2012 Innovation for India Awards

Innovations were marked by simplified processes, low costs, sustainability and transformational impact

MUMBAI, India—March 30, 2012— Using satellite technology to transmit “first day-first show” movies across India, bringing together an extremely fragmented and unorganized industry of private bus operators to pit stop approach for quick turnaround time of airline to cracking the sporadic mid day meal issue with technology were some of winning entries at the 4th edition of the Innovation for India Awards 2012, organized by Marico Innovation Foundation (MIF). The Awards was graced by Dr Ram Charan as Chief Guest, Mr Nandan Nilekani as keynote speaker. Dr R A Mashelkar, Chairman of Marico Innovation Foundation also spoke on the occasion.

The awards were given across Business, Social and Public Service categories, and the most deserving innovations were marked by simplified processes, low costs, sustainability and transformational impact. Indigo Airlines, RedBus Inc. and UFO Moviez were awarded in the business category while Akshay Patra-pioneer in mid-day meal program in India, Fractal Foundation, St. Jude and Teach for India were recognized in the Social Category.

In the Public Service Category, GVK EMRI was the sole entry that the jury felt was unique, impactful and sustainable. The Innovation for India Awards has a special category- “The Global Game Changer” and this was awarded to the UIDAI project of Government of India for its titanic program to provide biometric cards to millions of Indians.

“India is clearly burgeoning with talent so corporate India and government must create an ecosystem to allow innovations to thrive. The Innovation for India Awards by Marico Innovation Foundation acknowledges & encourages ideas that impact the community at large. The awardees stood out among all the 432 entries on basis of sustainability, impact and its inclusive approach” said Mr. Harsh Mariwala, Founder of Marico Innovation Foundation and Chairman and Managing Director, Marico Ltd.

Indigo Airline’s innovations, as part of its low-cost airline model, such as use of ramps for clearance of passengers and its pit-stop approach have enabled it to reduce turnaround time, run more flights and deliver superior customer service efficiently. All these customer-friendly innovations have helped it become the second largest player in the domestic aviation market.

Redbus stood out as the pioneer in the online bus ticketing domain, integrating a super-fragmented bus-operator sector and making the booking of bus-tickets convenient and hassle-free for millions of customers.

UFO Moviez promises to be a game-changer with its use of satellite technology to transmit movies to millions in theatre complexes – even in Tier-II and Tier-III towns. This not only cuts down print costs, but also fights piracy and increases office collections.

Commenting on the winners, Arpan Sheth, Partner at Bain & Company, which is the Knowledge Partner of the MIF Awards, said: “It is hugely inspiring to see the level of innovation that people have woven into their business models to make them sustainable, of lower cost and, at the same time, increasing the impact for so many people.”

In the Social category, Akshay Patra which has a mechanized kitchen with different models for urban and rural schools to enable it to provide hot nourishing food to children was a winner. Other winners in the Social category have also shown strong innovations and powerful impact. For instance, Fractal Foundation has transformed lives of rural artisans and weavers through its focus on micro-spinning which has resulted in a five-fold increase in employment and doubling of artisan salaries. St. Jude, with its free and holistic child care centre, focuses on pre and post cancer treatment for children. This has allowed St. Jude to engage families to create a conducive climate for the affected child to get educated, through proper tracking mechanisms and creative ideas. Teach for India has innovatively sought to bridge the quality gap in education by involving professionals to teach kids in government schools in towns and cities.

GVK EMRI with its 108 service, a state of the art emergency response system, integrated with fire and police emergency networks, ensures optimization of resources. It has focused on increasing penetration across regions and saving lives of innumerable people critically injured in road accidents and mishaps. ———————————————————————————————————————-

Visit http://www.maricoinnovationfoundation.org for further information.

About Bain & Company, Inc.

Bain & Company is a global management consulting firm headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, with offices in 30 countries. Bain has a results oriented approach to deliver value to clients. Bain has 47 offices in 30 countries, and its deep expertise and client roster cross every industry and economic sector. Bain has great experience across a diverse set of industries ranging from IT to Consumer Products to Telecom to Financial Services and Healthcare. Bain has been awarded the title “Best firm to work for” by Consulting magazine for nine straight years. In India, Bain has offices in Mumbai and New Delhi. http://www.bain.in

About Marico Innovation Foundation

A significant CSR initiative by Marico – the “Marico Innovation Foundation” was founded in 2003 with an objective to fuel Innovation in India. Under the leadership of stalwarts like Dr. R A Mashelkar, the Foundation focuses on providing the country with a belief that Innovation is a crucial way to leapfrog into the center stage of global business leadership. Over the last five years the Foundation has been playing a catalytic role by disseminating knowledge through cutting edge research on breakthrough Innovations. Its reach is first envisioned to cover the business community, both professional and entrepreneurial. Going forward this reach will expand to future business leaders and the general public.

