Cover Story

Infosys-EducationWorld Young Achievers 2007The commencement of each new academic year coincides with the disbursal of the Infosys-EducationWorld Young Achievers Awards. Instituted jointly in 2004 by the Bangalore-based ITES (information technology enabled services) and consultancy blue chip corporate Infosys Technologies Ltd (revenue: Rs.13,893 crore in fiscal 2006-07) whose 72,241 employees provide value-added services and business solutions to 864 clients in 22 countries around the world, and EducationWorld (estb. 1999), India‚s pioneer and sole education news and analysis magazine with an estimated readership of over 550,000 countrywide, these annual awards acknowledge, reward and celebrate young achievers in several fields of endeavour ‚ science, maths and technology; arts and music; sport and games; and social (community/environment) service. “The institution of this annual award open to young achievers across the country, is to encourage young citizens to showcase their ideas, aspirations and achievements. Infosys itself is a young company in which the average age of employees is only 26. Therefore we are pleased and proud to be associated with these Young Achievers Awards which reaffirms our belief that there is no shortage of bright young people with great ideas and achievements. Such young people need to be acknowledged and celebrated as they are an inspiration to all children and youth countrywide,” says Kris Gopalakrishnan one of the founder directors of Infosys Technolgies, who recently took charge as chief executive and managing director of this go-getting company which has repeatedly been voted India‚s most respected corporation by business magazines and pink newspapers.Since they were inaugurated three years ago, the response of young India to the Infosys-EW Awards which are widely advertised through direct mail and poster campaigns inviting nominations from schools and colleges across the country, has improved appreciably in terms of quality, if not quantity. “Although nominations for these annual awards have been steady at 400-600 for the past three years, in qualitative terms the nominations received this year were far superior making the job of short-listing the very best for the final round a difficult and testing exercise,” says Syed Sultan Ahmed the promoter chief executive of The Activity (estb. 1996), a Bangalore-based education events management firm which inter alia manages the Horlicks Whiz Kids contest and has choreographed the Infosys-Education-World Young Achievers Awards ab initio. Coterminously with the improvement in the quality of nominations received for the Young Achievers Awards, the evaluation criteria have also been revised and rationalised. In the first two years of the awards (2005, 2006), finalists were separated into senior and junior age groups, but evaluated and adjudicated across all categories of achievement. But following complaints from judges of having to compare “apples with oranges”, this year, nominees were grouped into four separate categories ‚ arts and music, social and community welfare, sports and science and technology ‚ for evaluation. Consequently in the final round held at the Infosys campus on June 14-15, a distinguished panel of judges comprising Dr. Aruna Sunderlal (founder-director of the Bangalore School of Music); Shukla Bose (promoter-chairperson of the Parikrma Humanity Foundation, Bangalore);…