Technology Review identifies 20 Indian innovators

BANGALORE, INDIA: Twenty young Indian innovators, all under the age of 35, from a wide range of fields, including biotechnology, materials, computer hardware, energy, transportation and the Internet, are being honored by Technology Review India, the Indian edition of the international technology magazine Technology Review.

On March 8-9, during EmTech India Conference 2010 in Bangalore, Technology Review India will unveil its first ever TR35 India list, which recognizes the game-changing achievements of young Indian inventors, the magazine said in a press release today.

“The prestigious TR35 list acknowledges the outstanding innovators whose superb technical work holds great promise to shape the next decades,” says Narayanan Suresh, group editor of Technology Review India.

The 2010 class of India TR35 winners have all demonstrated either development of new technology or the creative application of existing technologies to solve problems from the shores of India.

From among the Top 20 Indian innovators, Technology Review India has handpicked three Indians – Kranthi Kiran Vistakula, Rikin B. Gandhi and Dhananjaya Dendukuri - for special honors.

Twenty nine-year old MIT alumnus and founder of Ahmedabad-based Dhama Apparel Innovations, Kranthi Kiran Vistakula has been chosen as innovator of the year for creating a technology that can exchange heat as required.

Kranthi’s innovation, called ClimaCon, is a technology, which when used in a jacket, can provide comfort to the user in temperatures ranging from -30°C to +50°C by maintaining the body temperature of the user between 18-40°C.

Another MIT alumnus and founder of Bangalore-based Digital Green, Rikin B. Gandhi, has won the social innovator of the year title for creating a solution to help farmers adopt better farming practices.

Digital Green uses locally produced videos of sustainable agriculture techniques as a means to enhance the effectiveness of agriculture extension workers who help farmers become more productive.

Yet another MIT alumnus, CEO and Cofounder, Achira Labs, Dhananjaya Dendukuri has won the humanitarian of the year honor for creating a novel microfluidic-chip based platform to perform low-cost medical diagnostic tests.

The new platform from the 32-year old Bangalore-based innovator allows samples of blood, urine, saliva, or other body fluids to be loaded directly on to a plastic microfluidic chip and tested for the presence of multiple analytes in a few minutes.

The India TR35 list will be released in the March 2010 issue of the Indian edition of Technology Review at the emerging technologies conference, EmTech 2010, to be held at Bangalore from March 8. The 20 members of the TR 35 list will also be presenting their inventions at the conference

The jury members who selected the innovators included MV Shankar, principal scientist & general manager - R&D, Dow Chemicals International, Pune; K. Vijay Raghavan, director, national center for biological sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bangalore; PK Sinha, chief coordinator - R&D, center for development of advanced computing, Pune; K. Ananth Krishnan, vice president and chief technology officer, Tata Consultancy Services, Chennai; Sharad Sharma, member, Indian angel Network, Entrepreneur in Residence at Cannan Partners, executive council member at NASSCOM, and chairman at Movico Technologies; Jaswinder Ahuja, corporate vice president, Cadence – India Operations; Mohanjit Jolly executive director, Draper Fisher Jurvetson Limited, India; Ambuj Sagar, Vipula and Mahesh Chaturvedi professor of Policy Studies, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi; D Balasubramanian, director of research, LV Prasad Eye Institute, Hyderabad; Vishwanatha Poosala, head of Bell Labs – India, Alcatel-Lucent, Bangalore; Sushil Borde, innovation advisor, Reliance Innovation, Leadership Center Reliance Industries Pune; Kumar N. Sivarajan, chief technology officer, Tejas Networks, Bangalore; Shouvick Mukherjee, vice president and CEO, Yahoo India - R&D and G. Jagannath Raju, Systemantics India, Bangalore.