The Marico Innovation Foundation is steered by an eminent governing council that oversees both its vision and direction. While the Council is chaired by Dr R A Mashelkar National Research Professor, NCL, other visionaries like Anu Aga, Director, Thermax, Sam Balsara, Chairman & Managing Director, Madison World, Kishore Biyani, Founder and Group CEO, Future Group, Ashwin Dani, Vice Chairman & Managing Director, Asian Paints, Dr Naushad Forbes, Director, Forbes Marshall Pvt. Ltd, R Gopalakrishnan, Executive Director, Tata Sons, Ranjan Kapur, Country Manager – India, WPP, Prof Prasad Kaipa, Executive Director, ISB, Harsh Mariwala, Chairman & Managing Director, Marico, K V Mariwala, Chairman, HPFL, Prof Sujata Ramdorai, Dorab Sopariwala, Consultant, Ravi Venkatesan, Independent Director, Infosys, form a part of the Council. Mrs Namita Vikas, Principal Consultant to the Foundation leads and manages its agenda.

For additional information, please contact:

Deeba Mistry / Amruta Navghare

Madison PR for Marico Innovation Foundation

(91)98201-38383 / 98199-45670

deeba@fort.madisonindia.com / amruta@fort.madisonindia.com

Here are the first set of photos from the 2012 Innovation for India Awards – Stay tuned to our blog and Facebook page for more pictures!

Mr Sam Balsara awardign IndiGo President, Mr. Aditya Ghosh

Dr Mashelkar & Mr. Harsh Mariwala awarding Mr. Nandan Nilekani the Global Game Changer Award

Dr. Mashelkar awarding Mr Subodh Satyawadi the Public Sector Innovations Award

Mr Harsh Mariwala addressing the audience

The 2012 Innovation for India Award Winners!

Stay tuned to our Facebook page for more photos.

The 2012 Innovation for India Awards Ceremony

After months of outreach, gleaning through 432 applications and an inspiring Awards Ceremony, we are happy to announce the 2012 Innovation for India Award Winners! On Friday March 30th, India’s Innovation Community came together to honor India’s top innovations – 8 organizations were chosen based on their uniqueness, sustainability and impact.

Dr Mashelkar kicked off the evening with his perspective on Indian Innovation and the road ahead. He stressed on the importance of cultivating innovation and building a supportive ecosystem for innovation to flourish. Our chief guest, business guru Dr. Ram Charan inspired us with his speech and shared his insights on innovation

“Innovation must have a systematic, social process” – Dr Ram Charan

The Business, Social and Public sector winners were announced by Knowledge Partner Bain and Company. Below is a brief look at 2012’s biggest Indian Innovations:

Business Innovations:

redBus – The first centralized platform in India for bus ticketing, redBus.in allows users to book tickets via the web, phone, home delivery, physical outlets and SMS. The organization developed a bus ERP system called BOSS that caters to over 700 bus operators. redBus is also the on the FastCompany 50 most innovative organizations in the world list, recognized along with big names like Apple, Google and more!

UFO Moviez – UFO is the first and only digital movie transmission platform in India, they transmit content via satellite and have a presence in over 2700 theaters in India. The technology innovation is only a part of their success; the distribution and business model innovation are just as note worthy. Satellite transmission reduces costs significantly and allows even the remotest screens to have easy access to the latest movies.

IndiGo – IndiGo airlines is currently the only profit making airline in India – their disruptive business model boasts a fleet of 100 aircrafts, a big sign of scale and impact, especially for a start-up airline. IndiGo has incorporated multiple small innovations in every aspect from product development to execution, which is evident from their success in a struggling industry.

Social Innovations:

Akshaya Patra – Akshaya Patra runs the world’s largest school meal program – they serve 1.3 million children 6 days a week! They have 19 locations across 8 states and have pioneered the art of large scale, mechanized, assembly line cooking. Akshaya Patra has specially designed kitchens that are built for producing large amounts of food simultaneously, and the entire process right from production to distribution is mechanized and efficiently implemented. Akshaya Patra is also facilitating a better education environment for underserved school children. Access to a warm nutritious meal is just one more reason to stay in school; enrollment has increased by 15% and attendance by 15-30%!

Fractal Foundation – The Fractal Foundation are responsible for a micro-spinning technology innovation that reduces the scale of cotton spinning mills – positively impacting farmers, artisans, and the cotton industry as a whole. What is interesting about this innovation is that the technology drastically reduces the scale of spinning operations to increase impact, by integrating and involving farmers and artisans and removing the dependency on large-scale cotton mills. Farmers are incentivized to grow organic cotton and can now be integral market participants as opposed to the mere subsidiaries they were earlier. The Fractal Foundation has pilot units in 10 locations across 5 states and is growing.

St. Jude – St Jude is the first center that provides free holistic care to cancer stricken children. What is innovative about St Jude is that they recognize that beating cancer is not just about getting treatment but the additional services and needs like accommodation, proper diet, transport and counseling are just as important. St Jude’s provides these amenities and services to patients for free and in a child-friendly environment.

Teach For India – Teach for India is the Indian version of the Teach for America program – recent college graduates are placed in municipal schools and low-income private schools to teach for 2 years. The Teach for India program currently impacts over 125 schools, 12,000 students and has over 400 fellows till date. They have plans to expand to 2 new cities (Hyderabad and Chennai) in 2012-2013. The program helps fill the glaring gaps in the Indian education system while also creating leaders by employing the large number of college graduates that pass out each year.

