Author: yazdi

Motivations, News, Technology

The Infosys Science Prize

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The Infosys Prize – Securing India’s scientific future

The Infosys Prize endeavors to elevate the prestige of scientific research in India and inspire young Indians to choose a vocation in scientific research.

The Infosys Science Foundation, a not-for-profit trust, was set up in February 2009 by the management of Infosys. The Foundation instituted the Infosys Prize, an annual award, to honor outstanding achievements of researchers and scientists across five categories : Social Sciences, Physical Sciences, Engineering and Computer Sciences, Mathematical Sciences and Life Sciences, each carrying a prize of rupees 50 Lakh. The award intends to celebrate success in scientific research and stand as a marker of excellence in these fields.

A jury, comprising eminent leaders in each of these fields, evaluates the achievements of the nominees against the standards of international research, placing the winners on par with the finest researchers in the world.

Categories

The award will be presented annually in five categories:

Physical Sciences – Physics, Chemistry and Earth Science
Mathematical Sciences – Mathematics and Statistics
Engineering and Computer Science – All branches of Engineering
Life Sciences – Biology, Biotechnology, Medicine and Agriculture
Social Sciences* – Economics, History, Sociology, Anthropology and
Political Science

*Under the Social Science category, 2 subjects will be considered per Prize year. In 2010, work in the areas of Sociology and Anthropology will be considered.

Click Here for the website for more details

Uncategorized

Getting more for less

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Engineer RA Mashelkar shares three stories of ultra-low-cost design from India that use bottom-up rethinking, and some clever engineering, to bring expensive products (cars, prosthetics) into the realm of the possible for everyone. His take on the Nano, Gandhian Engineering and getting more for less are indeed thought provoking.

Finance, News

SBI Capital set to launch Rs 100 crore SME fund

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SBI Capital Markets Ltd, the investment advisory arm of State Bank of India, is planning to float a dedicated small and medium enterprises (SME) fund with an initial corpus of Rs 100 crore in the next one and half years.

“The SME fund will be used to rope in private equity investment in SME, which otherwise is facing dearth of capital for furthering its business growth,” Rajeev Krishnan, executive vice president, SBI Capital Markets said on the sidelines of a seminar on SME here.

Click Here for more……

News, Social Entrepreneurship

ICICI Foundation for Inclusive Growth

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ICICI Foundation for Inclusive Growth was founded by ICICI Group to empower low-income Indians to participate in and benefit from India’s growth. Our focus on inclusive growth is grounded in the philosophy of ICICI Group and its history of partnering in the nation’s economic growth and development.

Since its inception in 2008, ICICI Foundation has taken forward
ICICI Group’s existing initiatives in the areas of primary health,
elementary education, access to finance, civil society and
environmental sustainability. In addition, ICICI Foundation works
with ICICI Group companies in the formulation and execution of
their social responsibility activities.

We would like to share with you, the various activities being carried out by the ICICI Group in the chosen fields through a periodic newsletter. To access the newsletter, click here.

Business Ideas, Motivations, People / Stories, Social Entrepreneurship

Mother Earth

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Mother Earth believes in satisfying it’s customers while nurturing the environment and building on the strengths of marginalised rural communities to include them in sustainable livelihoods and overall prosperity.

Mrs. Gita Ram, co-founder, craft activist, mentors the company, and has been its principal social investor providing it with loans of upto 150,000 USD without collateral, at less than market interest. She is the leading light in Industree’s quest to uphold a tradition of volunteerism. This is essential to keep the balance of this venture that hopes to benefit the economically under privileged, through a for profit enterprise where often the discrepancies of free market wages, between urban management and rural producers can be quite extreme.

Neelam Chhiber is co-founder Industree, a social enterprise that connects rural producers to urban markets. Industree has obtained investment from Future Group, India’s largest retail chain to build a retail brand called Mother Earth, which is part producer owned, 14%. Industree is converging backwards to create a complete solution to fair and equitable distribution of returns from consumer to producer.

