India saw the quarter started with a severe impact of the 2nd wave of Covid19, with record-high cases and distress, in April and May. Large parts of the country faced lockdowns. Since mid-May, cases have declined and the country has opened up in June. During this tough period, WIN Foundation contributed to a program to cater to the survival needs of urban poor and homeless in the communities of Ahmedabad, by our partner, MHT.

All through the pandemic, WIN Foundation has focused on the following:

1. How to best support partners and communities, to ensure that our projects continue and then recover once things return to normal.
2. Generate new ideas, proposals, and activities, which create long-term impact potential.

Under our Innovative Product Market validation support scheme we recently introduced an innovative technology for Modular Cold Chain solutions, developed by Tan90 Thermal Solutions, in the Kutch, Gujarat, through our community partner Kutch Fodder Fruit & Forest Development Trust, together with Tata Power - Mundra, Kutch. This enables better storage and transportation for Fresh Vegetables, Fruits, Flowers, etc., for longer life.

To enable better use of data from the several waters, weather, and soil measurement equipment from startups we introduced last year, we are working on a web+mobile application to provide integrated data storage on the cloud, and dashboard views with combined data, to generate advisory for smart agriculture and water conservation.

To deepen and scale up the empowerment at the grassroots through skilling, we are developing an online skilling platform ”Skilling-to-WIN”, using the open edx platform from MIT/Harvard. The platform is offered to other NGOs and skilling providers at no cost, to offer their skilling programs for social impact.

Under our collaboration with the iTIC Incubator at IIT Hyderabad, to scout new technologies/solutions for critical technology needs in (i) Maternal Child health and (ii) Water and sanitation, we launched `WIN Challenge - Track 1’ for AI/ML solutions for -Child Growth and Health Monitoring.

We have signed an MOU with Coastal Power Gujarat Ltd (a subsidiary of Tata Power Ltd) CGPL with an objective to explore areas of cooperation for supporting grassroots innovations and social impact startups.

Need for Social Impact Innovations

Innovations for social impact domains are essential to make a quantum jump in improving the quality of life, livelihoods, and earnings, for the poor and lower-middle-class communities, and particularly among the rural and tribal areas in the country.

Empowerment of the community to take ownership of the adoption process is a must, including quality skilling, for innovations to take root and succeed. This also increases the circular economy within the community, maintains social vitality, and brings in a strong sense of self-governance.

Following are some examples of the strong community impact of innovative technologies, products, and services:

1. Digital Technologies and platforms now serve as access points for delivering a variety of electronic services to villages, encourage digital and financial inclusivity, promote rural entrepreneurship, and building rural livelihoods.
2. Point of care health tech devices enables field health workers to provide better value-added health services for improved diagnostic and therapeutic care to rural and tribal areas, as well as urban slums.
3. In agriculture, which employs maximum people in rural India, new technologies, coupled with smart farming practices, help farmers shift from input-intensive agriculture to knowledge-intensive agriculture.
4. Water recharge structures and water level and flow monitoring help water security for villages, assuring them water for the household, agricultural, and other needs.

In subsequent pages, we give many examples of WIN Foundation's experiences in introducing the above innovations.

1. Tell us something about your journey in innovations for society?

As a 20 year doing Bachelor in Engineering in Bangalore, the thought that my work ought to improve lives became strong in my mind and influenced most of my major career decisions. After completing my Masters in Electrical and Computer Engineering in the US, my professional journey began with a 6-year stint of purely engineering-focused R & D work at Bell Laboratories, working at the forefront of Information Technology research. The motive that impelled me then to leave behind such engineering-focused corporate research to become a “penniless graduate student” of interdisciplinary studies at MIT was the observation that, while we do know how to produce a technological artifact, because of lack of well-developed theories about how that artifact impacts its environment (e.g., market, policy, society), we fail to address some of our most pressing challenges, such as hunger and poverty.

My journey as a socio-technologist began at MIT during my Ph.D. in Engineering Systems (now called “MIT Institute for Data Systems and Society”). Here, I learned to apply cutting-edge tools to study, design, and implement large-scale socio-technical systems comprising both technological and human complexity. Since then, the long-term objective that has motivated my research, and therefore driven the selection of short-term projects within it, is: How can we avoid the gross inequity in the Information world, which we still endure in the material world?

2. Why are innovations critical for social impact? How can they be promoted on a larger scale among the communities and how can communities be partners in the process?

Innovations — be it technological, commercial, or behavioral — offer a way to induce non-linear improvements in society. For example, biometric ID like Aadhaar had a visible impact on financial inclusion in a non-linear fashion. Such an impact in a limited time frame is more likely with technological innovations.

While Aadhaar is a top-down intervention, many bottom-up innovations can be developed for and with society. Such efforts are visible in all domains like health, water, agriculture, energy, environment, etc. In my experience, promoting such innovations on a large scale requires a clear understanding of the problem faced by the society; a high-quality solution that is affordable, stable and reliable; and a business model that is inclusive of the communities that engage in producing, distributing and using the solution.