Public Sector Innovation:

EMRI – The GVK Emergency Management and Research Institute wins the Public Sector Innovation Award for its excellent coordinated emergency response system, process and trained personnel. EMRI is the largest emergency response service in the country, executing 10,200 trips each day. They have a fleet of 2600 ambulances and their responses time is under 15 minutes in urban areas! EMRI has also managed to keep costs low, each trip costs 600 INR, a huge difference from the average 600$ in the US. The EMRI model is funded 95% by the government and started in Andhra Pradesh.

The Global Game changer award was accepted by Mr Nandan Nilekani for pioneering the implementation of UIDAI. In his acceptance speech Mr. Nilekani provided a view into how the system can benefit our country and the scope of impact that a biometric database can provide. Lack of a unique identity keeps millions of people in our country excluded from access to public services and the mainstream economy. He focused on the 5 elements of the project that he believes are the corner stones of success: Speed, Scale, Cost, Quality and building an innovation platform. With 200 million people already enrolled for a unique ID, the team at UIDAI will reach a million enrollments a day soon.

“The problem statement was simple. 1.2 billion people need a unique ID”, Mr. Nandan Nilekani

So there you have it, the 8 winners and one Global Game changer! For an idea of how the Ceremony went, Live Tweets from the ceremony are available here. We will be uploading video clips of each winner and putting up photos. Stay tuned to our Facebook page and Twitter handle for more!

The Winners of the 2012 Innovation for India Awards

]]> http://maricoinnovationfoundation.wordpress.com/2012/04/02/announcing-the-2012-innovation-for-india-award-winners/feed/ 0 maricoinnovationfoundation Awards Ceremony 1 MIF 2012 Welcome Branding 8x4 (3) redbus logo ufo moviez indigo AP Teach for India emri 2012 Innovation for India Winners http://maricoinnovationfoundation.wordpress.com/2012/03/08/innovation-must-improve-the-quality-of-human-existence-ravi-venkatesan-in-conversation/ http://maricoinnovationfoundation.wordpress.com/2012/03/08/innovation-must-improve-the-quality-of-human-existence-ravi-venkatesan-in-conversation/#comments Thu, 08 Mar 2012 08:58:48 +0000 Marico Innovation Foundation http://maricoinnovationfoundation.wordpress.com/?p=972 ]]> In a freewheeling conversation on Innovation and India, Ravi Venkatesan talks about the inadequate Government action, evolving business responsibility and social enterprise.  Speaking to Parvathi Menon, Ravi shares his perspective on the opportunities and barriers that make up the Innovation fabric in our country. As Chairman of Cummins India Limited and thereafter as Chairman of Microsoft India, Ravi has had a unique vantage point view of Business in India over the last two decades of rapid evolution.

In Conversation….

I had the opportunity to catch up with Ravi at his wonderful home in the heart of Bangalore, as he took a break from writing his book titled ‘Winning in India’ to be published in 2012 by Harvard Business School Publishing.

“You have caught me on a bad day…” says Ravi as we get started. He is writing a chapter on why projects like UID must not be stalled … and goes on to share both his excitement and frustration on the subject of Innovation in India. Included below are excerpts of the conversation around some specific questions.

PM: What would you consider as innovation? Are PhDs and Patents the relevant indicators to measure?

Ravi: “For me innovation is things that improve the quality of human existence. When I was at Microsoft, we spent a lot of time trying to do things to stimulate the rate at which the country was producing PhDs in computer science, so in fact we set up Microsoft Research in Bangalore. But I think that’s a very narrow view of innovation and you would probably agree. Innovation is so much broader than just Patents and so forth.

 A lot of what has fueled innovation in the west or the developed world has been innovating for the world’s affluent, and I think what we’re talking about now is that there’s an opportunity to innovate for people who have less needs and provide them access to what are considered basics that is education, water, healthcare, all those things. And make money while doing that.

 So, am I concerned about the number of PhDs, patents that India is producing?  Yes.  But, I think that’s a different issue than real innovation that changes life and changes society. Both are important, but I think at the stage at which we are, still a developing country I think innovation that impacts lives, changes society, provides access to things that people didn’t have access to, that’s more important than raw scientific prowess measured as PhDs, patents, peer reviewed articles etcetera.  I think that will also happen but it can come over time.  This is the more important and urgent. And I think India has an opportunity to be sort of uniquely good at this type of innovation.”

PM: Are we succeeding in this type of Innovation? 

Ravi: “I just finished the research for my chapter on Innovation, and I came away from my conversations reasonably encouraged by the amount of innovation that is bubbling out there. The problem though is that not enough of it scales.  Much of it stops at the point where it barely has demonstrated some sort of proof of concept and companies give up too quickly or, you know, people get satisfied with a certain scale of success.

 There’s no shortage of ideas or people with ideas.  But for various reasons it’s not really impacting things at scale in the way we would like to see.”

PM: With the volume of challenges to be solved, isn’t that an ecosystem challenge? What is the role of the Government in Innovation and scale, for instance?

Ravi: “Everybody says government should do more to promote innovation.  I don’t think so. I think the government should just do its job. What is its job?  Its job is to create conditions that are conducive to growth. It’s like gardening.  If you create fertile soil, then other people can throw whatever seeds they want and it will catch root and flourish.  If you create the kind of disastrous environment that you have today where there’s no confidence, interest rates are wacko, inflation is high, etcetera, even established businesses struggle let alone start-ups and innovations. 

