Chitkara University gets two millennium alliance awards for innovations in healthcare

Chandigarh: Chitkara University announced that the University had been a proud recipient of "Millennium Alliance (MA) Awards" in two categories of Healthcare and Agriculture. The University has been setting exceptional standards in the field of Research and Innovation, and these awards speak volumes of the research focused innovations on the campus.

Millennium Alliance is an inclusive platform to leverage Indian creativity, expertise, and resources to identify and scale innovative solutions being developed and tested in India to address development challenges that will benefit base of the pyramid population across India and the world. The MA is a network to bring together various actors within India's social innovation ecosystem including, but not limited to social innovators, philanthropy organizations, social venture capitalists, angel investors, donors, service providers, and corporate foundations, to stimulate and facilitate financial contributions from the private and public sectors and offer a range of support to innovators.

Under FICCI's leadership and in partnership with United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Technology Development Board (TDB), and other MA partners, the Alliance will provide innovators with services such as seed funding, grants, incubation and accelerator services, networking opportunities, business support services, knowledge exchange, and technical assistance, and will facilitate access to equity, debt, and other capital. Through the Millennium Alliance, USAID, FICCI, TDB, and other partners, will help realize India's role as a global innovation laboratory.

"It is an exceptionally proud moment for our organization to mark success in a big event like Millennium Alliance. The innovations PICU (Portable Intensive Care Unit) by Dr. Surya Narayan Panda, Director Research and E-DeWeeder by Dr. Nitin Saluja, Assistant Director Research, are national level innovations now emerging fast as a solution to severe social problems. The event Millennium Alliance helps social innovations to grow beyond the commercialization stage with seed funds and business development assistance in four different sectors. In round IV, total 24 projects are funded among more than 1000 applications. These awards vouch for the research and innovation focus we have on the campus at Chitkara University," said Dr. Madhu Chitkara.

The award ceremony was organized by FICCI, the coordinating agency of the alliance on July 20, 2017. The awards were distributed by Dr. Harsh Vardhan, Minister of Science and Technology, Government of India. The innovations are now being created for the market with funding of Rs 20 Lakhs for innovation lead by Dr. Surya Narayan Panda and 30 Lakhs for innovation lead by Dr. Nitin Saluja.