Indian innovator wins $50000 at annual tech awards

California: M.G. Venkatesh Mannar, who fabricated the brand new idea to fortify salt with iron, won a $50,000 cash prize at the 10th annual Tech Awards in California, reports India West.

The Canada-based Micronutrient Initiative by Mannar gained the Nokia Health Award at the 10th annual Tech Awards gala. Mannar has developed a way to fortify salt with both iodine and iron in a way that makes better nutrition affordable to millions. His so-called Double-Fortified Salt, which endorses brain development and enhances health and productivity, protects 3.6 million people from anemia and iodine insufficiency daily in Tamil Nadu at a cost of two rupees per kilo.

Mannar estimates that 75 percent of India's women are iron-deficient. Adding to this, newborns need iron to boost brain development. This made Mannar and his fellow researchers to think about compensating this deficiency with salt, which will be taken in everyday whatsoever. "Those two deficiencies are widespread in India, because the nutrients are not in the food they eat, even in communities who grow their own food, the one ingredient they must always procure from outside is salt" told Mannar.

In another instance to make American Indians proud, Rajesh Shah of the Blue Planet Network in Redwood City, won the $50,000 Intel Environment Award for his project, the Peer Water Exchange, a unique online platform that allows more than 70 independent water groups in 23 countries to collaborate to learn from each other to implement small-scale water and sanitation projects. The project affects more than 300,000 people in local communities.

According to Shah, many water NGOs are forced to compete against each other for funding dollars, or they are crippled by microcredit schemes that demand interest rates of from 24-30 percent."The funding sector wants you to compete," Shah told India-West. "But we want to throw away the competition. We make competitors collaborators. The problem is so big that we need every possible solution." Another project making a deep impact in South Asia is the BBC World Service Trust, whose 'BBC Janala' (window) uses mobile phones as a way to bring English lessons to 1.8 million users in the farthest corners of Bangladesh - for the price of a cup of tea. BBC Janala took the $50,000 Microsoft Education Award.