By Alokesh Bhattacharyya
The winners of the first edition of
The Economic Times Innovation Awards, which seeks to nurture and celebrate new ideas and fresh thinking to solve business and societal problems, will be unveiled at a special ceremony on March 15 in
Mumbai.
Any company doing business in
India — be it Indian or multinational — was eligible to participate, so long as it had more than Rs 500 crore in consolidated revenue to show. Startups that have been around for five years or less were also eligible. All innovations submitted for nomination needed to be specific to the Indian market.
The awards look at innovation through multiple prisms. Product innovation is the easiest to identify and most visible. But innovative products are not the only area where corporate innovation happens. And so the award categories included several types of innovation, such as Most Innovative Large Company, Most Innovative Mid-Sized Company, Most Innovative Startup, Service Innovation, Process Innovation, Marketing & Brand Innovation, Business Model Innovation, Innovation in Inclusive Growth and Innovation to Drive Sustainability.
Unless there is impact, there is no value of an innovation. And so, the awards were open only to corporate innovations that have hit the market, and not ideas that are on the drawing board and look good on paper.
Companies are on an unrelenting quest for change and improvement. How can you earn more revenue? How can you be more profitable? How can you be more productive? How can you serve the customer better? How can you create a product — or a service — that addresses a market need? And, most important, how can you do these differently? Innovative thinking, therefore, is not a nice-to-have, abstract entity. It is real. It makes a difference — to companies, to their employees, to customers, to society. Companies that possess innovative
DNA are more likely to succeed than those which do not. And undoubtedly, a lot of that is happening in the country currently. Companies are pouring in hundreds of crores to come up with something new — be it in products, processes, services,
technologies, etc — to be able to gain that extra edge.
Innovation encompasses practically every sector in India — from healthcare to automobiles to FMCG to core manufacturing to technology. The country is witnessing a surge of innovative activity, across multiple sectors and spheres. The ET Innovation Awards will celebrate this.
The Process
- Applications were invited online through a structured questionnaire.
- ET and its knowledge partner BCG India analysed the entries and shortlisted top nominees across categories.
- A panel of celebrated leaders formed the jury.
- The jury deliberated on the nominations, changed their categories as they saw fit, altered some categories, brought in external nominations where they were not happy with the entries submitted, and honed in on the final three nominees in each category, and the winner.
- Whenever a jury member had a conflict of interest surrounding a company that was being debated, he recused himself, and left the discussion room for that period of time.
Over the next few days, we will present to our readers the names and the innovations of the top three nominees in each category — the best modern innovations of our times. The names of the winners will be announced at the felicitation ceremony in mid-March.
The awards are presented by
SAP, and BCG India is the knowledge partner.