Tag Archives: awards

Pune’s @SuhasKelkar, Pradeep Kulkarni, @Amdocs, @Allscripts win awards at Confluence 2013

Pune had a strong showing at the excellence awards given out at the recently held globalization conference, Confluence 2013, held in Bangalore by Zinnov (a globalization and market expansion advisory firm), with Punekars winning 2 individual awards (3 if you look closely), and 4 company awards.

At the conference – whose theme this year was “Unlocking India’s Innovation Potential,” Zinnov recognized individuals and companies in 7 different categories. There were 200+ nominations from 50+ companies (mostly MNCs).

Here is the list of Punekars who won:

  • Pradeep Kulkarni, Distinguished Engineer, Symantec, one of two winners of the “Technical Role Model (Senior Level)” award, for “technology stalwarts and have served by example and inspired individuals both within their organization and beyond to emulate them and follow a technical career path”. Note: the second winner in this category, is Sairam Veeraswamy, of EMC, who is also ex-Veritas, ex-Pune, so Pune can take some credit for him too.

  • Suhas Kelkar, CTO (APAC), BMC Software, one of two winners in the “Thought Leadership” category, for “visionaries or have demonstrated original thinking and contributed ideas and/or to initiatives that have had an impact on the overall technology ecosystem.” This is the second year in a row that Suhas has won this award.

Amongst the company awards, these Pune companies won:

  • Amdocs, one of two winners for “Best in Class Ability to Create Next Generation Leaders”, for “MNC Centers that have created a sustainable leadership engine. The company’s mechanism to create and feed leadership roles (both local and global) in a sustainable manner through programs to identify, train and groom talent was assessed.”
  • Allscripts, one of two winners for “Most Successful Attrition Management (Software/Internet R&D Companies)”, in other words, “MNC Technology centers that have successfully managed attrition within their organizations despite the industry average of ~11% in the last year. The assessment criteria, apart from the attrition numbers, evaluated the proactive measures taken by organizations to understand their employees’ needs as well as the innovative practices introduced to develop and retain people”
  • Honeywell, for “Innovation – Potential to Solve Large Problems”. This recognizes “organizations that have successfully solved or are in the process of solving large problems that has or will have a significant impact on society. These problems being addressed can be planet scale, restricted to developed markets or emerging markets but should have been addressed in the last (12 – 18 months) with the India Center playing a significant role in the initiative.”
  • Mercedes-Benz R&D. Same as above.

Suhas Kelkar, CTO (APAC) of BMC Software, “In general we Punekars had a STRONG presence there, an indication of rising importance of Pune belt in Software Products ecosystem. This is not just my opinion, but a general feeling expressed by various people at the conference.”

Encrypted Video Distribution Platform Idea, L3, wins Wipro-Wharton Award

A new idea for a video distribution platform called L3, by Pune’s Prof. Anil Gupte, has won the “best Customer-centric New Idea” award in the Wipro-Wharton Innovation Tournament, 2011.

Here is a video of Anil Gupte giving an overview of L3:

If you don’t see a video above, click here to see it on YouTube

L3 has received multiple awards this year, including:

  • Selected as on of the top 5 finalists in the Economic Times Power of Ideas Competition conducted by the Center for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE), IIM Ahmedabad. CIIE along with Dr. Narayan Murthy extended Seed Funding to this venture.
  • Selected as one of the Category Winner at the DST-Lockheed Martin India Innovation Growth Program.
  • Selected as one of the Red Herring Global 100 (Innovative ideas and ventures).
  • Winner of the Wipro-Wharton Global Innovation Challenge in the category of New Consumer-Centric Innovations, felicitated at the Wharton campus.

Prof. Gupte is part of the senior management team at Amplify Mindware, a group of educational institutions that are part of the Bharati Vidyapeeth family.

NASSCOM Showcase of Start-up Innovative Companies

What: NASSCOM Innovation Awards 2008 for Startups – Startup showcase and awards function
When: Tuesday, 23rd December, 10am to 3pm
Where: ICC Trade Towers, A Wing, hall no 5. Senapati Bapat Marg
Registration and Fees: This is free for all. No registration required.

Details:
Set off in 2004, the NASSCOM Innovation Awards 2008 will mark the fifth edition of the Awards. With several organizations realizing the value of Innovation and actively nurturing it, we are sure that the past year has been one where the Indian IT Industry has broken established precepts with path breaking ideas that have brought value to both its customers and itself. To continue their growth and to attain newer heights, Indian firms need to recognize the importance of “Innovation” for maintaining their competitive edge and driving further growth.

The NASSCOM Innovation Awards, currently in its fifth edition, is a key initiative by NASSCOM to highlight the true innovators in the Indian IT industry. Through this initiative, we hope that the award winners will provide a ‘light house’ effect and further spur the innovation movement in India.

On December 23rd, we will showcase start-up companies who have been short listed in the Business Innovation, Market Facing category for the NASSCOM Innovation Awards 2008. This category includes innovations made a company for go to market strategies, delivery models, methodologies etc to realize significant value to itself. This category also includes the creation of ‘new to the world’ or ‘new to the market’ technology that will help a customer realize value.

