Innovision Today :WORDS without borders

A helping handLinguistic enabler Sunil Khandbahale at INK 2013

Sooraj Raj Mohan : The Hindu :5 Nov 2013

Sunil Khandbahale did not know how to use a dictionary. 

He is now the proud creator of digital dictionaries in all 22 vernacular languages.

 SOORAJ RAJMOHAN listens to his amazing life story

Sunil Khandbahale is a picture of unassuming self-assurance and eager observation. For a man who has garnered much acclaim for creating online and mobile-based dictionaries for all the officially recognised Indian languages, he looks around with some awe at the interiors of the Le Meridien hotel in the city, where he was invited to speak about his work at INK 2013. “This is the first time I have sat in a plane,” he reveals with a smile, “I was more worried about checking in and buckling my seatbelt than the actual talk.”

Sunil, one of three children from a farming family in Mahiravani, near Nashik, says that he is the first in his family to have received complete formal education. “My parents were not financially well off, but they were determined to educate us. I originally wanted to become a painter but because I got good grades I was sent to an engineering college to study instrumentation,” he says.

For Sunil, who had studied in Marathi medium till then, the Government Polytechnic of Ahmednagar was a challenge. He was one among the minority who did not speak English, a factor that prompted some of the other students to leave the course and made Sunil consider the same. “I was on the brink of quitting but I remembered the sacrifices my parents had made to educate me and I could not give up on them. When I approached a professor with my problem, he suggested I get a dictionary. I found it to be a strange word and did not know what to do about it,” Sunil says.

Sunil did eventually learn its meaning and procured a dictionary, spending hours making notes and learning new words. By the time his course ended, Sunil was surprised to learn that he was among the few who had passed. The achievement led him to think that his friends who had left the course would have stood a better chance had they also had access to a dictionary. “The dictionary was my friend, and that friendship had helped me see that day. So I started making photocopies of my dictionary, with all my notes and observations, but the reach was limited. I then considered printing it as a booklet but that raised a lot of new costs I could not bear. This was in 1997, and computers were becoming popular, so I decided a digital dictionary was the way to go,” he reminisces.

After overcoming his lack of software know how (by sitting in a room with a borrowed computer and books for the better part of six months), Sunil finally released an online English-Marathi-English dictionary, the first of its kind. The venture met with much praise and soon Sunil was flooded with requests for more languages, which he promptly obliged, “Though my personal expertise could only be used for Marathi, Hindi and English, I soon reached out to linguists and experts in various fields for help, mostly at universities. When they saw that I wanted to create a linguistic community, they were immediately on board, asking for nothing in return.”

Sunil and his team have now created dictionaries for all vernacular languages to English and vice-versa, with around 22 languages to their credit.

However, he is far from done with his efforts, with his dream being a global linguistic community. “I have a four-stage plan; the first is to create dictionaries for all officially recognised languages, the second to cover all vernacular languages and dialects, because there are so many, in the third stage we plan to include international languages and the final stage is to integrate all this together into a collective where English is not needed as a link and users can directly translate from one language to another.”

And how many of these stages has he completed? “One so far, and it took me 13 years,” he says with a smile, before adding, “but now things should move faster thanks to all the help I am getting.” He says many interesting things as he speaks about his work, but his parting words are perhaps the ones that sum him up best, “The world is full of good people who are ready to help, all you need is a good cause.” More information and the setup files for his dictionaries can be found at his website khandbahale.com (Android and Java enabled devices). Android users can also do a quick search for ‘Khandbahale’ on the Play Store for a list of all Sunil’s dictionaries.

Innovision Today :Cultivating innovating habit helps overcome problems

New thinking: Jegannatha Raja, of Rajapalayam has thought out-of-the-box to erect his own green house.-Photo: Special Arrangement

M J  Prabu : The Hindu :October 31, 2013

Absence of a suitable solution to overcome a present problem or

 not being satisfied with existing ones

 makes some farmers turn innovators.

