation offering children, women and marginalised genders affected by online and on-ground sexual violence access to healing, justice and rehabilitation through professionals; Co-Founder-Director: Siddharth Pillai

Each winner walks away with a cash prize of Rs 50,000 and invaluable mentorship from PIC’s Social Innovation Lab mentors. The NCSI 2024 awards were presented by Dr. Raghunath Mashelkar and Dr. Vijay Kelkar in the presence of Jyotsna Sitling. This conference was a collaborative effort with the National Innovation Foundation and Tata Institute of Social Sciences.

In his opening remarks, Dr. Raghunath Mashelkar, President, PIC, highlighted the need for compassionate equity to support innovators. He also underscored the importance of innovation for public good and the benefit of the poor; the need to follow “next practice” instead of merely following best practices; and the power of ideas.

The chairs for the sessions were (Tribal session) Bina Joshi, CSR Head, Forbes Marshall, and Dinanath Kholkar; (Rural session) Soujanya Venguru, CSR Head, Cummins, and Shashank Kothari, Senior VP, Platform Engineering at Angel One; and (Urban session) Dr. Sujata Deshpande, CSR Head at Thermax Foundation, and Ram Iyer, Trustee and Administrator at Swadhaa School.

Panel discussions were a special segment introduced this year. The panel discussion on Success Stories of Leading Social Entrepreneurs featured representatives from successful startups Blackfrog, Padcare, RNisarg Foundation, and Trestle Labs, and was moderated by Hitendra Singh, Senior Director at Emcure Pharmaceuticals. The panel discussion on CSR Funding Opportunities had representatives from Persistent Systems, Bajaj Finserv, and Flipkart Foundation as panellists, and was moderated by Amit Bhargava, VP at BiofuelCircle. A fireside chat on Impact Investing in Social Enterprises featured Dr. V Premnath, Director, NCL Venture Centre, and Vishwas Mahajan, Founder at Whizible.

In the valedictory keynote address, Jyotsna Sitling, Member, Advisory Committee to SEBI on Social Stock Exchange, spoke on the topic ‘Democratising Giving: The Role of Social Stock Exchange’.

Drawing applications from over 200-plus social innovators nationwide, NCSI 2024 showcased the prowess of 18 finalists across Urban, Rural, and Tribal categories. Their ground-breaking ideas were rigorously evaluated by a distinguished panel of judges.

At the NCSI 2024, the 14th Anjani Mashelkar Prize was awarded to innovator Partha Pratim Das Mahapatra for the innovation EzeCheck, a digital non-invasive haemoglobin screening device to test for anaemia. The simple test involves inserting one’s finger into the prick-free, ultra-portable device to get the result in one minute at a cost of only Rs 10.
Presenting the award to Mr. Pratim, the Chief Guest, Chairman and MD of Kirloskar Brothers Sanjay Kirloskar, said that to remove urban poverty, we have to get rid of rural poverty.

Sushil Borde, President, Anjani Mashelkar Foundation, gave an overview of innovations awarded by the Foundation.

All the sessions were followed by lively Q&A sessions.