L-RAMP Award Winners 2007

Following an elite education and tenure with a blue chip corporate, Mr. Sanjit ‘Bunker’ Roy left to start his work with the poor. He established the Social Work and Research Centre (SWRC) – better known as the Barefoot College – in Tilonia, a village in Rajasthan, one of India's largest, driest and poorest states. "Barefoot" refers to rural people and the poor. The College focuses on imparting employment generating, modern technological skills to the illiterate and school drop outs in areas such as water engineering, solar power, income generation, medicine and other topics to empower their own communities. Through the College’s work, Mr. Roy has proved how adept India’s masses are with emerging technologies. The organization has trained hundreds of technicians in remote villages in 13 Indian states over the past 30 years through a self-help model that respects local knowledge and capability and promotes local organizations to make community decisions. He is the recipient of several awards like the Schwab Foundation Award, the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, the German Nuclear Free Future Award and the St. Andrew’s Prize. In the picture, Dr.S. Anandalakshmy receives the Lifetime Achievement Award on behalf of Sunjit Bunker Roy.

Mr. M. J. Prabu presently writes for the Farmer’s Notebook, a column that has been published by “The Hindu” for nearly 4 decades as a weekly feature. He writes on a wide range of issues that concern agriculture and the allied sectors – horticulture, animal husbandry, aquaculture, floriculture, cultivation, farm equipments, arecanut, bio-fuels, cocoa, coconut, cotton, foodgrains, spices, poultry, tea, technology etc. Mr. Prabu’s articles on these themes provide continued coverage of a wide range of issues, thus creating a space where farmers can gain reliable knowledge about latest developments/practices created in the country’s labs by leading scientists and on the country’s lands, by fellow farmers, with scope for continuing dialogue. This has contributed greatly to the spread of knowledge, know-how, technology, and practices.

As a banana cultivator, Ms M. Lalitha noticed the wastage of a large portion of the stem of the banana. To turn this ‘waste’ into wealth, she has developed a process and machine to extract “banana cotton”, from which good quality yarn can be obtained. For the first time, she has been able to develop a fabric made wholly of yarn from banana stem (both in weft and warp in weaving). This innovation is bound to create additional wealth for banana cultivators from what is now largely waste.

The Aavishkaar India Micro Venture Capital Fund (“Aavishkaar”) is a venture fund founded in 2001 to promote development in rural and semi-urban India. Aavishkaar believes entrepreneurs can be a powerful force for development. To this end, the Fund provides micro-equity funding (Rs. 10 Lakhs to Rs. 2 Crore), and operational and strategic support to commercially viable companies increasing income in or providing goods and services to rural or semi-urban India. They have invested in small/medium enterprises in sectors such as energy, health, dairy and IT, leading to the creation of significant societal impact. Mr. Vineet Rai is CEO of Aavishkaar.

Servals Automation Pvt. Ltd.Headed by Mr. P. Mukundan, Servals is a Chennai-based company that focuses on developing and marketing energy-saving innovations that benefit the poor. The company’s Venus energy saving burner is robust, cheap, long lasting and has efficiency of up to 30% more than existing burners. The Plant Oil Stove developed by the company offers users a choice to substitute expensive kerosene with locally available plant oil to the extent of about 25%. This is a boon to rural and low income people. Servals has built a viable business for serving the poor and rural consumers.

Mr. R. Sivasaravanan is a mechanical engineer and design consultant based in Chennai. He has developed a novel approach to increase the performance of IC engines through an innovative design of the connecting rod and geared drive mechanism. His innovation generates trapezoidal piston velocity variation instead of current sinusoidal pattern. This innovation has a potential for creating impact through fuel savings in auto industry.

Mr. M. Parthasarathy, a Chennai-based entrepreneur, has developed an alternative to surface mounted pumps used in open wells. This pump works on a floating platform, thereby reducing suction head and avoids the problem of dry running. The innovation will be able to deliver energy savings due to overall efficiency achieved and deliver further savings by preventing damage to the pump.

Mr. Mani, a businessman from Sivagiri in Erode district, has developed this innovation based on the felt needs for basic mechanized implements in agriculture. This machine works with equally effectiveness for threshing several crops like paddy, wheat, maize, blackgram, groundnut etc. It is safe, has high productivity, reduces losses and can be attached to any type of tractor.

Mr. G. Ravichandran, a young farmer from the Namakkal district in Tamilnadu, has developed a simple and easily transportable motorized device for dehusking coconuts. Coconuts are fed at one end and come out as dehusked coconuts at the other end. The machine has a high output of 400 coconuts per hour, is safe and easy to operate. In addition, the innovation has the advantage of being operated via a tractor, and delivers husk in a manner where it can be easily processed.