National Conference on Social Innovation
The 8th National Conference on Social Innovation was organized online by the Pune International Centre (PIC) in association with the National Innovation Foundation & Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), on the 4th & 5th December 2020.
In addition to Maharashtra, we received 100 applications of Social Innovators from 18+ states including Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Meghalaya, Nagaland, etc. It is also heartening to know that we continue to see healthy participation from female applicants. The two-day conference recognized 18 social innovators from urban, rural, and tribal categories out of 100 entries from various sectors including education, health, and environment. Six innovators from the tribal category gave a presentation on Day 1 (4th Dec) over their innovations in different streams.
Mr. Shrikant Vaidya, Chairman of Indian Oil Corporation, was speaking as a Chief Guest at the conference in presence of Dr. R A Mashelkar, President, PIC, Dr. Vijay Kelkar, Vice President, PIC, Prashant Girbhane, Hon. Director, PIC and Abhay Vaidya, Asso. Director, PIC. Speakers including Mr. Shrikant Vaidya, Dr. Kiran Kulkarni, Director, Urban Development were present at the conference on Day 1.
Despite having finances to invest in industries, technical support, and availability of credit post-independence, entrepreneurial growth is yet to take off in India. To generate and accelerate the economy and create more jobs, we have to embrace innovation and empower entrepreneurship among locals particularly in the rural areas,” said Mr. Vaidya.
“To transform the country into a USD 5 million by 2020 is a big challenge as literacy levels of 80 percent of the labour workforce is below average. We need educational and economic regulations to provide opportunities and better jobs,” he added.
Dr. Raghunath Mashelkar said, “Due to the COVID19 pandemic lots of lives were lost and livelihoods were affected so now it is time to recover and for that, social innovation is the key. We need disruptive innovation, which is sustainable. Young India is progressing now and we have access to talent and technology, which is going to change the course of the future.”
Dr. Kiran Kulkarni said, “Tribal are considered as underprivileged in India but the fact is that they are culturally more advanced. In Maharashtra, 9 percent of the state budget goes toward tribal welfare therefore focus on the development of the tribal is very significant.”
“We must stop material-intensive activities like mining, quarrying, and forest logging and should only promote Green growth. We should also combine matter and energy with information and go digital and stop depending on government for resources for setting up enterprises and rely on own capital, and bank loans,” said Vijay Mahajan, CEO and Director, Rajiv Gandhi Foundation and Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary studies while speaking as a valedictory keynote on the second day of the 8th National Conference on Social Innovation (NCSI) organized online by the Pune International Centre (PIC).
Dr. Vijay Kelkar, Vice-President, PIC, Vijay Mahajan, CEO and Director, Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, and Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies, Abhay Vaidya, Asso. Director, PIC, Prakash Apte, Chairman, Kotak Mahindra Bank, and Dr. Vipin Kumar, Director, National Innovation Foundation were present at the conference on Day 2.
Twelve innovators from the Urban and Rural category gave a presentation on the second day about their innovations in different streams.
“We have to stop thinking in terms of jobs and opt for entrepreneurial self-employment. We need to have 10 lakh new micro-enterprises per year with an average of 10 workers, which can create employment to the extent of 1 crore every year,” Vijay Mahajan added.
Prakash Apte said, “Article 1 of the constitution says that India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States. Rural areas can be referred to as Bharat as it comprises 70 percent of the population, while the rest 30 percent of the population lives in urban areas. To be able to progress, we’ll have to enable Bharat to connect with India by providing all basic facilities including education and employment opportunities to everyone in rural and urban areas. We have to make our social responsibility.”
The innovators will be given a chance to join the PIC’s mentorship program, which will help them scale up their enterprises through networking, understand challenges, and assist them with financial support to help them sustain.
Pune International Centre (PIC) announced winners under 3 categories including Urban, Rural, and Tribal at its 8th National Conference on Social Innovation (NCSI). Each category had 6 innovators, out of which 1 from each category was chosen as a winner.