“The main reason that makes them think and innovate something new could probably be that they are the best judge about the way to tackle the problem they are facing in their area,” says Mr. Vivekanandan, Executive Director, Sustainable Agriculture and Environmental Voluntary Action (SEVA), Madurai.

Idea genesis

Mr. K.S. Jegannatha Raja, a farmer and nursery owner in Rajapalayam is one such person whose out-of-the-box thinking led him to erect a greenhouse for his nursery in Rajapalayam, Tamil Nadu.

Usually big nurseries erect a greenhouse for maintaining the health of seedlings. Mr. Raja wanted to establish a greenhouse but the price quoted for erecting was more than Rs. 40,000.

The farmer designed his own greenhouse costing Rs.1,000. He used plastic pipes instead and a plastic sheet along with some nuts, bolts and iron bars. He found that direct sunlight penetrating the plastic sheets affected the newly developed buds/ tender leaves.

“Whenever direct sunlight does not fall on the plants I observed that the seedlings are normal and healthy. So I placed some coconut fronds on the top,” he says. By seeing this model two local farmers also followed this technique.

“So far in Tamil Nadu tamarind (kodukkapuli in Tamil) seedlings have been raised only through seedlings or seeds but Mr. Raja developed cleft grafting (sorugu ottu in Tamil) technique in tamarind and commercialised it,” says Mr. Vivekanandan.

Tamarind usually takes about 20 years to yield well while the grafted ones developed by Mr. Raja come to yield in four years.

Searching for the best

The farmer spent years in Sathur region in Virudhunagar surveying to identify the best mother tree for grafting. The tamarind developed by the farmer is deep red in colour and is considered ideal for making natural dyes.

He has also installed drip irrigation for his nursery. Unlike other places where the drip lines are on top of the soil Mr. Raja has buried the lines two feet under the soil. “I advise other farmers doing drip irrigation to follow the same technique because when you bury the line under the ground, rodents like rats or wild animals like boars do not damage the drip pipes,” he explains.

Another novelty

Another novelty about his work is that he grows his seedlings in plastic containers instead of poly bags.

Usually seedlings are grown in black coloured plastic bags in nurseries or in small mud pots and later transplanted to the ground.

But Mr. Raja felt that poly bags are a waste of investment since they are not durable and get torn after some months of watering.

No mud pots

The mud pots too are not conducive since they easily break so he made a sketch of his innovation and approached a local cottage unit in his area where plastic containers are manufactured. The manufacturers were not convinced about the idea of producing the plastic pots as expected by him.

The farmer got hold of a second hand dye model and altered it to make his own plastic containers. He feels that it costs only Rs.4.10 per plastic container which is more convenient than a conventional polythene bag.

Hold more water

“The containers hold more water and reduce the quantity of water requirement for nursery seedlings. There is no wastage or spillover of water while watering and the transport of seedlings is also much easier and there is no breakage as in mudpots.

“Root piercing out of bags is also negligible. Since it is a uniquely coloured model I am easily able to spot whether my seedlings have been stolen by others,” he says. The container can be used for one and half years according to him.

Personal need

His own requirements of plastic containers alone are about 30,000 in a year. He raises mango, guava, coconut, sandal and wood apple and manila tamarind (kodukkapuli in Tamil) seedlings in the plastic containers and sells about 25, 000 seedlings in a year.

In a year he is able to earn more than Rs.5-6 lakhs from selling his seedlings to farmers from different parts of the state. Recently the Development of Humane Action (DHAN) Foundation in Madurai conferred an award on the farmer for his indigenous innovations.

For more information interested farmers can contact Mr.K.S.Jegannatha Raja, Rajapalayam Nursery,168, Madurai Road, Cotton market, Rajapalayam: 626117,mobile: 94420 57077, 98421 22866.

Innovision India

infosys co-founder and Chairman Emeritus N.R. Narayana Murthy 

headed the panel that looked at the body's role

India should be branded as a centre for innovation: Nasscom panel

Goutam Das In B T :: March 4, 2013  | 23:58 IST

IT industry lobby Nasscom on Monday shared the recommendations made by a committee that looked at the body's role, going ahead, and its organisational structure. The panel was chaired by Infosys co-founder and Chairman Emeritus N.R. Narayana Murthy. 