The Showcase session will include presentations by 6 short listed companies who through an interactive session will demonstrate the uniqueness of their product or services, new customer segments, business models, etc. Innovations in this area have typically a direct correlation with the revenue of a firm and have an impact on the firm’s markets. The other short listed companies can be accessed online at www.nasscom.in/innovation or at http://blog.nasscom.in/emerge/2008/12/08/finalists-for-nasscom-innovation-awards-2008-announced/

As an industry player and a leader of your organisation, we request you to participate at this interactive session and be part of the Indian IT industry’s innovation journey.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Pune’s Satish Talim wins “Ruby’s Top Teacher in 2008” award

Satish Talim

Satish Talim, whose RubyLearning onine classes have enrolment of more than 5000 students from over 100 countries, has been named the “Top Ruby Teacher in 2008” by RubyInside (the #1 Ruby news site in the world).

An excerpt from the article:

How (and when) did you find your way into Ruby?

After being with Java since its beta days, my interest in Ruby was aroused after I read an article Ruby the Rival in November 2005. I decided to learn Ruby myself and started making my Ruby Notes for my site, RubyLearning.com.

How have your Ruby & Rails related projects progressed in 2008?

I started my free, online Ruby teaching site in January 2008 and today it has over 5600 participants who have either learned Ruby or are in the process of learning Ruby with me. The experience has been very positive and fulfilling. I’ve also been promoting Ruby in India since 2006 with my PuneRuby User Group. I also managed to convince the the University of Pune to introduce Ruby as a full time paper in their computer science course from Jan. 2009.

With RubyLearning.org I am able to give Ruby exposure to people across the globe (there are currently students registered from over 140 countries) – we have people from far-flung places where no trainers (leave alone Ruby trainers) are available – my site facilitates that.

Read the full article for more about the award.

Satish runs two RubyLearning portals: namely RubyLearning.com (is a thorough collection of Ruby Study Notes for those who are new to the Ruby programming language and in search of a solid introduction to Ruby’s concepts and constructs) and RubyLearning.org (where, since 2006, participants from across the globe have been learning online and for free, the Ruby computer programming language).

However the RubyLearning portals are not Satish’s primary occupation. His experience lies in developing and executing business for high technology and manufacturing industry customers. Basically, he has helped start subsidiaries for many US based software companies like Infonox (based in San Jose, CA), Maybole Technologies Pvt. Ltd. (Servient Inc. based in Houston, Texas) in Pune.

You can also follow Satish on Twitter where as @IndianGuru, with over 700 followers, he is the top twitterer from Pune. (As to why you should be on twitter, see our article “Why you should be on Twitter“; and then immediately after that, you should follow @punetech, and all the others mentioned in in these posts over at AmIWorks.)

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Pune-based Harbinger wins award for learning software

Pune-based Harbinger group, creator of the Raptivity e-learning software, has just won an award from the “Chief Learning Officer” magazine for “Clinical Challenge,” an innovative online learning program that it created with Philips Healthcare, designed to pioneer the use of gaming in healthcare education. This program tries to combine entertainment with challenge to test knowledge on complex clinical subjects. 

From the press release:

As can be seen on the Philips Learning Center web site www.theonlinelearningcenter.com, complex subjects such as anatomy, physiology, pathology and imaging specific challenges have been made engaging and interesting using a variety of game formats including popular TV game shows, common board games, challenging brainteasers, immersive simulation games and so forth. The tools have also provided a means to present advanced clinical images in a format that allows for exploration via drag and drop, hot spots and auto-solve techniques. 

Use of games for learning appears to be one of the areas that Raptivity is focusing on, earlier having partnered with a US non-profit organization, the Entomological Foundation, to design an develop games based online learning software products targeted towards 3rd and 4th grade children in the US. The games teach the children about “the exciting world of insects and their role in our environment.”

The main features of Raptivity:

  • Leverage Raptivity library of pre-built interactions based on best practices in instructional design.
  • Completely customize each interaction.
  • Create a single Flash File for your eLearning interactivity.
  • Successfully track completion status, score and responses for each interactivity.
  • Packages that allow easy creation of 3D content, learning games, converting videos to interactive videos, and simulations

Harbinger are also the creators of Flockpod, a web-service that allows web publishers to create a space on their webpage where users can interact with each other right on-the-spot, without leaving the page.

Pune engineer honored as RHCE of the year

From Red Hat News:

The achievements of Red Hat Certified Engineers (RHCEs) from around the world will be honored for the third-consecutive year at the upcoming Red Hat Summit, June 18 – 20 in Boston, Mass. RHCE of the Year awards will be granted to five individuals – one each from the United States, Canada, Asia-Pacific, India and Europe.

The RHCE of the Year award gives Red Hat an opportunity to acknowledge the contributions of five extremely resourceful and capable individuals whose winning submissions highlight the value of the Red Hat certifications for the enterprise, the career and the community. The awards also recognize the contributions of our certified community as a whole. More than 500 RHCEs entered this year’s contest by answering the question: “why should you be considered RHCE of the Year?” in 1,000 words or less.

[…]

Anil Waychal, India’s winner, led his company’s efforts in migrating more than 350 systems to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The end result was a large cost savings and a significant boost for Suma Soft’s overall security.

Suma Soft is a Pune-based company that provides development and support services in web technologies and security.

Zemanta Pixie