The Winners at the 8th National Conference on Social Innovation, under 3 categories included Nitesh Bhardwaj, Founder of Ulgulan Foundation in the Tribal category, Ayush Nigam, Founder of Distinct Horizon in the Rural category, and Shashank Nimkar, Founder of Earth Tatva in the Urban category.
Ulgulan Foundation in Tribal category is working to create social awareness and raising local issues by using mobile films in tribal areas of Maharashtra, while
Distinct Horizon in Rural category is innovating agricultural machinery that can double the profits of farmers and reduce GHG Emissions in 5 times lesser cost than solar panels and half the time.
Earth Tatva in Urban category works to reduce mining for natural resources by making products from recycled ceramics under closed-loops zero-waste manufacturing process.
The winners won a cash prize of Rs 50,000/-.
7th National Conference on Social Innovation took place on 17th Novermber 2019 at Yashada Auditorium. The conference started with the Anjani Mashelkar Inclusive Innovation Award (AMIIA) which had been awarded to ‘GenRobotics’ a young group of students from Kerala. We witnessed a personal message from Shri. Ratan Tata, former Chairperson of Tata group, for our innovators and the participants.
After the extensive process for selection out of 100+ applications which had been received throughout the nation, 19 innovators got selected in three categories Tribal, Rural and Urban. The innovators covered diverse field from agriculture to healthcare, education, community empowerment, vulnerable group and many more.
We had a pre-conference meet with our innovators with our session chairpersons and mentors. Prof. Satyajit Majumdar from TISS, Mumbai, delivered an insightful talk for social entrepreneurship. Mr. Pradeep Lokhande, Founder of Rural Relations shared his inspiring experience as social entrepreneur. After these two insightful sessions, our mentors helped our innovators to understand the Social Enterprise Mentorship program in detail with the success stories from the year of 2018.
On the day of our NCSI conference, we had three sessions; Tribal, Rural and Urban. Tribal Session was chaired by Mr. Pradeep Lokhande; the founder of Rural Relations. Rural Session was chaired by Cmde. Anand Khandekar, ex-Indian Navy and ex-director of Nvidia India. Urban Session was chaird by Prof. Satyajit Majumdar from TISS, Mumbai. Our innovators impressed many people by their unique work, presentation and by showcasing their product in front of our all guests and participants. Our Tribal category winner Mr. Rajendra Prasad Moturu from Telangana showcased a unique water purifier which can help people in disaster affected areas to get clean and drinkable water. Our Rural Category winner Mr. Parthapratim Dasmahapatra from West Bengal helped us to know his unique device which measures hemoglobin without taking any blood samples. Our Urban Category winner Mr. Mayur U Shetty from Karnataka showed his cutting edge technology for transferring vaccine without any harm with his cooling device named ‘Sanjivani’.
We had our guest from Tata Chemicals, Thermax, RSB transmission, KPIT, Emcure Pharmaceuticals, BP Exploration, Tata Trust, TCS, Weikfield, Finolex, Aditya Birla Group, Forbes Marshall, Petronet LNG’s CSR representatives and Venture Centre, Magic Incubators, and accelerators and institutions representatives to support our program and engage with our innovators.
We had a very insightful panel discussion with Dr. V. Premnath (Venture Centre), Mr. Anil Paranjape (Infuse Venture), Ms. Alka Talwar (Tata Chemicals), Mr. Sanjay Kanvinde (PIC moderator and mentor), and Ms. Priyanka Behera (RSB Transmission). This discussion helps everyone to understand the strategical approach for collaboration with various CSR and the need of CSR’s to be open up for social Entrepreneurs for collaboration.
The 6th National Conference on Social Innovation held on 17th Nov 2018 at Yashada Auditorium Baner Road, Pune. The chief guest for the conference was Shri Girish Bapat, Minister of Food, Civil supplies and Consumer Protection for the State of Maharashtra.
