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| BUSINESS - US INDIAN BUSINESS |
| Two Innovative Indian Projects Win $50K Tech Awards | | By LISA TSERING | | | indiawest.com | November 25, 2009 05:22:00 PM |
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SAN JOSE, Calif. — PATH, a company founded by an Indian American that makes a novel, iron-rich Ultra Rice which packs micronutrients into each tiny grain; and Akshaya Patra, a huge school lunch program that serves 1.2 million Indian children a day, were among five projects that won this year’s Tech Awards.
The ninth annual Tech Awards attracted a black-tie crowd of more than 1,500 Silicon Valley movers and shakers to the McEnery Convention Center Nov. 19 for the yearly event organized by the Tech Museum of Innovation. A highlight of the evening was a passionate talk by Nobel Prize- and Academy Award-winning activist Al Gore, who accepted the James C. Morgan Global Humanitarian Award.
 Gore spoke before a giant screen displaying brilliantly hued nature photographs, and he asked the crowd what the next generation will think of us if we continue to ignore the signs that our environment is in peril.
“Our kids will ask us, ‘What were you thinking? Were you watching “Dancing With the Stars”?’” he quipped.
“We have to shake off our lethargy. What we are facing is completely unprecedented. It’s time for us to get politically active and get solutions to the climate crisis.”
Each of the 2009 Tech Awards comes with a $50,000 cash grant, and has far-reaching effects on grassroots projects like the Akshaya Patra Foundation, which is headed by Madhu Sridhar of Stoneham, Mass.
Sridhar dedicated her Microsoft Education Award to the workers in India. “Our employees get up at 3:30 a.m. to prepare the noon meal,” Sridhar said.
Akshaya Patra’s 18 vast, spotless kitchens, located in seven Indian states, have been constructed in four levels so that fresh rice, sambar, rotis and vegetables can be prepared on different floors and then sent down by gravity to delivery containers on the bottom floor, which are then trucked out to a network of schools.
It costs just $28 to feed a child daily for an entire school year, and Akshaya Patra is funded 50 percent by the Indian government and 50 percent by donations.
“Sometimes, there’s this loneliness, and we feel like it’s a daunting task,” Suma Adapala, the NGO’s director of corporate development, told India-West. “But the Tech Awards are giving us a platform, and now we can accelerate our mission.”
Dipika Matthias of Seattle is the founder of PATH, which uses a patented “Ultra Rice” technology to manufacture tiny grains made of rice pasta which are fortified with iron, zinc, folic acid and Vitamin A. By blending the grains into a bag of regular rice at a 1:100 ratio, PATH is able to help fight micronutrient malnutrition, which threatens the health, cognitive development and productivity of billions of people around the world. In India, Ultra Rice now reaches 60,000 children per day.
“PATH’s mission is to achieve maximum benefits in health,” said Matthias as she accepted the Nokia Health Award. “Ultra Rice is simply pasta made from rice flour — it’s simple, affordable and culturally appropriate. Together, we can feed children’s potential worldwide.”
The winners of the other three top Tech Awards were the Nigerian NGO Cows to Kilowatts, which converts waste into energy (Intel Environment Award); Alternative Energy Development Corporation, which provides inexpensive zinc-air fuel cells to impoverished African communities (BD Biosciences Economic Development Award); and World of Good Development Organization of Emeryville, Calif., which calculates fair wages for local artisans — primarily women — around the world (Katherine M. Swanson Equality Award). Incidentally, one of the individuals responsible for the creation of its Fair Wage Guide is Indian American activist/social entrepreneur Priya Haji.
Several other South Asian projects were named Tech Laureates this year, and were finalists for the top prizes (I-W, Sept. 11): Salman Khan, founder of the free, online Khan Academy; Bangladesh’s Mohammed Rezwan, founder of Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha, which brings solar-powered lanterns into rural areas; and Driptech, a low-cost irrigation system in South India founded by Peter Frykman of Palo Alto, Calif.
Each of the 15 Tech Laureates was flown to Silicon Valley for a week of networking events capped by the Nov. 19 gala, and all 15 projects got invaluable opportunities with potential partners and funders here. In previous awards, 25 Tech Laureates were chosen, but this number has been trimmed to 15 so that each individual group could receive more attention, said a Tech Museum spokesperson.
For more information on the Tech Awards, or to nominate a project for next year’s honors, visit www.techawards.org. |
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