True Youth Icon !

Once upon a time, there lived young Krishnan all of 29, a Maduraite. He trained himself in Hotel Management and culinary skills. He worked in a Five Star Hotel and got a lucrative job offer in Switzerland. It was a dream come true. He decided to visit Madurai to bid farewell to all. But fate had other plans for him… The sight of the old and uncared for, starving was not new to Krishnan. India was full of such sights. Sleep deserted me that night as the old man’s image kept flitting in and out of my mind.” What is this human nature! It gets moved by such sights never to be forgotten. You would expect Krishnan to now sigh and say, ‘Ah, but what difference can I make after all..’ and continue Swiss-ward. But there you will be mistaken. His Swiss journey never happened. He HAD to act to orient himself to change the plight of these people.
The destitute.

The true hero !

Starting by cooking in his mother’s kitchen, and distributing food packets to the starving, mentally ill across the city he had to sometimes wash and bathe them, and feed them three meals a day. Literally. India has one quarter of the world’s hungry population and is facing an acute shortage of proper food resources. In such a scenario, N. Krishnan has taken the lead to change things in Madurai, to begin with. With a Maruti van that was donated by a well wisher, he reaches out to 120 people across Madurai giving them clean and home cooked food, never compromising on quality. With potable water filled in used plastic bottles collected from hotels, and steaming hot food, Krishnan brings a smile to the faces of the destitute. Some recognize his face, acknowledge the service, and even await his arrival. While some are in no condition to recognize him. He still goes on, hoping he can make a difference. He sure does.

With an estimate of 500 mentally ill people roaming the streets of Madurai, he strives to reach out to as many as possible while his perennial fear is that even if he fails to go one day, these people would start eating out of garbage again. Run entirely on donations from well wishers who contribute for the meals, his family chips in to make ends meet. He also puts his culinary skills to use by running a catering service that can serve 500 people. The profit from this serves to meet the needs of Akshaya Trust he started in 2002. Dismay of parents turned to supporting every stage of his growth and today he has been recognized in a few forums for his excellence and dedication to humanitarian service. He also won the CNN Heroes award in 2008. Success rests lightly on his shoulders however, as he works incessantly for his cause. Hunger is one of the most agonizing human experiences.

Deriving his energy and drive from the need to end the misery of Hunger in humans, he continues undaunted. Today he plans to establish a home for the mentally deranged women and feed, care for them. And so, many of the poor and hungry breathe easier, thanks to committed individuals such as these. With conscious action by every individual in their limited capacity, a difference can be made. Ask Mr. N Krishnan. Akshaya Trust can be contacted at 91-0452-4353439 or 91-98433-19933 or www.akshayatrust.org.

A Design For Jobs

RURAL CALL:

In 2006, veteran techies Dipak Basu, his wife Radha and a group of social entrepreneurs set up Anudip Foundation in West Bengal to provide employment to villagers through IT. 

The idea was to provide market-aligned skills,set up training centres in IT and English, and empower young people, says Radha. Farmer Atanu Mondal of Ashurali village in the Sunderbans is just one beneficiary. I have worked on transcriptions and on other projects in India and the US, he says. Since 2009 Anudip has set up district level outsourcing centres employing their own graduates to execute global and local projects. The road ahead is tough. It requires changing the work ethic of rural people and the mindset of urban employers, says Dipak. That’s Anudips biggest challenge !

A Light Touch !

SOLAR CITIZEN:

Just outside Bangalore, J Gajendran runs a small business enabled by his solar panels.

His neighbours, who have mobile phones but don’t have access to electricity, pay him Rs 5 per hour to plug their phones into his solar-powered batteries. This is possible, thanks to Magsaysay Award - winner Harish Hande whose Selco Solar creates solar energy products such as CFL and LED lamps, heaters and cooking stoves.

 

They are currently being used in 1.3 lakh households in Karnataka,Gujarat, Maharashtra, Bihar and West Bengal. It is extremely important for Indian enterprises to balance social, financial and environmental sustainability. That is the only way the social fabric of the country can be stable, says Hande.

http://www.selco-india.com/

Little Drops Of Life !

POUR PURE: He thirsts for transformation ! For 27 years Gourisankar Ghosh has tapped at an idea: providing potable water to Indias villages. That simple vision came alive three years ago in Hyderabad as Waterlife and has now spread across eight states.   Explains Ghosh: Rural population is increasing by the hour.Complete dependence on government for safe drinking water is not practical. The solution is to use technology and distribute water in small zones. Waterlife’s biggest test came in West Bengal when at least 50,000 villagers were saved from arcenicosis, a waterborne disease that leads to skin cancer. Life-saving steps like this make Waterlife confident of delivering safe water to all Indian states by 2020!

Mobile Medicos !

Healthcare is a buzz away, thanks to a venture that links patients with doctors by leveraging India’s exceptional mobile phone penetration. mHealth Ventures India, co-founded in 2010 by techie Gautam Ivatury and Dr Ajay Nair, has been used by 10,000 families across India so far.