 There is a certain enabling infrastructure that is needed for innovations to scale, what is that?  For instance distribution reach. You can have 22 smokeless chulhaa ideas, 15 different solar lanterns etcetera.  Every one of which is viable, but there is no distribution reach, so, many of these ideas and models won’t scale because they lack access to distribution.

So, I think job number one of a Government is to create conditions that are conducive for the growth of businesses, operation of business.  It’s just so tough that it sucks all the life force out of these poor innovators.

 Number two the Government needs to promote competition. One of the biggest drivers of innovation is competition. And there are large parts of our economy that are still today quite protected from competition and therefore we are not seeing enough innovation.  For instance this whole subject of retailing, agricultural supply chains etcetera.  Critical issue, lots of means and scope for innovation, but if you don’t throw the doors open in a responsible way, with regulation, you are never going to get there, right?

 Number three, the role is in creating critical enabling infrastructure, whether its roads or electricity that is necessary for people and businesses to work. So, the Government should just do its job. Should it provide early stage funding? It’s nice if it does, but that’s not critical.  If the economy is growing, there’s going to be plenty of early, medium and late stage capital. So, I think let’s just keep them focused on what Government should do and I think other parts of society whether it’s business, non-governmental organizations, civil society they can all do their respective tasks.”

PM: What should corporate businesses do?  Do they have a role in building more conducive environments and opportunities?

Ravi: “Businesses, I guess, should do two things; Take a longer-term view, longer-term horizon of their own business because I think the investments in R&D in most cases are extremely little.

And the second thing businesses, should do is think about corporate social purpose as opposed to corporate social responsibility and think about extensions to their business that create social value as well as economic value.

We have got plenty of examples of this. One of the biggest cases in my book is of Hindustan Unilever and their PureIt water filter. It’s actually a stunning example of doing it right.  Still long way to go, but they stayed with it and are now in the 11th year and for $22 or 1,000 rupees you get your entry-level water filter.

And it’s fantastic, but here’s a company that’s creating social value and eventually will create economic value.  And I think businesses should be encouraged to think that way i.e. enlightened self-interest, right?  The company called JCB that makes diggers; they are training two types of people at scale. One group of people is welders because they need welders (at JCB), but they train lots and lots of them, most don’t join them, some do.  But they’re creating a pool of skilled welders and they train operators of construction equipment with a for-profit business model that covers their costs.  And they’re creating thousands of skilled people. I worked with Raymond, the apparel company.  And I’m advising them on how to create a scalable way of skilling tailors because their long-term success depends on finding enough tailors and today the younger generation simply doesn’t want to become and so that’s a big issue.

So, every business should be encouraged to think about ways of creating societal value in a way that they leveraging their own strength, leveraging core learning around their own strength and do it in a way that is profitable and sustainable for them not just contribute 2 percent of profits into CSR to be compliant with a new company rule or something. Genuinely do that.  That’s what Businesses should do.”

PM: Is there a constraint in terms of capital that can be deployed to build such ideas?

Ravi: “So, I look at Unilever and PureIt.  It has been at it for 10 years.  They’ve spent hundred’s of crores probably more than a thousand crores and it’s still a long way and they know it. Now, how many people can sustain with this type of scale, right?  And that’s because Unilever has done all the heavy lifting in this.

For Social Entrepreneurs like Harish Hande the scale is still small because a lot of the pieces like the infrastructure are not there. For any entrepreneur to really scale without any infrastructure is very tough – you first have to put infrastructure in.

So, the more the government does its bit, for instance, if you remove this gap of FDI and retail and retail blossoms and distribution systems fall in place, then you can go into a small town or a big village and be able to buy your (solar) lantern, and he (the entrepreneur) doesn’t have to go figure out how to get products into every nook and cranny.

 There’s plenty of money – there’s foreign money, angel investors who are quite well off, but everybody is investing only in growth stage, even if you take Narayana Murthy and Catamaran. They’re looking for growth stage.  They’re not doing early stage.

And I think that’s because people don’t believe a lot of the early stage stuff will succeed. Either the entrepreneurs have no track record of any sort or else these other barriers to becoming successful are so large that they’re skeptical.

So, what we have to do is reduce the barriers to innovation and commercialization.  The money will come. Money is always very rational.  It will flow where the returns’ are.  If we reduce the barriers to returns, the money will come….”

………………………………………

The conversation continued to cover a wide range of examples and ideas from UID, Apple, Akshay Patra and Ravi’s own exploration of a Start-up and his learning from that. But all that’s for another time.

In summary a few points that stood out. The fact that India has an opportunity to build its own unique ‘purposeful innovation’ approach given the opportunities at hand. But there is a critical need for Governments to start doing their job in building the necessary infrastructure to facilitate innovation and business. And an opportunity for Businesses to think of integrating Corporate Social purpose into their core business, not just look at it as social responsibility.

Innovation continues to be a rapidly evolving thought process for India… but something that Ravi said stayed with me… “We have a tendency to celebrate prematurely.  That’s really an issue…” indeed and while there are fantastic examples of how innovation is enabling change in our country, we may need to stay the course and find the rigor, structure and scale to make it really meaningful.