Each Invited guest was given a Kit, which included different products from past mentorship programme mentees. The Kit itself was made from flex banner, a creation of Mr. Amit Inamdar. Each Kit included the bamboo pen by Mr. Anant Vats and postcards curated by Khula Aasmaan, a platform which encourage and allows kids to exhibits their creations in the areas of art and technology.
This year, the conference was attended by not only CSR’s but also donors, investors and incubators, More than 40 organizations attended NCSI 2018, including CSR’s incubators, investors, donors, academic organizations and NGOs.
The conference was divided into three main sessions; Tribal, Rural and Urban, with a total of 16 constituent sub-themes, such as agriculture, health, sports, waste management, to name a few, six innovators presented in each session. The Tribal session was chaired by Mr. Pramod Athalye, a member of PIC and mentor of Social Enterprise Mentorship Programme (SEMP). Mr. Pradeep Lokhande, The founder of Rural Relations, Chaired the Rural session of the conference. The Urban session was chaired by Mr. Sanjay Kanvinde, a member of PIC and a mentor for the Social Innovation Mentorship Programme (SEMP).
After the extra-ordinary presentations of our innovators we had three winners in each category. In the Tribal category Mr. Ashwin Pawade, cofounder of S4S technologies won the prize for their Solar Conduction Dryer which dries horticulture produce for later use. In the Rural category Mr. Subham Singh won the prize for his straw panel board which is made from crop residue. In the Urban category Ms. Akshita Sachdeva won the prize for her product called KITAB, a mobile app which increases availability of books in multiple Indian languages for visually challenged people.
After the declaration of the winners there were a session on ‘Fostering Social Innovation’ a discussion held between CSR’s incubators, impact investors and earlier NCSI innovators and our mentees of the mentorship program.
On the second day after the conference, we had sessions with our innovators with the presence of PIC mentors, Ms. Anshu Bhartia, CEO of UnLtd India and Mr. Shirish Joshi, Independent consultant and eminent social sector researcher. The focus was on the interaction between mentors and the innovators, understanding the obstacles they face in their journey and a brief guidance on their future path. After the mentorship program our mentors also introduce our ‘Shared Service Centre (SSC-SE)’ which is being launched by Social Innovation Lab.
The Pune International Centre (PIC) organises a National Conference on Social Innovation (NCSI) every year on the 17th of November at the Yashwantrao Chavan Academy for Development Administration (YASHADA), Baner.
PIC has been organising this conference for the last four years with the objective of promoting the cause of Social Innovation and providing a fertile platform for collaboration to the Social Innovators and CSRs of leading Corporate Houses. Innovations in the sectors of Health, Education, Livelihood, Technology and Agriculture have been covered in the Conference.
To further strengthen the cause of social innovation, PIC has also reached out to grass-root innovators from all corners of the country to scout for exceptional innovations. Entries have been received from States such as Gujarat, Karnataka, Telangana, Delhi, Port Blair, Arunachal Pradesh etc.
Innovators such as Dr. Devi Shetty (Narayan Hrudayalaya), Dr. Abhay Bang (SEARCH), Dr. D.R. Mehta (Jaipur foot). Dr. Rajendra Singh (Water conservationist) have presented on the NCSI platform. CSR heads of leading companies such as the Tata Group, Bharat Forge, Praj, KPIT, Kirloskars, JSW Steel, Mahindra, Lupin, etc attend the Conference to encourage and listen to the innovators.
The Hon’ble Vice President of India Shri Hamid Ansari and Dr. Vikas Amte, Secretary and Chief Functionary, ‘Maharogi Seva Samiti’ have graced the NCSI as Chief Guest and inaugurated the Conference. PIC is honored to receive the continuous guidance and support of Dr. R.A. Mashelkar (President, PIC), Dr. Vijay Kelkar (Vice-President, PIC) and Prof. Anil Gupta, Professor at IIMA and Exec. Vice Chair of National Innovation Foundation (NIF), for the NCSI.
