Manthan Award recognizes best practices in the area of e-content, creativity, innovation and development. Ever since the Manthan Award was instituted in 2004 under the framework of World Summit on Information Society, it has given birth to several more entities. Manthan Award looks at how these tools and digital media impact the masses, especially people living in remote areas and difficult areas. Digital Empowerment Foundation in partnership with World Summit Award, Department of Information Technology, Govt. of India and various other stakeholders like civil society members, media and other similar organizations launched the award in India on 10th October 2004.These establishments engaged in promoting digital content inclusiveness in the whole of South Asia for development. The Award has now extended its horizon from Indian states to almost all of Asia Pacific.
To felicitate innovations from North East India we conduct the North East Award every year. Later in 2010, Manthan Award gave birth to mBillionth Awards to especially focus on mobile innovations.
Due to the regular increase in nominations the competition is getting very tough for all nominees. Small-scale regional level innovations are suffering and getting overpowered by large-scale innovations. Keeping in mind the main objective of Manthan Award, which is to recognize small-scale local innovations Digital Empowerment Foundation, is poised to launch a separate entity called Manthan Award South West India.to recognize digital innovations at regional level. The award will focus exclusively on the 10 states of India in South and West.
Considering that every year Manthan Award receives maximum nominations from South and West India, especially Maharashtra the first edition of South West Award is scheduled to take place in Pune. The subset of Manthan Award has been created to encourage more grassroots ICT innovators to participate and present their innovation and get a chance to be recognized at a national level.
