Nandan Nilekani
Innovation award launched by Mr.NandanNilekani
In keeping with the tradition of promoting talent at their alma mater, the ’89batch of IIT Delhi has instituted theIIT Delhi Class of ’89Innovation award for students of IIT Delhi. There could have hardly been a better candidate than the Aadhar chairman and Padma Vibhushan awardee, Mr.NandanNilekani to launch this award. To get hold of this prestigious award and prize money of Rs. 2 Lakh, students need to produce a work of genuine innovation that benefits masses, especially the weaker segments of society.
On this, Mr. Nilekani - an IIT alumnus himself spoke about the importance and necessity of creative products across different fields. He elaborated on the challenges faced during the implementation of UID project and the innovation models that his team came up with, to resolve them. To implement the project at a speedy rate, Aadhar set ‘Registrar’ system in place. As there are 70 different agencies or Registrars present, they would compete with each other to get their share of revenues for successful issuing of Aadhar Ids. He also gave some insights on how technology will be used at an unprecedented level and thesafeguards in place to avoid misuse of technology. He highlighted the contribution of interns and volunteers for the project and termed it Human resource innovation.
Adding colour to the celebrations of the IIT Delhi golden jubilee year, the honourable director of IIT Delhi, Mr.S. Prasad, also announced the setting up of an innovation centre as a part of the Foundation of Innovation in Technology Transfer (FITT), which will finance innovative ideas of fellow IITians.
The Innovation award is initiated in the memory of late Dr. Partha Niyogi and late Mr. Samir Anand, (both of whom were students of the class of ’89). Mr. Rahul Bhargava, another ’89 pass out and an instrumental figure in setting up this award, stressed upon practicability, scalability, benefit to commoners and being realistic enough to be executed,as the judging criteria for selecting the winner for this award.Mr.Ashwani Sharma another alumnus contributed generously to have this award in place.
Mr.Nilekani answered audience's queries thereafter. Mr. Nilekani summed up his speech with the words, “Innovation happens when you stretch your limitations”. The statement was one of the highlights of the event which was a rare colosseum of a perceptive crowd and the applause it generated was proof enough of the fact that innovation is at the heart of IIT Delhi culture.