BENGALURU: Infosys Foundation, the philanthropic and corporate social responsibility arm of Infosys, on Wednesday announced the winners of the third edition of the Aarohan Social Innovation Awards. It recognised winners across three categories -- Healthcare, Education and Women Empowerment.
The winners were shortlisted from over 2,400 submissions and evaluated by a jury, including Arvind Gupta, toy inventor and science expert, and Dr Pratima Murthy, Director and Head of the Department of Psychiatry, NIMHANS, among others.
These awards, established in 2018, aim to recognise and reward individuals, teams, and NGOs for creating pathbreaking solutions for social good, benefiting the underprivileged in India. The winners across categories of healthcare, education and women empowerment were awarded Rs 50 lakh each. Subrahmanyam Prasad Muddam and Akitha Kolloju from Hyderabad, who developed ‘nLite 360’, an advanced, portable, standalone, and battery-powered smart phototherapy device that provides customised treatment for severe and dynamic jaundice conditions, were awarded under the healthcare category.
Seetharam Muthangi from Bengaluru who developed ‘Smart Vision Glasses’, an artificial intelligence-enriched assistive device that helps people with visual disabilities identify objects and people, gauge distance, detect currency, read books and manuscripts in Indian regional languages, among other things, was awarded under the education category.
Under women empowerment, Shelter Associates, an NGO from Pune that created ‘One Home One Toilet’, a data-driven model focused on facilitating sanitized household toilets for underprivileged urban women, was awarded. Salil Parekh, Chairman of Infosys Foundation, said, “Tough real-world problems can only be solved with purposeful innovation. The Aarohan Social Innovation Awards not only celebrate such innovations but empower social innovators by helping them scale up and impact more lives.”
In addition to the category winners, the jury recognised five social innovations and awarded their creators prize money of Rs 10 lakh each. The Jury’s Special Award-winning innovations include Swaasa, an artificial intelligence platform that can be used for screening and diagnosis of respiratory diseases, created by Narayana Rao Sripada, Manmohan Jain and Venkat Yechuri of Hyderabad.