Search engine Google Inc on Thursday announced a funding of Rs 21 crore to 10 Indian non-profit organisations to scale up their enterprises.
The four winners -- Digital Green Trust, Agastya, Janaagraha and Social Awareness-Newer Alternatives (SANA) -- will get Rs 3 crore each, while the remaining six will get Rs 1.5 crore each.
The Google Impact Challenge winners were selected by a jury consisting of Anu Aga, Chairperson, Thermax Ltd, Nikesh Arora, Senior Vice-President Google Inc, Jacqueline Fuller, who leads Google Giving that invests over $50 million a year in tech innovators, Ram Shriram, founding board member, Google Inc, and Jayant Sinha, Managing Director of Omidyar Network India Advisors.
“The organisations were short-listed after due diligence by us with use of technology as well as speaking to their funders, peer groups, beneficiaries etc," said Fuller, who is spearheading the initiative in India and was here for the event.
Fuller said Google would sign a legal grant agreement with all the winners on how the money was to be sued with clear deliverables and timelines.
This is Google’s second Impact Challenge initiative, the first one being held in the UK in the first half of this year.
Rikin Gandhi of Digital Green, which gives agricultural training to farmers using videos, said they would use the funds to create 10,000 village resource centres by 2015 in tie-up with the Ministry of Rural Development.
Sanchaita Gajapati Raju, Managing Trustee, SANA, in her presentation to the jury, said they will use the fund to deploy solar-powered water purification technology to provide 54 million litres of clean drinking water in select villages as well as provide bio-digesting toilets to 10 villages.
Rajan Anandan, Vice-President, Google Inc, said they received about 1,000 applications after announcing the awards in August this year and got about 5 lakh online votes after which the 10 organisations were short-listed. The voting was done on the basis of the video uploaded by each organisation show-casing their work. He said Google’s aim was to give technology support to ‘real’ work being done by non-profits.