Faculty

The MIT-India/IFMR Trust Seed Fund is a part of the MISTI Global Seed Funds.

India Innovation: Applied Technology for Development in India

Funded by the IFMR Trust, the fund provides support to MIT faculty, research scientists, and lecturers for projects in applied technology for development in India.

Areas of interest include, but are not limited to:

Design of personal finance and wealth management strategies for low-income rural households and migrant households which could involve investigations into household psychology, anthropology, moral hazard, adverse selection
Human centered design for channels through which rural remote households access financial services solving problems which include customer identification, computing, printing, telecommunication, interface software and physical architecture design
Breakthrough physical and materials design of equipment and utilities commonly used by the rural poor: drinking water plants, decentralised energy devices, housing materials and irrigation implements
Innovative low-cost design ideas that facilitate businesses that aim to serve rural India: How to uniquely identify livestock in order to prevent insurance frauds and thereby improve supply? How to design simple anti-tampering technology for things like drinking water plants, commodity warehouses? How to devise cost effective ways of counterfeit note detection?
Computing and mobile innovations that can dramatically reduce the cost of financial services delivery in remote rural India

The maximum award is $15,000.

The deadline for the 2009-2010 grant round is September 14, 2009. Winners will be announced in early December.

For more information and application, please visit the MISTI Global Seed Funds website.