How has been the journey of the Marico Innovation Foundation, so far?

It was started about 10-12 years ago. At its start, we didn't know what we will do, but, we're very confident that there is a need of innovation in India in two segments, namely business and social sides. It was started with an objective to increase innovation in both segments. We took several initiatives, studied things and published a book and sold almost 75,000 copies of the same. Besides, Marico Innovation Foundation's award ceremony is conducted once in every two years and this year's awards ceremony is scheduled to be held on March 11, 2020. We take this award but seriously because we have seen that several organizations that provide awards complete the jury in an hour or two. However, we study a lot, shortlist and then go for a jury on social and innovation sides. There is a full-day meeting to shortlist after which we visit the premises of the shortlisted candidates to find out the truth because what he writes is completely different from the actual reality. Thus, we research and then go back to the jury, which is the second jury. Even, the award function is also taken seriously and that's why we train them with the help of TED trainers who teach them on how to talk just about the key innovation. Thus, it is a compact award function of 2 hours where all winners, almost 6, talks for almost 10 minutes and there is a chief guest. We also provide a Global Game Changer award.Yes, everything comes with a risk of failure but being afraid of failure will not allow you to go ahead. We have failed several times but every failure has thought something and application of the learning leads to innovation. Thus, Indian society should change its perspective towards failure because speaking about it creates a fear of failure, which in turn have an impact on his risk-taking abilities. If there is no risk-taking, then there will be no experimentation, and the absence of experimentation means no innovation. It is a cycle and is very important. Punishing anyone for intelligent failure will stop people from taking risks and innovate. This way, we thought of changing the mindset and find out the ways to innovate at the company level and creating an innovation culture, which is essential. Besides, we have initiated something new in the innovation segment, 3-4 years back from now. Under this, we identify 6-8 organisations who are innovative but hasn't scaled. We look out towards ways to encourage it so that it, the innovation, spreads. The process involves, employees from Marico, several consultants, retired CEOs also associates with it and interestingly I give my time to those organisations. The initiative has paid-off like Atomberg Technology, a company engaged in manufacturing fans with the ability to save a huge amount of power. Its sales have risen almost 5-6 times from and it has raised around Rs100 crore from the market and all private equity guys are applied and we have helped them a lot in terms of reaching out, scaling and how to market at eCommerce platforms or go for digital marketing.digital webglow