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Education and Skill Training Microsoft India and NASSCOM Give Catalytic Grants worth Rs. 85 lakh to...
Microsoft India and NASSCOM Give Catalytic Grants worth Rs. 85 lakh to 11 innovators for PwD
NASSCOM Foundation and Microsoft India in partnership with the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities, Department of Science & Technology (DST), and ERNET today announced the winners of ‘Innovate for an Accessible India‘ (IAI). The announcement was made in the run up to World Disability Day tomorrow.
IAI is a pan India initiative that fosters innovative use of technology to address problems faced by Persons with Disabilities. It 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 startups and established organization categories and will get catalytic grants of Rs. 5 lakh and Rs. 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.
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 seemless 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 Rs. 5 Lakh in catalytic grants
Anant Maheshwari, President, Microsoft India said, ““With over 1 billion people with disabilities around the world, we have 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.”
Ashok Pamidi, CEO – NASSCOM Foundation said, “With Innovate for an Accessible India, one of our 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.”
He further added, “On the eve of International day of Persons with Disabilities, we hope to present these innovations to all of India’s 2.7 Cr 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.”
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 |
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