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TheNFAPost Podcast
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Nasscom Foundation holds the event in partnership with Microsoft India
11 innovative solutions given catalytic grants worth Rs 85 Lakh & mentorship
New Delhi, NFAPost: Nasscom Foundation and Microsoft India in partnership with the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities, Department of Science & Technology (DST), and ERNET announced the winners of ‘Innovate for an Accessible India‘(IAI)-a pan India initiative that fosters innovative use of technology to address problems faced by Persons with Disabilities.
IAI is a unique platform that brings together technologists, innovators and other stakeholders involved in accessibility and assistive technologies to work towards a truly inclusive India.
Eleven winners were chosen from amongst 3000+ innovative solutions in the areas of education, skills and livelihood, mobility, health and e-governance. This also includes two winners for a special AI for Good Awards from across all categories.
The winners have been chosen from both early stage start-ups and established organization categories and will get catalytic grants of INR 5 lakh and 10 lakh each respectively. All the winners will also be supported with customized industry mentorship and Microsoft cloud and tech support to scale their innovations.
Here are the list of winners:
| Category | Segment | Name of the Project/Innovation | Name of the Organization |
| Mobility | Early | Kickstart Gati: An electric vehicle and that easily accommodates a wheelchair when needed | Kickstart Services Private Limited |
| Mobility | Established | NeoFly: Wheelchairs with push rim design that enable movement of 2-5 times the distance on a single push and NeoBolt: Motorised add-on for independent long distance mobility. | NeoMotion Assistive Solutions Pvt Ltd |
| Education & AI for Good (special award) | Early | NURTURING DIFFERENT LEARNERS: a validated easy to use screening tool for parents to ensure early identification of Specific Learning Disability (SLD) in children | Blink Foundation + NIEPMD [National Institute for Empowerment of People with Multiple Disabilities] |
| Education | Established | HEXIS: a six-dot portable, battery based, low cost electronic Braille book reader to be the means to disseminate accessible and high quality content to students with blindness | Vembi Technologies Private Limited |
| Education* | Early – Special Mention | E-Vision: a Low cost interactive Braille Tablet (around Rs.5000) which enables the visually challenged to not just understand/ visualize how images and other forms of Pictorial data like graphs, pictures, diagrams, drawings, charts, maps, etc looks like but also intercact with them. | Student |
| Education* | Established – Special Mention | Development and dissemination of tactile graphics eg: textbooks, concept-based books, storybooks, learning manuals and learning aids eg: colouring kits, geometry kits, drawing boards, 3D models, accessible print | Raised Lines Foundation – IIT Delhi Technopark-ITEC |
| E-governance & Access | Early | Cluster Trainnig Modal: Creation of standards for accessible premises available to a potentially large number of organizational users through an app. | Vidya Bhawan Society and v-Shesh |
| E-governance & Access | Established | A mobile app that provides live interpretation of speech in Indian Sign Language (ISL) to enable seamless communication between a hearing impaired and a hearing person | SignAble Communication Private Limited |
| Health | Early | Splinter Band: A wearable for autistic people, that reads and helps convey any emotional or physiological change. | Globsol Innovation Labs Pvt Ltd |
| Health | Established | A novel device & system to screen newborns for hearing loss to prevent speech loss & disability in resource poor settings. | Sohum Innovation Labs India Pvt. Ltd. & VAANI, Deaf Children’s Foundation (Trust) |
| Skilling and Livelihood | Early | MyDost: A beacon/s based engine that helps people with Intellectual Disabilities (ID) through mobile based audio/visual or text based instruction of the tasks when they come close to any user equipments. | V-shesh Leaning Services Pvt Ltd |
| Skilling and Livelihood | Established | Inclusive Divyangjan 2.0: An app to unify all the relevant information and services a Divyang individual will make use of in her/his life. | Inclusive Divyangjan Entrepreneur Association |
| AI4Good (special award) | Early | ScreenPlay – A digital game-based screening tool for autism | Kidaura Innovations Pvt. Ltd. |
* Special Mentions – Will not receive catalytic grants.
AI for Good awards are separate and will be given additional INR 5 Lakh in catalytic grants
Details of all winning innovations and ideas can be accessed from https://iai.nasscomfoundation.org/
Commenting on th success of the event, Microsoft India President Anant Maheshwari said with over 1 billion people with disabilities around the world, IAI has the opportunity and responsibility to create inclusive technology that works for all.
