Infosys Foundation announces winners of Aarohan Social Innovation Awards

Infosys Foundation has announced the winners of the third edition of the Aarohan Social Innovation Awards. The awards were established in 2018 to recognise and reward individuals, teams, and NGOs for creating pathbreaking solutions for social good, benefiting the underprivileged.

This year, the Foundation announced winners across three categories: healthcare, education, and women empowerment.

The winners were shortlisted from a pool of over 2,400 submissions and evaluated by an esteemed jury comprising Padma Shri Arvind Gupta, Indian toy inventor and science expert; Pratima Murthy, Director and Head of the Department of Psychiatry, NIMHANS; Sairee Chahal, serial entrepreneur, angel investor and Founder of SHEROES and Mahila Money; Sumit Virmani, Trustee, Infosys Foundation, and Sunil Kumar Dhareshwar, Trustee, Infosys Foundation

Winners across categories who were awarded Rs 50 lakh each in prize money are:

Healthcare – Subrahmanyam Prasad Muddam and Akitha Kolloju–they developed ‘nLite 360’–an advanced, portable, standalone, and battery-powered smart phototherapy device that provides customised treatment for severe and dynamic jaundice conditions.

Education – 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.

Women empowerment – Shelter Associates, an NGO from Pune that created ‘One Home One Toilet’–a data-driven model focused on facilitating sanitised household toilets for the underprivileged urban women.

Speaking on the occasion, Salil Parekh, Chairman, 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. We congratulate the winners for their contributions in healthcare, education, and women empowerment–themes that are central to Infosys Foundation’s efforts to move us all forward towards an equitable future.”

The Jury’s Special Award-winning innovations, who won prize money of Rs 10 lakh each, include:

Swaasa – This artificial intelligence platform created by Narayana Rao Sripada, Manmohan Jain, and Venkat Yechuri in Hyderabad can be used for the screening and diagnosis of respiratory diseases,

SickleCert – A cost-effective and accurate point-of-care test for sickle-cell anemia that can also be used in prognosis and treatment setup, developed by Prof. Sai Siva Gorthi, Arun Balasubramanian, Rajesh Srinivasan, and Yatish Prasad Dasari in Bengaluru.

Portia – A self-contained portable oxygen generator providing a continuous, uninterrupted supply of medical-grade oxygen during pre-hospital or pre-ambulatory medical emergencies without any reliance on electricity, batteries, or a skilled healthcare resource, developed by John Joy and Sanjay K Pillai in Bengaluru.

Emvólio – A portable, battery-powered refrigeration device for last-mile transport of vaccines, developed by Mayur U Shetty in Manipal.

Modha Pedal Operating Machine – It aims to eradicate chronic knee pain and lower back pain issues faced by women handloom weavers, empowering the longevity of their weaving careers, developed by Sivakumar Modha in Hyderabad.