Is rigor and scale relevant to enough innovators and entrepreneurs for us to change the mindset and system that keeps us locked in?

Ravi Venkatesan is on the 2012 Innovation for India Awards Jury. The Awards Ceremony is scheduled for March 30 in Mumbai; author and Business Guru, Dr Ram Charan and UIDAI Chairman, Nandan Nilekani will both be speaking at the event. If you would like to attend, please register for your exclusive invite.

Parvathi Menon is the Founder CEO of Innovation Alchemy Consulting
And can be reached on Twitter @parvathimenon

It’s official!

The 2012 Innovation for India Awards Ceremony will be held on 30th March 2012 from 6.30 to 8.30 pm, in Mumbai at the Jamshed Bhabha Theater at the NCPA.

In addition to meeting winners, finalists,  Innovation experts and practitioners from across the country – the Awards are an opportunity to interact with some great thought leaders on this subject. We are excited to announce the participation of Dr. Ram Charan, highly acclaimed speaker and author as the Chief Guest and Mr Nandan Nilekani, Chairman UIDAI as the Keynote Speaker for this year’s Innovation for India Awards. Register to attend.

Forbes has listed Dr. Charan as one of the 50 most Influential Management Gurus in 2009. The Economic Times in the same year named him the Global India. Dr. Charan is a business adviser to some of the world’s most successful companies including GE, Thomson Corporation, KLM, Bank of America and Honeywell. With an engineering degree from the Banaras University, Dr. Charan went on to attend Harvard Business School and is a former member of the Harvard Business School Faculty. He is the author of several insightful books and articles on business and leadership, including The Leadership Pipeline, The Talent Masters and Execution. For a full list of his books and articles, check out Dr. Ram Charan’s official Website.

With innovation being a key ingredient of global Management and Corporate agendas, Dr Charan shares his ‘action orientation’ in a FastCompany interview:

“First, as Thomas Edison said, an idea is called invention. Converting an idea into revenues and profits or something a customer uses is innovation. Innovation is selecting an idea and converting it to the production of a product, service, or new business model that creates growth and profit.”

Forbes calls him “a guru, a business sage” and with over 35 years of experience in business and strategy, it is no wonder that many CEO’s have applauded his work and sought his insight.

Mr. Harsh Mariwala, Chairman, Marico has been an admirer of his work, especially highlighting that  Dr. Charan  “has a gift for identifying key issues very easily and his language is very powerful”.

 Nandan Nilekani is recognized as one of India’s most successful software entrepreneurs and as the co-founder of Infosys where he also served as CEO for over 5 years. He was conferred the Padma Bhushan in 2006 and in 2009, TIME magazine listed him as one of the ‘World’s Most Influential People’. He is today the iconic leader behind the design and implementation of Aadhaar, the Unique Identification project (UIDAI) for the Government of India. Aadhaar was initially conceived by the Planning Commission as an initiative that would provide identification for each resident across the country and would be used primarily as the basis for efficient delivery of welfare services.

Last month, the Aadhaar number count was inching close to 120 million, about a fifth of the way to its target by 2014. In just over a year-and-a-half since the journey began, Aadhaar has equaled the size of the world’s largest biometric database maintained by the United States.

Nandan Nilekani’s highly acclaimed book ‘Imagining India’ cemented his place as a prominent thought leader and innovator. Business Week describes it as “a rich, insightful look at today’s India through the eyes of a business leader”.

We are honoured to have Mr Nilekani as our keynote speaker at this year’s Awards ceremony and are eager to hear him speak about his journey and UIDAI’s mammoth task of creating the world’s largest biometric database’s of individuals.

The 2012 Awards saw an unprecedented 432 applications and entries for Awards across Business, Social and Public Sector Innovations. Following a rigorous evaluation and inputs from an independent Jury, the Marico Innovation Foundation is very excited to be announcing the final winners on 30th March 2012.

The Award ceremony is scheduled for the evening of March 30th 2012 from 6.30 to 8.30 pm. Participation is by invitation only. However this year we are happy to announce a limited set of open registrations. If you are interested in attending the ceremony and hearing Mr Nilekani and Dr Ram Charan speak, follow the link and register for an exclusive invite. We are reserving seats for Innovation enthusiasts, students and members of the Indian Innovation community who wish to join this evening.

Pictures and details from the 2010 Awards are accessible here.

India - massive challenges equal massive opportunities

The Marico Innovation Foundation plays the role of a catalyst for innovation in India and works toward building a rich, inclusive innovation ecosystem. We asked our Jury for their perspective on the role of the Government, the Private Sector and the Social sector in building this ecosystem?

Ms Aga articulated the complexity of the issue by highlighting the strengths of each sector and described the potential challenges of tapping into these strengths. “Government has the resources and an existing delivery network. Private sector is equipped with technology and managerial expertise and the social sector has in-depth understanding of the challenges at ground level. (However) Gaps in transparent practices and trust levels between the three entities could be potential obstacles that prevent them from joining hands and working out a win-win for everyone concerned.”

