Awards

TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs) is a global nonprofit dedicated to fostering entrepreneurship. TiE has 57 chapters in 14 countries, with a total membership exceeding 13,000. TiE is most closely affiliated with the South Asian business community, and is recognized as an important networking forum for entrepreneurs and investors.

TiEcon is the world's largest annual conference for entrepreneurs with participation from top technology companies, leading venture capital firms, and global service providers. It attracts over 3,000 attendees from across the world that collectively impacts a significant portion of high technology businesses worldwide. These attendees span the spectrum of CEOs of mature companies to first-time entrepreneurs creating new companies to financial market experts and government policy makers.

Luna Ergonomics was the winner of Tiecon 50 awards in 2011, as one of top 50 winners and top 10 in Mobile.

This award can help a lot but I am unable to stay in Silicon Valley and meet people. During our short stay, we were called to present at the Intel HQ at Santa Clara and a presentation to the Director of Disruptive Innnovations, Mr Quinn Jacobson and his team at the Nokia Research Center at Page Mill Road, a visit to Google HQ and some others.

RCR-Wireless is a reputed trade magazine based in USA and read worldwide.

We are extremely proud we were selected winner in the category of mobile innovations by their Editors alongside many large companies who won in other categories. The world of mobile applications is really very numerous and diverse and there are always the ones that the media is going ballistic about, so its hard to notice any of the others. In such a scenario, our entry from far away India getting the attention of the jury and their bold decision to give us the award of that category is extremely commendable.

Calling All Innovators was a contest run by Nokia Forum in 2009.

We were winners of the Judges Choice award in category of Emerging Markets and Mobile Necessities. This was one of our earliest awards.

The funny thing is we never got an email notification of our winning. We found out later while Google searching. :) Sudhir Syal of ET NOW says he was there is Stuttgart when it was announced.

The Asian Innovation Awards are announced by the Wall Street Journal. We have been declared to be one of the 12 Finalists on 15 Aug 2012. As a finalist, each company will be profiled in WSJ Asia. The winner will be declared and awarded in Nov 2012 in an event in Hong Kong

Microsoft BizSpark organised the Annual Start up Challenge starting in 2009. We were hot contenders to be the winners of it which had a large prize money.

Here is Shramana Mitra's blog on our chances of winning the award. We were Finalists.

This one we are very proud about because it was a recognition from NASSCOM, well researched on social innovation and the awards were given in a well attended show in Mumbai. And my angel investor Lt Gen Gokarn received the award from Mr Kapil Sibal.

Here is our AVP Business, Surjendu Kuila speaking to media after the awards.

Because we were winners of this, Nasscom called us to meet Mr Thomas Friedman when he visited India.

This award is extremely prestigious because the FICCI, along with Dept of Science and Technology, Govt of India engages an empowered group from University of Texas to scout for innovation in India which should be helped for commercialization. They go about all govt labs, CSIR labs, private labs and other things and decide on winners who are supported through this program in which Lockheed Martin is also a partner. It is called the India Innovation Growth Program. I think the best part is occasional unbiased third party recognition of work that is being done in labs of India is a good thing because (most) of our scientific labs are otherwise only filled with politics, nepotism and sloth.

We were spotted by Mr Len Denton, a member of the team when he visited the Incubator in Noida where we operate from.

The Economic Times held the Power of Ideas contest for the first time in 2009 during which they undertook considerable publicity of it countrywide and over 12000 applied. The contest was held over several rounds. The contests of Economic Times are definitely the ones that are the most well participated in India. The newspaper is strong but they also spend considerable amounts in outdoor promotion and others.

We were one of the winners and the staff of Economic Times have written about us kindly several times ever since.

We applied for the Power of Ideas again in 2010 for a different idea Shiva whose reference you will find on this website. This is about a proposed script reform which is so fascinating that you will be blown away. The finalists went through a 10 days capsule in IIM, Ahmedabad which I quite enjoyed because milling around with other entrepreneurs was a lot of fun plus I have never been in a MBA classroom. We got a cash award of Rs 2 lakhs handed by Mr Narayanmurthy as winners.

Economic Times was kind with us again and when Mr Anish Chopra and Vivek Kundra, the CTO and CIO of Obama Administration were visiting New Delhi and wanted to meet some entrepreneurs, we were invited for a protracted luncheon with them. That was cool. I made friends with Mr Mark Temple, the scientific officer at the US Embassy who has been supportive. He even invited me to an event on Innovation when Ms Hillary Clinton was in New Delhi.

This one is a cool one. Over the years, the proto had gathered a considerable reputation amongst the start up community. This one was held in the IIT, Mumbai and was very well organized. It was also very well attended by the investor community and tech enthusiasts of Mumbai. We did extremely well on that day in our 6 min presentation and were given attention by several VCs soon after that episode.
Here is a TV coverage of that event.

I have no idea how we came up on their radar but was most pleasantly surprised that we were going to be given that award. It was a truly memorable beautiful windy evening in the Taj Lands End. And the prize was handed by Mr Ramadorai, CEO of TCS. Look, I am standing next to Ms Mini Menon, former Miss India. :) I am very happy Gen Gokarn, my God like angel investor came for this event.

These awards are given by the Aegis School of Business, Mumbai in a well organized function. I was blown away by the fact that we were given the award despite the presence of several industry heavy weights in our category. Later someone informed us that we were given 100% in all the areas by the Jury.

The mBillionth Awards are given by the DEF (Digital Empowerment Foundation), based in New Delhi which has grown very quickly under the leadership of Mr Osama Manzar and their events are participated by lots of stake holders from all over South Asia. We are proud we were given the mBillionth award, during which we had a chance to demonstrate the Panini Keypad to the Secy of IT and many others. We had a stall. And the HT MINT covered us.

The Manthan Awards are also given by the DEF and the list of collaborating entities is really very large. The event in 2011 was very well attended and included several ministers and many dignitaries from South Asia and Africa. The award itself, which is made of two elephant tusks is very attractive indeed.

There was a Nasscom AppFame contest in which our company was represented by Surjendu. We didn't actually win the award, but Surjendu was shown by a member of the Jury that we got the highest marks but it should be given to others because we were winning too many awards. :)

This was an Innovation award given by the Indira Group of Industries in Pune. They were kind to find out about us and give us their recognition. My friend Cdr Piush Pawsey, who was posted in NDA then, received this award on our behalf.

We won the Red Herring Global Award also. The awards were given away in Los Angeles. I couldn't go to receive this.

We won the Red Herring Asia 100 which was held in Shanghai and I went to receive it. The best part was I could meet so many other entrepreneurs that had come from so many other countries. Much later I found out that the Red Herring awards are bit of a vanity awards, there is a steep fee to apply for them. But there were excellent companies there so we take pride in it.

We were featured in their program and shown on ET NOW on 30 Dec 2011.

THINK! (The Innovation Knowledge Foundation) is an international no-profit research institute - a think tank - whose aim is to collect, process, share and circulate information concerning the ways in which ICT and digital technologies can enable innovation processes, economic growth and human development in mature, emerging and less developed countries in an era of environmental sustainability.