The NASSCOM Social Innovation Honours (NSIH) 2012 reached its finale, with the winners being announced by Jaithirth Rao, Chairman, NASSCOM Foundation and awarded by Kapil Sibal, Hon'ble Minister for Communications and Information Technology, at the NASSCOM India Leadership Forum, The annual awards recognize innovation in the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for social transformation, and showcases projects that demonstrate best practices in this context. This year, the innovations spanned across issues such as enabling accessibility for the disabled and the masses, improving healthcare facilities, and creating employment opportunities in the rural areas.

The eight winning campaigns have been selected by the jury, comprising India’s corporate leaders and strategists, including Anand G. Mahindra, Vice Chairman and Managing Director, Mahindra & Mahindra, Dilip Chenoy, Managing Director & CEO, National Skill Development Corporation, Harish Mehta, Chairman and Managing Director, Onward Technologies, Jaithirth Rao, Chairman, NASSCOM Foundation and Rama Bijapurkar, an expert on India’s consumer economy and business-market strategy.

Here is a look at the winning projects that stood out at the NSIH 2012:

e-Mamta (Mother and Child Tracking System)

The Government of Gujarat developed an application for tracking mothers and children through unique identification number that enables grassroots workers to communicate with residents who are in need of services and through SMS alerts, they alert the beneficiaries for the due health services. Besides providing individual attention to the mother and infant, the use of technology also enables availability of reliable reports, and real time data to the district and at state level.

Web@ssist

Web@ssist, by the University College of Engineering, Punjab University, is an assistive technology toolbar that increases the accessibility of websites by customizing the way the disabled view and interact with the web pages, as the cloud itself can now adapt to its users. Web@ssist has removed the specific machine dependence for a disabled person, allowing an individual to use the web at any public place like libraries, labs, classrooms etc. The solution can be used irrespective of any platform or website constraints.

Mass Employment Through Rural Technology

Kolkata-based Anudip Foundation for Social Welfare has set up rural IT outsourcing centers to make the rural youth employment ready by providing market aligned skills training program. For rural youth who have a business orientation or who, especially women and minorities, are unable to commute to jobs, Anudip’s training, incubation and mentoring of entrepreneurs allow them to successfully start rural IT-enabled enterprises in their communities. It also connects them to corporate.

108 Emergency Response Service

The 108 Emergency Response Service by GVK EMRI and Mahindra Satyam was conceived to address the issues of accessibility, availability and affordability. This not-for-profit service delivery model integrates emergency response for any type of emergency – medical, police, or fire – through a toll-free number. Currently, this service is provided at Rupee 1 per citizen per month. With its presence in 11 states of India, the 108 project proceeded from a fleet of 70 ambulances in 2005 serving 14 million people living in 27 cities and 50 towns of Andhra Pradesh to safeguarding lives of up to 372 million people with 3,006 ambulances in present day. 108 handles 1 emergency every 8 seconds, and saves 1 Life every 8 minutes.

e-HealthPoint

e-HealthPoint provides a unique, innovative multi-service delivery platform for low income communities – rural broadband to support healthcare services; modern workflow telemedical software based around electronic medical records that connects an urban doctor to the rural population; point-of-care diagnostics for more reliable diagnosis; and water treatment providing communities with safe drinking water at affordable price point of 10 paisa per liter. e-HealthPoint provided more than 30,000 consultations, 15,000 diagnostics, 35,000 prescriptions, and access to safe drinking water for more than 500,000 rural inhabitants. More than 60 percent of these clients are women and children.

Online Video Subtitling Service

The development of a software product, which, when integrated with popular Internet browsers adds subtitles automatically to the online videos currently being viewed. The project ensures that the pool of online videos with foreign content becomes more accessible to the Indian masses.

This year, two projects have been given special recognition in the Corporate Social Responsibility category – YES Bank’s Frugal Innovations for Financial Inclusion (FI4FI) that is enabling doorstep banking services, multi-channel and multi-platform banking through partners, and appraisal of micro loans and Adobe Systems’ Youth Voices project, a global initiative, which is designed to provide youth in underserved communities with the critical skills they need to become active and engaged members of their communities. This is encouraged through the active use of multimedia tools.The winners of NSIH 2012 have the opportunity to be mentored by known names from across industries through Centre for Innovation Incubation Centre, Ennovent and TiE Delhi.