Prof Jhunjhunwala renowned Professor from IIT Madras focused on the start-up ecosystem in his response. “(We) Need more government funding at start-up level. Need policy and incentives to try out indigenous products when they are available, rather than insist on established imported products”. Prof Jhunjhunwala is also a serial entrepreneur who has founded seven companies centered on new technology and innovations in existing technology.

Creating a significant social impact in India often requires innovation and with this idea in mind we asked the Jury to describe a few of the major social impact areas that demand innovation solutions. Education, green energy and inclusive growth are some of the big issues that came up.

Prof. Ashok Jhunjhunwala

“India’s biggest problem is uneven economic growth today.” remarked Prof. Jhunjhunwala. “Innovation has to focus on this. Indian society has a large number of challenges – that means more potential for innovation”. Through IIT Madras he is working toward building formal and informal environments for industry persons, academia and young people to come together, innovate and ideate.

 “Green energy is an important issue for the planet while education and inclusive growth is critical for India.” said Mr. Nadir Godrej, Chairman, Godrej Agrovet and the Managing Director of Godrej Industries. He is an Indian innovation enthusiast, and Godrej has a strong focus on green practices which are critical for its continuous growth and development as a leading FMCG.

Mr. Nadir Godrej

Mr Godrej was clear that social organizations need to innovate to use fewer resources and meet their specific goals while businesses need to innovate and target the bottom of the pyramid; strive to be commercially successful as well as meet societal needs.

Ms. Aga highlighted literacy and skill development as the two main areas that she believes demand social innovation in India.

Ms. Anu Aga

Following several years of Business Leadership, Ms. Aga is now deeply involved in social impact projects. She is currently a trustee at the Akanksha Foundation as well as a Board member of the Women’s India Trust and Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative. Ms. Aga shares that “Development for the millions of our young people to help them to be gainfully  employed and productive for the overall benefit of society” will need to be a key focus.  This will require two key elements. The creation of adequate employment opportunities in various sectors of a growing economy to  absorb the skilled workforce. And a decentralised machinery to combat corruption at grass root levels and to ensure that development funds reach the desired beneficiaries.

Innovation continues to be underlined as a key ingredient for India’s growth and development. It is this insight that fuels the Marico Innovation Foundation and sets the bar high for each Innovation for India Award. Stay tuned to this blog for more insights and interviews from our Jury. We hope this gives you a better understanding of the foundation’s mission and makes the award process and selection more transparent.

Find out more about how the Marico Innovation Foundation is directly supporting Social Innovation.

The awards are just 2 months away and we will be reserving a portion of the seats for the public to attend and be a part of the ceremony. If you are interested in attending, stay tuned to our Facebook page and Twitter handle for updates.

Wishing all our reader’s a great start to a wonderful new year. As you probably know the Innovation for India Awards closed with over 450 applications in September 2011.  December 2011 saw the first round of Jury meetings. Our Knowledge Partner, Bain and Co have shortlisted the entries through a rigorous assessment and the Jury has had a chance to do one round of review and selection. The Jury is made up of 8 eminent innovators and thought leaders from India. Read more details here about the Jury.

The innovations are being assessed on 3 main criteria – Uniqueness, Impact and Sustainability. The first round of assessment has lead to 47 entries being shortlisted and considered for the 2012 Innovation for India Awards. These shortlisted entries were presented to the Jury with details on how each of them score on the key criteria.

To shortlist over 450 applications into a rich pool of 47 potential winners is no mean feat and though we can’t share any specific names or identifiers with you right now, we can give you an idea of the nature of innovations that seem to be making the cut.

Within the Business applications, large scale innovations that address a massive market gap with services, technology and products seem to have impressed the Jury. Being cost effective, especially efficient, easily adoptable, exhibiting a potential to expand and scale are some clear characteristics of the shortlisted entries.

Within the Social sector, exhibiting large scale impact in numbers or developing a model that has the potential to be highly scalable seems to be a criterion for selection. Developing inclusive models that are sensitive to cultural differences and break through language barriers while still creating a significant impact are being considered.

Within the Public sector entries, all the shortlisted entries seemed to exhibit clear, transparent and tangible impact that was effective and timely. Building effective public-private sector partnerships was a clear indicator of success and most of the models show a huge potential for scale.

One overlapping characteristic of most of the shortlisted applications is the use of technology. Many of the applications indicate that organizations have either developed their own technology or modified an existing technology to meet a specific need. Technology innovation has the potential to make any product or service cheaper, more adoptable and efficient, scalable and easily replicable. And in a rapidly growing country like India – application of technology to scale the impact of an innovation seems to be an underlying trend in many of the applications that are making the cut.

Dr. Mashelkar, Chairman of the Marico Innovation Foundation defines Innovation as the Successful Exploitation of a New Idea.  And in many ways the shortlisted candidates represent ideas that have not only demonstrated uniqueness – but are also clearly reflecting the ability to grow and create large scale impact.

We know you are keen to learn the names of the shortlisted applications and winners but we still have one more round of Jury meetings to go before selecting the winners! The winners will be announced at the Innovation for India Award ceremony in March 2012.

