3 Indian teams in race for Singapore social entrepreneurship award

By the end of this week, an idea to make the world a better place which till now was on paper will turn into reality.


Supporting the idea and the brain behind it will be a group of experts from across the world, mentoring by professionals and a grant of up to SGD20,000.

Young Social Entrepreneurs

, a platform under non-profit organisation Singapore International Foundation, which has been nurturing innovative business ideas focused on social good for eight years now, will announce the winner for its ninth year on October 18.

After filtering 500 applications from 22 countries, 15 social enterprises—one each from Thailand, Singapore, Pakistan, Bangladesh and New Zealand, two each from Cambodia and Malaysia and three each from Indonesia and India—were shortlisted after a four-day workshop in March in Singapore.

The three teams from India vying for the winning spot include

Ubuntu Micro Irrigation

by Ajay Etikala, whose mission is to reduce financial burden on farmers by providing them with affordable low-cost micro-irrigation systems—which are 80% cheaper than the market rate.

The second is

Parched Foodworks

by Shreya Shukla, Vatsal Shukla & Abhinav Jaiswal. Their idea tries to solve the problem of up to 50% wastage in the fruit and vegetable supply chain in India by setting up dehydration centres at village level run by farmers. Fruits and vegetables will be semi-dried and transported to the nearest processing centre. By doing so, transportation cost reduces drastically and farmers get to choose when and how much they want to process, thus reducing distress selling, food wastage and increasing farmers’ income by 30-40%.

The third is

Tactopus Learning Solutions

by Chandni Rajendran and Saloni Mehta, who make study material for children with vision impairment so that non-availability of study material for them does not hinder their learning process. An interactive audio companion through a smartphone app makes it possible for the child to learn independently using books and games.

The writer was in Singapore at the invitation of the Singapore International Foundation