The Murthy report has suggested that Nasscom re-align its structure to focus more on emerging sectors such as Internet and mobile commerce, software products as well as the domestic market. Vertical councils should shape the agenda of the body, the report added. Other focus acres include: IT services, Business Process Outsourcing, Engineering, Research and Development, and Captives or the Indian arms of multinationals. 

 The report also highlights the role the lobby needs to play to re-brand India as a business destination - from a country of order takers to a centre for innovation. Nasscom and Murthy insist that the re-branding is essential because "what we do is what should be reflected in the brand". 

 "Given that we want to become end-to-end solutions providers, given that we need more interactions at the boardroom level, with CXOs, we said it is right to brand India as a proactive provider of solutions rather than a reactive developer," said Murthy, addressing a query from BT on the need to re-brand the country, during a press meet in Bangalore. 

In the current business climate, where unemployment is still very high in developed markets, "outsourcing" has become a dirty word. Nasscom has silently worked to change the terminology the industry uses. For instance, Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) is now being called Business Process Management (BPM). 

To position India as an innovative solutions provider, the Murthy committee has recommended Nasscom holds many more international events, publishes research and case studies, and hold workshops to enable an innovation culture. 

Other suggestions include enhancing Nasscom's effectiveness by expanding its membership from 1,303 members now to 3,000 new members in five years. Of the current members, only 400 are actively engaged. The Murthy report wants Nasscom to provide knowledge and certification facilities in specialist domain areas. 

Apart from Murthy, other members of the expert committee included Krishnakumar Natarajan, CEO of Mindtree; Rajan Anandan, Managing Director of Google; Ganesh Lakshminarayanan, President of Dell India; Ashank Desai, founder of Mastek; Pramod Bhasin, former CEO of Genpact; and Som Mittal, President, Nasscom. 

Nasscom says the Indian IT industry can touch $300 billion by 2020 from $108 billion now. To become an enabler and remain relevant, it has to move fast in adopting the committee's recommendations.

Chapattis..Lifebuoy..Maha Kumbh Mela... Brilliant advertising idea.

Kumbh Mela: Of clean hands and rotis

Ogilvy Action tied up with over 100 dhaba owners in the vicinity of Kumbh Mela and handed out more than 2.5 million chapattis stamped with the Lifebuoy message.

'B T :Ajita Shashidhar February 9, 2013  | 09:55 IST

Did you wash your hands with Lifebuoy?' 

That was the message, in Hindi, stamped on over 2.5 million chapattis at the Maha Kumbh Mela , the largest congregation of human beings on the planet. 

The unusual advertising medium certainly had pilgrims taking notice. The campaign enabled Unilever, the company that makes the soap, to reach a large audience in a low-cost but effective manner.

Rotis with a message

Unilever has the advertising agency Ogilvy Action to thank for the brilliant advertising idea. 

Vipul Salvi

Vipul Salvi, the 34-year-old National Creative Director of Ogilvy Action, is the one of the people behind the campaign. He says the idea needed to be big and innovative. "The obvious options were to put up stalls and play games around health and hygiene, but that would have been too gimmicky," remarks Salvi. 

Those ideas were rejected since the Maha Kumbh is a spiritual affair. The mandate, therefore, was to look at other ways of getting the consumer in touch with the brand. 

The ad agency deliberated over the campaign for close to eight months and came up with over 200 ideas before zeroing in on the roti campaign. 

Rotis being stamped with the message

A heat stamp was specially made to make an impression on the chapattis. The agency tied up with over 100 dhaba owners in the vicinity and handed out more than 2.5 million chapattis stamped with the Lifebuoy message. 

The heat stamps used to make an impression on the chapattis

Lifebuoy achieved its aim of increasing awareness and getting people in touch with the brand. And many of the millions at the Maha Kumbh Mela ate with cleaner hands.