Bengalurean bags Infy honour for Braille device

BENGALURU: City-based Sanskriti Dawle who developed Annie, a device that addresses low Braille literacy in India, is one of the 12 award winners at the first edition of Infosys Foundation’s Aarohan Social Innovation Awards, which were handed over on Tuesday.
Dawle, in her early 20s, has won accolades for developing the audiotactile device in assisting the visually impaired by helping them learn how to read, write and type in Braille monitored by parents or teachers.It
is accompanied by a content creation platform for interactive content and a companion app to track progress, schedule tests and homework. Dawle is the co-founder of Thinkerbell Labs, that started as an independent research project at the Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS) Pilani Goa campus. She won in the bronze category, which carries a prize money of Rs 10 lakh.
3 awardees from Davanagere
Among others, Davanagere-based Karibasappa MG, Dayananda K and Anil Kumar MK bagged the award under the jury special mentions category for developing a solar insect trap for agriculture. The teams won Rs 5 lakh. The Aarohan Awards were established to recognize individuals, teams or NGOs to catalyse innovations that would have a bearing on the lives of the underprivileged. The 12 social innovators are recognized for their breakthrough innovations and awarded a total prize money of Rs 1.7 crore. The awards identify entrepreneurs who develop unique solutions for the social sector, which have the potential to impact the underprivileged. “The Aarohan Social Innovation Awards were conceived as a means of creating impactful change at scale, by encouraging people to address social challenges in India,” said Sudha Murty, chairperson of Infosys Foundation. The winners are selected across five award categories: platinum, gold, silver, bronze and jury mentions.
The platinum and gold award winners are eligible for a residential technical mentorship at IIT Hyderabad for up to eight weeks to help them scale up their solutions. The jury assessed the submissions based on four broad criteria — application to real-world problems, innovative use of technology, originality of ideas and ease of use.