Two young Indian social entrepreneurs have won a global competition aimed at empowering women and girls in the Asia-Pacific region at the Responsible Business Forum on Sustainable Development at Marina Bay Sands here.
'Project Inspire: 5 Minutes to Change the World' is a global social initiative aimed at improving the lives of disadvantaged women and girls in Asia-Pacific, and was jointly organised by Singapore Committee for UN Women and MasterCard.
Applicants to the global competition included 270 entrepreneurs, aged between 18 to 35, from across the world. Among these, ten were given a five-minute platform to pitch their inspired idea live at the grand finale on Thursday.
Aditya Kulkarni, Co-founder and Executive Director at CareNx Innovations, based in Mumbai won the first prize of $25,000 for their CareMother Mobile Pregnancy Care in the country.
"With this grand prize, we wish to scale our mobile pregnancy care solution to reach out to at least 2,000 pregnant women and 20 women health workers in next one year. We aim to reach out to 2 million pregnant women in the next three years and this prize would get us started," commented Kulkarni, in a statement.
The second prize was won by Indian-origin Riyanka Ganguly, Executive at Village Volunteers, a US based organisation working in India.