Mentoring, News

Mentor Edge

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MentorEdge is an initiative by Mentors and Experts across India to provide hand-holding, mentoring and networking support to aspiring entrepreneurs. It is a country wide structured network of mentors aimed at helping entrepreneurs get the winning edge through advisory support on various strategic and operational decisions.

MentorEdge helps create synergistic relationship between mentors and mentees. Initiated by Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) in October 2009, MentorEdge has received immense interest from mentors and mentees alike and hopes to bridge an important gap in India’s entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Networking, News

Open Architecture Network

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What is the Open Architecture Network?

The Open Architecture Network is an online, open source community dedicated to improving living conditions through innovative and sustainable design. Here designers of all persuasions can:

• Share their ideas, designs and plans
• View and review designs posted by others
• Collaborate with each other, people in other professions and community leaders to address specific design challenges
• Manage design projects from concept to implementation
• Communicate easily amongst team members
• Protect their intellectual property rights using the Creative Commons “some rights reserved” licensing system and be shielded from unwarranted liability
• Build a more sustainable future

What is our goal?

Far from replacing the traditional architect, the goal of the network is to allow designers to work together in a whole new way, a way that enables 5 billion potential clients to access their skills and expertise. The network has a simple mission: to generate not one idea but the hundreds of thousands of design ideas needed to improve living conditions for all.

Business Ideas, Motivations, News, People / Stories, Social Entrepreneurship

Agricultural Innovator

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GV RAMANJANEYULU

Agricultural Innovator

BY SOPAN JOSHII

In about 20 lakh acres of farms in 4,000 villages of Andhra Pradesh, farmers today manage crop pests without spraying pesticides.

GV Ramanjaneyulu, 37, took premature retirement from the Directorate of Oilseeds Research in Hyderabad. “I didn’t want to wait till my retirement to do the right thing,” he says.

Click Here for the full story from Tehelka

Finance, Networking, News, People / Stories

Entrepreneurs As The New Asset Class

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Forget about technology, market size and products. VCs should invest in the entrepreneur.

My new lens on investing: Entrepreneur equity. Specifically, equity in all the commercially productive activities of a person’s career. I want to invest in the innate drive, talent and potential of a person. I want to invest in what they’re working on now, what they’re thinking about next, and whatever they dream up in the future. When it comes to exceptional talent, I’ve stopped worrying about technology, market sizes, product-market fit, etc. I just want to invest before the valuation gets frothy (seed is so 2010).

Click Here for a new, refreshing point of view………

Courtesy : Nauzad Tantra

Business Ideas, Motivations, Networking, News, Social Entrepreneurship, Technology

Indo-US Joint Clean Energy R&D Center

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Indo-US Joint Clean Energy Research and Development Center (JCERDC) is proposed to be established under a joint initiative between the Government of India and the US Department of Energy. The center is envisaged to undertake collaborative R & D to advance clean energy technologies by teams of scientists, technologists and engineers from India and the United States, and related joint activities, needed to deploy clean energy technologies. To achieve this objective, the Indo-US JCERDC will support multi-institutional network project costs using public-private partnership model of funding support.

The initial priority areas under the Indo-US JCERDC are:

Letters of Intent to participate in the JCERDC are invited from Indian academia, research institutions and industry partners together in a consortia mode.

ELIGIBLE GROUPS

  • Awards will be made to a consortium with the knowledge and experience to undertake first-rate collaborative research programs. These consortia will leverage existing resources and physical infrastructure.
  • The application should be jointly submitted by the U.S.-Indian researchers who would be members of the Consortia based on their mutual interests, priorities and strength.

On receiving the LOI, a prestakeholder meet will be organized, following which the final call for proposal will be made. Funding will be competitively awarded through a joint review process, solely on the basis of the merit and feasibility of the final proposal.

The program will be coordinated by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) and the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India and administered through the binational Indo-US Science and Technology Forum (lUSSTF).

Submission Deadline: 26 September 2010
For more details visit: www.indousstf.org