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TSEC 2012-13

The winners of the Tata Social Enterprise Challenge for the year 2012-13 are:

1. Greenway Grameen Infra

Greenway Grameen Infra designs and distributes modern, efficient home energy devices tailored to rural consumers. Our flagship product is the Greenway Smart Stove, an improved cookstove that burns biomass fuel (wood, cow dung, etc.) more efficiently, reducing fuel consumption by 65% and smoke emissions by 70%. India, 160 million households cook in rudimentary mud stoves or open fires with solid biomass fuels such as wood and cow-dung. This method of cooking is dangerous, emitting toxic smoke that causes 4 million premature deaths globally, each year. It is also expensive (wood must either be collected or paid for, wasting productive hours or draining family income) and inconvenient to users (creating soot-covered walls and requiring constant fire tending). The products are designed through co-creation with rural consumers and thus are able to provide an alternative to traditional cooking methods that is both effective and desirable.

Website: www.grameeninfra.com

2. OttoClave

OttoClave is a nine-month-old startup founded by two MIT alums that works at the intersection of technology, design, and healthcare. Our mission is to improve health care access for the billion people living in areas with limited infrastructure around the world. OttoClave’s main product is an affordable autoclave that utilizes a common household item, a pressure cooker, and a talking cycle monitor that guides users throughout the process in the local language. Surgical Site Infections occur at an alarmingly high rate in resource-poor health clinics (30% versus 2-5% in resource-rich hospitals) and according to the WHO the main causes of this disparity are the lack of functioning autoclaves and the lack of trained personnel. We address this issue with affordable pricing, speech-enabled monitor that walks users through proper use every time, and a built in tutorial to standardize training. OttoClave also provides purchasing agencies with mobile software that allows them to effectively measure impact and monitor usage of devices in the field.

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