Infosys Foundation felicitates eight social innovators at Aarohan Social Innovation Awards

A total of 2,400 submissions were received by the jury for the award.

The Infosys Foundation, the philanthropic and CSR arm of the IT major, announced awards for eight winners in the social innovation space on August 23. The Aarohan Social Innovation Awards had three winners across the healthcare, education, and women empowerment areas, with each winning Rs 50 lakh.

The awards were started in 2018 to recognise those who create solutions for social good that benefit the underprivileged in India. A total of 2,400 applications were received by the jury for the award.

In addition to the three winners, five others won the jury's special award, which comes with a prize money of Rs 10 lakh.

Of the three main winners, nLite 360 won the award in the healthcare category for a portable, standalone, and battery-powered smart phototherapy device that provides customised treatment for severe and dynamic jaundice conditions.

In the education category, the award went to Smart Vision Glasses, an AI assistive device that helps people with visual disabilities identify objects and people, gauge distance, read books in Indian languages, and more.

The healthcare category’s winner was Pune-based NGO Shelter Associates, which created One Home One Toilet, a data-driven model focused on facilitating household toilets for underprivileged urban women.

The five jury awardees were Swaasa, an AI platform for screening and diagnosing respiratory diseases; a point-of-care test for sickle cell anemia called SickleCert; a self-contained portable oxygen generator named Portia; a portable, battery-powered refrigeration device designed for the last-mile transport of vaccines called Emvóli; and the Modha Pedal Operating Machine, which aims to alleviate the pain faced by handloom weavers.

Speaking at the ceremony, Infosys Foundation’s founder Sudha Murty, in her advice to those looking to innovate in this space, said, “When you innovate something if it only helps one or two people, that is not innovation at all. Your innovation should impact many people and you can see the impact of that. For that, you should have vision, understand where the challenges are whether you will be able to make it or not….You should know where the bottlenecks are.”

In a statement, Infosys Foundation Chairman Salil Parekh 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.”