Last year, a new addition to the NCSI was the introduction of an Indo-China Social Innovator Exchange Program, launched jointly by PIC and the Society for Research and Initiatives for Sustainable Technologies and Institutions (SRISTI), Ahmedabad. Under this program, Ms. Xie Fang from the TUFE University, China made a presentation on ‘Rural Cultural Heritage and Ways for Survival’, while Ms. Tulaji Bhavsar from Bhuj, visited China.
This year, 17 innovators present their innovations to an audience comprising CSRs, incubators and investors. The conference was inaugurated by Hon’ble Minister of Human Resource Development, Shri. Prakash Javadekar.
The 4th National Conference on Social Innovation took place on the 17th of November. Dr. Vikas Amte, Chief Secretary and Functionary of Maharogi Sewa Samiti inaugurated the conference.
The themes for the conference were Tribal, Rural and Urban innovations. The NCSI team at PIC began with an outreach initiative to reach out to grass-root innovators. PIC’s knowledge partners such as the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) and the National Innovation Foundation (NIF) extended great support to PIC for this initiative. BAIF Development & Research Foundation also strongly facilitated the outreach activity.
After a 3-staged evaluation process, 18 finalists were chosen to present at the conference and they drew representation from various regions of India such as Gujarat, Telangana, Delhi, Karnataka, Arunachal Pradesh, Maharashtra and Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
On the 16th of November, a special workshop with a legal expert, Advocate Manoj Wadekar of Wadekar & Associates was organised for the innovators. The objective of the workshop was to inform innovators on essential legal requirements that need to be met, in order to satisfy CSR mandates and attract funding for further scaling-up of their innovation.
The 18 finalists displayed great authenticity and diversity in their presentations. They enthralled the audience with their creative ideas, passion and humour.
Around 400 people attended the conference this year. CSR representatives of over 35 corporate houses such as Forbes Marshall, the Tata Trusts, Bharat Forge, Praj Industries, KPIT, Siemens, Mahindra, Lupin, Reliance, etc were present at the conference and they listened intently to the innovators.
It was heartening to witness the positive impact of the conference when two of the innovators from NCSI-2016, Krishna Thiruvengadam and Yogesh Malkhare, received support for their initiatives and innovations from few organisations present at the conference. A formal report on the NCSI-2016 was also released at the first Social Innovation Forum (SIF), which was held in March 2017.
The day long conference started with Hon’ble Mr. M Hamid Ansari, The Vice President of India who addressed the gathering in presence of Hon’ble Shri C Vidyasagar Rao, Governor of Maharashtra and Hon’ble Shri Girish Bapat, Guardian Minister of Pune. The Vice President of India congratulated both Pune International Centre and National Innovation Foundation for pioneering this series of national conference on social innovation.
Shri Ansari said, Social Innovation was essential and was linked to ‘levels of harmony, freedom, stability and security prevailing in the society’. He emphasized that while economic progress is essential for survival and well being, it is neither a substitute nor the panacea for the social challenges that confront us.
He highlighted, Social Innovation impacts the society, but particularly the excluded, the needy, the remote and the by passed sections of our society as we race forward towards becoming a developed nation with economic indicators of scale, pace, size of our growth, innovation that leads to social and economic inclusion is going to be more and more important.
He said “I am particularly glad to see pioneering efforts of the organizers to provide a platform for conversations between the “support seekers” and those “seeking to support” as they are expected to lead to scaling up of some of the social innovations presented on this occasion and thereby accelerating the impact of such innovations”.
21 Social innovators from 8 states were the focus at PIC on 17th Nov 2015 on the occasion of ‘NCSI 2015’. In this third annual conference, the innovators focused on their innovations in the domains of Health, Education and Livelihood. From an IITian to a farmer we had significant diversity among the 21 presenters.
30+ CSR representatives from leading corporates including PIC corporate members were in the audience listening to these innovators and many of them demonstrated enthusiasm in the concluding session to take forward some of these initiatives in a manner that fits their respective corporate CSR guidelines.