The Awards ceremony is a much awaited biennial event in Mumbai and entry is by invitation only. The event brings together Industry Leaders, Innovation Champions and all the Finalists. This time the Awards ceremony is also going to have a few ‘open seats’ reserved for enthusiastic members of the Innovation Ecosystem in India. Stay tuned to the blog, Facebook page and Twitter handle  for more information on how you can get an exclusive invite to the award ceremony. Hope to see you there!

Yuva Parivartan provides employability training to young people who have either dropped out of formal education (or) are at risk of having no real livelihood options. It is estimated that by 2016 close to 500 million people in India would have dropped out of school, having gone through less than 5 years of schooling ( read more) creating a huge drag for the economy and a major challenge for industry in the country. This high rate of school drop outs and a large gap in terms of real employability options is a critical social challenge that needs urgent focus.

The YP Innovation challenge:

Although the team has successfully managed to create a low cost training model and setup the required resources to do so, the model is constrained by the number of youth who came to its physical centers.  Increasingly, the core operations team at YP was finding that a majority of their target group were not interested in building capacity for themselves – or in seeking any real employability options. With limited real livelihood sources at hand, lack of exposure to the wider world, limited access to go beyond their rural catchments – the youth we met were mostly convinced that no real option exists.  And if it does exist its too expensive and unaffordable. Interestingly though, most of them had high expectations of how much they wanted to earn, which, it figures, is in itself a barrier for them to take up entry level jobs (offered by YP courses). In the search for instant gratification the teenagers in their minds continued to discount existing opportunities.

For the YP team it was not feasible to set up infrastructure in remote areas where the population is scattered, but the need for such an intervention was most felt in these areas. Similarly it did not make sense for the youth to travel about 40 kilometers a day for their training to the centers. In a sense it was a catch 22 situation that limited the team in reaching out to the rural, tribal youth and impacting their lives.

Innovation, prototype design and the thinking behind it:

To address the challenges it became clear that the model had to evolve into one that could provide:

•    A low cost, scalable solution that solves the last mile gap
•    Has the potential to reach the most rural and remote villages
•    In an engagement of a few days, be able to start a transformation at a mindset level.
•    Demonstrate value by exposing them to sample livelihood opportunities.

Once it became clear for the YP team that cracking a model with the above design parameters would result in the removal of maximum number of barriers of scale, the Mobile Camps Model was designed – and a lot of ideation, brainstorming and prototyping went into the design stage.

A mobile camp offers basic training free of cost over a period of 7 to 10 days depending on the courses and its complexity. The basic infrastructure and equipment required for the teaching gets transported to the identified village and is housed at a public venue like the school or panchayat training room. Thus addressing the remoteness challenge by taking training centers to where the students were instead of the other way around. Also through on-job training opportunities within a catchment radius, the students get a taste of real earning possibilities. These opportunities are complemented by life skills training, aspiration of achievement and exposure to industry needs in an experiential manner.

Early Signs of Impact & Potential Evolution of the Model:

The camp model has now evolved to offer on job trainings for a month or two after completion of the course – thus exposing the candidate to real life learning and livelihood scenarios, thus also increasing the probability of the candidate getting his/ her first real livelihood opportunity soon. It also forces the YP team to create more advance courses (leading to better livelihood options) at their centers, since basic training is done through the low cost camps model. The camps become a pipeline for the centers and partnerships that help YP expand its reach deep into the remote rural parts of India where this need is the most. Operated at a very low cost, using shared resources, a well designed curriculum and integrating it with locally relevant skills makes this model widen the base of impact for YP tremendously.

The following graph depicts a quantitative leap created by this innovative approach to widen the base of students coming into the programme:

Yuva Parivartan plans to scale throughout Maharashtra – demonstrating the direct impact of this model. Apart from this they are in the process of standardizing their camp modules into replicable formats, thus enabling other organizations to pick up the model and run with it. Kishor Kher, Founder of KSWA, the parent organization for the YP programme is emphatic about the need to facilitate several other NGOs and organizations to adopt learning and insights from the YP model and apply it in their regions. He believes that this form of fission or natural adoption is the key to ensuring that all youth in India have a second chance.

YP is also working hard to crack a market-based placement model (which is being prototyped) that will create enough business sense to make a compelling value proposition, for other organizations to be interested in. Work is also ongoing with corporate programmes for specific skills to be developed for the industry.

Watch a film on Yuva Parivartan’s work.

Read more about the acceleration programme supported by Marico Innovation Foundation, designed and implemented by Innovation Alchemy.

For more details follow us on twitter (@innovationindia and @innovalchemy) or write to us at info@innovationalchemy.com; akshayd@maricoindia.net

Blog Post Author: Aditya Tejas, Research & Project Management, Innovation Alchemy Consulting

The need for Innovation in solving Social Challenges

New age Social Enterprises and more traditional non-profit civil society organizations form the formidable ‘third sector’ that complements the public and private sector in the country. Over the last couple of decades, social organizations have created impact in areas that the Government and the private sector have had a challenge working within. Health, education, employability, access to drinking water, better nutrition… all these are subjects where social organizations have applied government funds, market models and philanthropic money to demonstrate impact. Social Enterprises have an edge over the Government in terms of understanding the core issue within communities, being agile enough to learn quickly by failing fast and cracking innovative models that could go the last mile in efficient and low cost ways.