“The mission of Innovate for Accessible India is to design technology that empowers people of all abilities. We are incredibly proud to support this program and the winners as they create and scale innovations for India to be more inclusive, affordable and accessible for people with disabilities. Now more than ever, it is critical for the public and private sectors to come together, creating equal opportunity and access for everyone,” said Microsoft India President Anant Maheshwari.
Nasscom Foundation CEO Ashok Pamidi said with Innovate for an Accessible India, one of the critical goals was to encourage more tech innovators to take up the cause of Persons with Disabilities.
“With us receiving a record 3000+ applications in the first year itself, we are incredibly thrilled with the innovation potential and intent towards the sector,” said Nasscom Foundation CEO Ashok Pamidi.
He further added that on the eve of International day of Persons with Disabilities, Nasscom hopes to present these innovations to all of India’s 2.7 crore PwDs.
“We will also support the innovations to scale-up fast through catalytic grants and industry mentorship. We are grateful to our partners Microsoft to provide such encouragement to all innovators working in the accessibility space and are thankful to the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, Dept. of Technology and ERNET to support this initiative wholeheartedly,” said Nasscom Foundation CEO Ashok Pamidi.
The winners were selected by a jury of industry stalwarts, domain thought leaders and policy makers as below:
| Categories | Juror Name | Organisation | Designation |
| Mobility | Anita Narayan Iyer | Ekansh | Founder |
| Shilpi Kapoor | Barrier Break | Founder | |
| Vinayak Hedge | Microsoft India | CTO | |
| Health | Dr Neena Pahuja | ERNET | Ex Director General |
| Anita Gupta | DST | NEB Head | |
| Reena Dayal Yadav | Microsoft India | Principal Program Manager, The Garage R&D team, | |
| Education | Ashutosh Chaddha | MasterCard | Vice President & Head Public Policy and Government Affairs South Asia at Mastercard |
| Tarika Roy | DEPwD | Joint Secretary | |
| Ira Singhal | Department of Women and Child Development | Deputy Director, IAS | |
| Skilling and Livelihood | Jaikant Singh | SCPwD | CSO, NSDC |
| Kiran DM | ONGC Foundation | CEO | |
| Meenu Bhambani | State Street | Vice President, Head of Corporate Citizenship and Inclusion and Diversity, APAC at State Street | |
| Shri Rajan Sehgal | NHFDC | Chairman, MD | |
| B.K Chakravarthy | IDC, IIT Bombay | Institute Chair Professor | |
| E Governance and Accessibility | Bharat Bhushan Tiwari | ERNET | Sr. Director |
| Vikash Prasad | DEPwD | Sr. Director | |
| Rakesh Paladugula | Adobe System | a11y Product Manager | |
| Nixon Joseph | SBI Foundation | CEO | |
| Dipesh Sutariya | Enable India | Fouder and CEO |
| Artificial Intelligence For Good Award | Rohini Srivathsa | Microsoft India | National CTO |
| Snehanshu Mitra | NASSCOM | Head – CoE, Data Science and Artificial Intelligence @ NASSCOM | |
| Ramanan Ramnathan | Niti Ayog | MD ATL & Additional Secretary at NitiAyog |
About Microsoft India:
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) is the leading platform and productivity company for the mobile-first, cloud-first world, and its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Microsoft set up its India operations in 1990. Today, Microsoft entities in India have over 13,000 employees, engaged in sales and marketing, research, development and customer services and support, across 11 Indian cities – Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai, New Delhi, Gurugram, Noida, Hyderabad, Kochi, Kolkata, Mumbai and Pune. Microsoft offers its global cloud services from local datacenters to accelerate digital transformation across Indian start-ups, businesses, and government organizations. In 2016, Microsoft opened one of its eight Cybersecurity Engagement Centers in the country, to address security needs of both public and private sectors.
About NASSCOM Foundation:
NASSCOM Foundation is the social arm of the IT-BPM industry body – NASSCOM and works with the industry in achieving its goals of social transformation and impact through technology.
The foundation has touched more than two million lives through its efforts towards providing digital literacy, skills for livelihood, supporting persons with disabilities, empowering not-for-profit organizations with technology and driving volunteerism.
