Many problems that we face in our daily life sometimes needs high tech solution but at an extremely affordable level. SRISTI pioneered the grassroots innovation movement as a part of the Honey Bee Network. National Innovation Foundation is taking this mission forward vigorously. SRISTI decided to promote originality, social, industrial, biotechnological and ecological connect through Techpedia.in platform seven years ago. It has pooled information around 200,000 engineering projects at the platform pursued by 550,000 students. The selected young tech innovators are given Gandhian Young Technological Innovation Award at a function, part of Festival of Innovation (FOIN), hosted by the Office of the President, Rashtrapati Bhavan assisted by NIF. Recently, It tied up with BIRAC (Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council) for giving BIRAC-SRISTI grants of Rs 15 lacs each to 15 tech students to take their innovative idea forward and 100 grants of Rs one lac each to take grassroots innovation and outstanding traditional knowledge forward in the broad field of biotechnological, medical devices and other related fields.

To illustrate, a technology viz., Automated opto-fluidic Microscope for Cellular Diagnostic Testing was awarded in 2016, Rs 15 lac fellowship/grant to Bindu Bhat, Veerendra Kalyan Jagannadh, Jayesh V. Adhikari, Albina L. Nirupa, and S Rashmi guided by Prof Sai Siva Gorthi, IISC, Bengaluru, Karnataka. If this idea goes forward, in situ that is, in field diagnostic of malaria and several other diseases will become extremely cheaper, affordable, and accessible to millions of common people of our country who cannot afford or access modern pathological lab facilities. It will use a lab on a chip. Neenu Jose, Athul.K.Raj, K R Athira, P Neenu, guided by prof Jinu Sebastian, Sahrdaya College of Engineering And Technology, Thirussur, Kerala, were sanctioned similar award of Rs 15 lac for Automatic Urine And Fecal Disposal System. Many of us have faced the problem of attending to daily needs of patients in hospital who can not go to toilet because of their poor health condition. Now, the newly designed bed will adjust to make toilet facilities available to patient on the bed itself through motorised mechanical faecal disposal system. Indian hospitals can then induct such facility for making the life of the patients and elderly people more convenient.

Automated Opto-fluidic Microscope for Cellular Diagnostic Testing

Shivani Gupta and Anuradha Pal developed an antibiotic finder for diagnosing urinary tract infection under the able guidance of Dr Suman Kapoor of BITS, Hyderabad campus, Andhra Pradesh. There are fourteen different kinds of infections which take today about 72 hours to diagnose. With this antibiotic finder, it will be possible to identify the right antibiotic in four hours and start the treatment early. These are just three example, see http://www.sristi.org/cms/sristi-birac for more information about these awards and also visit gyti.techpedia.in for innovations in other fields of engineering. Entries are being accepted for Gyti and birac-sristi awards at gyti@techpdia.in
India is poised to make extremely affordable solutions to the world through such initiatives. Shortly SRISTI will also have an incubator to support such technologies to become viable enterprises under the start-up India movement. We need every college of technology in the country to send nominations for GYTI awards so that distributed genius of our country can be recognised, and supported for scaling up her innovation based enterprise.