Shatajit Basu, a college junior at IIT Madras and a core member of the India chapter of Asia-Pacific Student Entrepreneurship society (ASES), attended the L-RAMP Innovation Awards 2007 and sent us this guest post.

By Shatajit Basu

The L-RAMP Innovation Awards is a joint initiative of premier Indian engineering school – IIT Madras and the Rural Innovations Network, supported by the Lemelson Foundation. L-RAMP is an acronym for "Lemelson Recognition and Mentoring Programme." The foundation identifies innovators and harnesses their creativity to build their innovations into sustainable and scalable enterprises. The goal is to transform living standards of poor communities through such ventures.

The winners of L-RAMP Innovation Awards 2007 were feted by Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, former President of India at a gala ceremony hosted by the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. Dr MS Ananth, the director of IIT Madras began by congratulating the winners and then gave a brief overview of the various socially relevant inititiatves and projects under incubation at IIT M. This was followed by a short talk by Professor TT Narendran, the Dean for Industrial Consulting and Sponsored research (IC-SR). Charismatic as always, his message stressing the importance of “rural engineering” was largely aimed at the hundred strong engineering students in the audience.

Following this, the L-RAMP innovators were presented the awards by Dr. Kalam. The award carries a cash award of INR 25,000 INR and a trophy.

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Anand Shah, CEO of the Piramal Foundation and a NextBillion reader, alerted me to the recently-announced $25,000//10 lakh rupees Piramal Prize for Innovations that Democratize Healthcare.  In his e-mail, he notes that prize was created

...to encourage and support bold entrepreneurial ideas which have a profound impact on access to higher standards of health for India’s rural and marginalized urban communities. The award recognizes high-impact, scalable business models that propose innovative solutions which directly or indirectly address India’s healthcare crisis. Entries may include, but are not limited to, innovations in service delivery, technology applications, health-related products, or mechanisms to address public health necessities such as potable water.

Initial entries for the prize are due no later than April 1, 2008; the winner will be announced at the end of May. 

The Piramal Prize is a joint project of the Ajay G. Piramal Foundation and the Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship at the Indian Institute of Management - Ahmedabad.  It is interesting to note that the Piramal Foundation gets most of its support from Piramal Enterprises, a major player in the Indian pharmaceutical industry.  This prize is an excellent example of how corporate social investment aligns with financial returns.  But that's the subject of another post.

Thanks, Anand, for the alert.  I encourage NextBillion readers to learn more about the Piramal Prize and submit their applications soon.  Even if you are not a BoP health enterprise, consider bookmarking the Piramal Prize web site, as the entries will be available for public viewing as they are submitted.

(Via story suggestion - yes, we really do read them!)