The core logic behind community partnership is the following: one can pass on something to the community only if the product or service commands enough margin based on the value created that someone would pay for. Such margin is a function of the quality of technology and/or service. Of course, the innovator needs a mindset to share it equitably; in other words, to distribute a part of one’s own profit to maximize the impact.

3. What are key initiatives taken by the Atal Innovation Mission for supporting innovations, important for society, across the country?

At one level, with its mandate to create a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship throughout the country, all of the work supported by the Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) has a societal angle. Our innovation ecosystem, with all its fervor and excitement, is still in an early stage, having tapped only a small portion of our nation’s creative potential. Also, the innovation infrastructure seeded by Atal Innovation Mission via the various Atal Tinkering Labs, Atal Incubation Centers, and Atal Community Innovation Centers is yet to see a self-sustaining revenue model. AIM's work fills this market gap to create an ecosystem for society.

To support infrastructure for innovation specifically focused on societal impact, AIM launched Atal Community Innovation Centers (ACIC), with the goal to spur community innovation in underserved and unserved areas of the country. Presently, there are eight ACICs across the nation operated by community organizations. The nature of problems and innovations in these centers are distinctly different from those in incubation centers located in large cities. One not only finds the local problems being articulated but also the innovators who understand them and are passionate about solving the problems of their communities. The nature of support they need is also different: being able to operate in regional language, tools to develop personally as well as technical skills, and so on. The mandate of this program is to have 50 such centers.

4. How do you see the role of foundations like WIN Foundation in social innovation for social impact?

Foundations like WIN Foundation bring a unique form of support to the social impact space, with a rare combination of both the grassroots as well as global experience. They have empathy for the problems of our underserved communities, an understanding of what can be done in terms of innovation to address them, and the sophistication to help innovators operate in the most structured markets. It is my hope that their work will help us harness the immense creativity exhibited by innovators that hail from the second, third, and fourth-tier cities of our nation. Presently, I see much potential in these areas yet a weak innovation ecosystem to support them. WIN Foundation’s operation in this geography can produce a win-win for everyone.

About Dr. Chintan Vaishnav :

Dr. Chintan Vaishnav, is currently Mission Director, Atal Innovation Mission, Niti Aayog, Government of India. He is a Senior Lecturer at MIT's Sloan School of Management and is Academic Director and a member of the founding team of MIT Tata Center for Technology and Design. He is a socio-technologist, and his work encompasses understanding human as well as technological complexity in large systems, and creating socio-technical systems for improving lives in underserved communities. He holds a Ph.D. in Engineering Systems from MIT. He also holds a BA in Indian Classical Music.

Dr. Rajul Patkar
Founder of Proximal
Soilsense Technologies We started a technology pilot with Win Foundation and their community partners, ACT (Arid Communities and Technologies). A few brainstorming sessions along with WIN and ACT paved the way to add a few more important features to the existing platform that would not only benefit ACT but would also help SoilSens in improving the product for other stakeholders. Win foundation has not only connected us to ACT but also their other partners like CGPL and KFFFT. I would like to state that working with WIN Foundation would be akin to working with an extended family. The support that WIN Foundation, especially Mr.Paresh Vora and Dr.Yogesh Jadeja, provided to SoilSens is invaluable.

User's Voice:
Koli Dharamshi Baubhai, Sharneshwar near Badalpar village says that” The soil testing process is new to me, and I have done it for the first time for my farmland and I will start mixing the necessary ingredients which will improve the condition of my soil in the coming monsoon season. Samerth’s team has provided me the necessary information for the improvement of my farmland.”

Tan90 thermal solutions are working on cost-effective de-centralized cold chain solutions aimed at marginal farmers. Through WIN Foundation, we have deployed our energy-efficient cold storage, meant for both storage and transport in Kutch, with Samriddhi as the community partner. Creating awareness about cost-effective cold storage is of primary importance, particularly when marginal farmers are the users. WIN Foundation, along with Samriddhi has helped us in setting up infrastructure, thereby creating awareness among the users. Not only that, WIN Foundation is working closely to evaluate the impact of the installed units, which forms the baseline for future installations that can reduce post-harvest losses, primarily for low value, high volume, and highly perishable leafy vegetables during the peak summer or during lockdown periods. We are excited to take our partnership ahead with the firm belief of creating more impact at the grassroots.

Dr. Soumalya Mukherjee
Co-Founder, Tan90 thermal solutions

Maternal and Child Health / Nutrition / Med devices - Innovations

User's Voice
Alimelu, HoD, Neonatology, Niloufer Hospital, Hyderabad

I have been associated with Parisodhana for almost the last 3 years and we have done research on Neowarm. This is a very good simple device to keep the babies warm, with a lot of application possibilities, especially in the winter season. Even the radiant warmer is not keeping them warm enough for them and they start getting colder. If the baby gets hypothermic i.e cold, it does not use the glucose or the milk that the baby takes in properly as it is diverted to maintain the body temperature rather than giving heat. This device gives the baby warmth and helps in improving the babies’ weight. I see a lot of potential in the coming winter season we look forward to lot more babies being saved with this simple device.