However, more often than not the initial success at prototype stages does not always lead to large-scale adoption and impact. Organizations tend to compromise innovation and do a trade-off between the larger challenge and the potential feasible impact possible through current resources. Limited resources, high costs of capacity building, poor infrastructure, limited working capital for operations are all reasons that good ideas seem to stop growing after a point.

At the same time issues of health, education, employability, women, farming are all becoming more critical to solve. This makes it imperative that social organizations adopt innovation principles to overcome the odds. Finding ways to take a leap into large scale impact.

Guiding Social Innovation – a catalytic programme

As one of its initiatives to catalyze the Innovation ecosystem in India, Marico Innovation Foundation has designed a 10 month program called Guiding Social Innovations. Facilitated by knowledge partner Innovation Alchemy this program is designed for Social Enterprises to apply Innovation to scale their impact, beyond organizational constraints. This is achieved through a hand-on methodology that helps a team engage with an innovation process over a 8-10 month period.

This programme was launched in 2012 and implemented in two broad phases:

1. A series of open innovation workshops, designed for social organizations to explore and reflect on the need for innovation, learn tools and frameworks to apply in their own context
2. Building on the workshop, selecting two social organizations/ projects for an in-depth acceleration facilitation programme that will handhold the team for an 8 month period with the objective of demonstrating new ideas, insights and prototypes for scale of impact

The open innovation workshops were conducted in August and October of 2010. The acceleration/ incubation programme was implemented between January and October 2011.

The core tenets of this in-depth programme design are:

1. Building the core team’s capacity to use Innovation tools, frameworks and methodologies in solving issues and blocks of social impact. This programme consciously works with a core team inside the organization NOT just the primary leader
2. Identify the core blocks to scale and find ways to create breakthroughs in those, enabling faster deeper impact
3. Demonstrate the potential of the ideas – in a manner that the board, management and investors see the potential of supporting it further with time and funds

Both the teams Yuva Parivartan and Waste Wise Trust have been through 8 months of in-depth support and some early impact is starting become visible.

The incubation period defined the value of scale in our operation.  From our current operation of 5 tons per day, to 100 tons per day or 1000 t/p/d, we buoyed over the notion of scaling and how it happens, current impact vs potential impact and uniqueness of crafting a change.   The creative exercise which is the hallmark of every session with Innovation Alchemy helped us in transforming existing facility of waste management to learning center that attracts number of clients and visitors; Establish a network across the city to mobilize, train and take on logistical support from every actor involved; and establish a for profit company in its legal terms and make it distinct with social and  business impact indicators. Anslem Rosario, Ashoka Fellow and Founder Waste Wise Trust and Mythri Seva Samith (Parent organization)

The Innovation Incubation Process by Marico Innovation Foundation is a very good step to guide & handhold NGO’s like KSWA to take a big leap in an innovative manner. The inputs & insights on the YP model, and (the support) thereafter in dividing YP activities into three different clouds was a great learning; hence innovative lever for us to invent the CAMP as backward linkage to the  existing YP activity. Secondly, involving the energy of external experts in the overall YP innovation process helped us to find our way very easily. Dr. Vivekanand Sawant, Director, Yuva Parivartan Skills Development, KSWA

Read more details on how Yuva Parivartan has leveraged this support to build out their Camps Model, a big lever for future scale of the programme.

For more details on the Guiding Social Innovations programme please write to info@innovationalchemy.com; and akshayd@maricoindia.net

Follow us on twitter for regular updates: @innovationIndia

Watch Videos from the series of Innovation Practitioner Workshops in 2011.

Innovation for India Award Criteria

The first phase of selection is conducted by our Knowledge Partner, Bain and Company who have reviewed and evaluated every single application according to the defined evaluation framework. Top candidates were identified by an unbiased panel of technical experts and then a first-hand audit was conducted to validate the selections. This leads us into our first phase of Jury selection, short listed candidates are rigorously evaluated and reviewed according to the Uniqueness, Impact and Sustainability of their innovations.

Many questions and concerns came up during the discussion such as – How important is commercial viability when judging innovation and impact? Can previous winners be re-awarded? Should we only consider innovations that create impact in India or can Indian innovations that create impact on foreign soil also be considered?

After much deliberation and review, a follow-up verification is now being conducted. This involves a detailed due-diligence where short-listed applicants are contacted to further clarify any questions raised by the Jury in Phase 1. The next and final Jury session will be held on February 9th where the 2012 Innovation for India Awards Winners will be selected.

Dr. Mashelkar at the Pune Innovation Practitioner Session

“With each award, the bar has been raised” remarked Dr. Mashelkar who reminded the Jury that they must be mindful to judge each and every application with the utmost scrutiny and set the bar higher each year. That being said, we are even more eager to see who will make it to the Awards ceremony in March. Do stay tuned to our Facebook  and Twitter accounts for up-to-date information on the Awards process and for deeper insight into the Indian Innovation Ecosystem.

We have had many previous Innovation for India Award winners join us at the Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore and New Delhi Innovation Practitioner Sessions, here is a short film from the Bangalore session:

Bangalore : Innovation Practitioner Session from Innovation Alchemy on Vimeo.

For more on the Innovation Practitioner Sessions, check out the Innovation for India Vimeo Channel