Subscribers of MeraDoctor pay Rs 100 per month for unlimited phone consultations with 10 MBBS doctors in Hindi, Marathi and English. About 80% of callers get their health issues resolved in the first call without requiring follow-up visits to specialists or hospitals.

In rural India in particular, where quacks operate as healthcare practitioners, this service provides people with the basic healthcare consultation they require, says Nair.

http://meradoctor.co/

Gautam Ivatury and Dr Ajay Nair

Saving Little Lives - Life Saving Embrace

HEATING TOUCH: Around 8 million low birth weight babies are born in India each year. About 1.2 million of them die, many because of lack of access to a simple resource—heat. It’s this problem that Bangalore-based Embrace addresses. Started by four Stanford students—Jane Chen (in pic), Rahul Panicker, Naganand Murty and Linus Liang—the enterprise produces lightweight, portable Thermpod that performs the same function as a traditional incubator, albeit at 1% of the cost and a fraction of the power. “It was essential to create a product that did not depend on uninterrupted electricity and was not intimidating,” says Panicker, who saw too many donated incubators lying unused in hospitals for lack of technical know-how. Despite its size, Embrace is one giant step for the little ones !

WARM-UP EXERCISE: Rahul Panicker and Naganand Murty with the low-cost incubator

Bangalore-based start-up Embrace has created a low-cost infant warmer that promises to save the lives of premature babies who lack access to expensive incubators.
 In 2007, four students of Stanford University came together at the Institute of Design at Stanford, informally known as d.school. They were from different educational backgrounds and disciplines: Jane Chen was in an MBA programme, Rahul Panicker was working on his PhD in Artificial Intelligence, Naganand Murty was earning an MS in management science and engineering, and Linus Liang an MS in computer science. All they had in common was that they belonged to Stanford University and shared a love of design.

Together, they created something wonderful. It started as a class project for a module titled ‘Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability’.
 The challenge was to create a low-cost infant incubator. Initially, the group worked to create an inexpensive version of the incubator used in hospital NICUs, that cost between Rs 2 lakh and Rs 13 lakh.

 “We started making a cheaper glass box,” says Rahul Panicker. “But we realized something was wrong. We stopped in our tracks and asked ourselves: do we need a cheaper glass box or something that will save babies’ lives?” says Naganand Murty.

They went back to the drawing board, and started with the fundamental fact that low birth-weight babies need warmth. “Premature babies are born with very little subcutaneous fat. Most weigh less than 2.5kg, some only 850gm, and basically need to stay warm so their bodies can finish developing,” says Panicker.
The team developed a lightweight, portable device that worked just as well as an electricity-intensive incubator. The final product consists of three main components: a snug sleeping bag in which the baby can be wrapped, a pouch containing a patented phase-change material and a heater (running on electricity) in which this pouch can be heated and then inserted into the sleeping bag unit.

At 1% the cost of a traditional incubator, they had created a device equally good at saving vulnerable infant lives.
They won rave reviews on campus and many plan and design competitions, but there came a time when they had to decide what to do with their product. “We could have walked away from it but we didn’t have the heart to,” says Murty.

PRODUCTION FOR THE MASSES
So they returned to India and started versioning the product. Today, the Bangalore-based team runs a 30-member organization called Embrace, and launched their patented low-cost infant warmer in April 2011.
They conducted clinical trials across Karnataka and in rural areas of other states. “It was essential to create a product that does not depend on uninterrupted electricity and is not intimidating,” says Panicker, who reveals that in hospital after hospital, they saw donated incubators lying unused because there weren’t enough people who had the technical know-how to use it.
In comparison, their product can be used even by an unlettered mother — it just involves inserting the heating pad into the heater, warming it for 20 minutes, and placing it in the sleeping bag. Their best moment was watching a new mother in a Sargur hospital confidently operating the unit, says Murty.

Once the pad is heated, the charge lasts a minimum of four hours, and one heater can serve a single location. “Eventually, we plan to create units that are not dependent on electricity, using pads that can be heated by hot water,” explains Panicker.
They’ve placed about 50 units across hospitals in Bangalore and Karnataka and their manufacturing unit has the capacity to roll out 2,000 units in a quarter. Each unit is priced at Rs 11,000.

The team’s biggest challenge was cracking the distribution network. Now, they’ve forged a partnership with GE Healthcare to distribute the product in India and abroad.
Their vision is to make the product available in developing markets, and requests are pouring in on their website from countries like Peru, Bangladesh and the Philippines. That’s not all. In an interesting turn of events, researchers at Stanford University are working with Embrace’s product to see how it fits the needs of hospitals in the US. That’s the future.

Given the fact that 8 million low birthweight babies are born in India each year, and around 1.2 million of them die, this is a truly life-altering idea !

Source: The Times of India.