In a recent event, NotOnMap bestowed with the Prestigious ‘Bharat Award’ in NASSCOM’s ‘Emerge 50 Awards 2020’. The NASSCOM’s 12 Edition of ‘Emerge 50 Awards 2020’ was conducted with the mission to find the most innovative technology companies who would be the future trendsetters of ‘Techade’ from India. NotOnMap, a social initiative for the marginalized, indigenous communities were awarded the coveted ‘Emerge 50 Awards 2020’ under the ‘Bharat’ category.
Under ‘Bharat’ category, brands/companies are awarded for providing innovative ideas and solutions to solve some of the major challenges faced by the rural communities at the grassroots level in a scalable manner using technology with their innovative solutions/platforms. While addressing the challenges, it includes building affordable solutions that impact the people at the lowest rug level like Voice-enabled products, Video, Vernacular, Citizen Services, Agriculture, Pollution, Sanitization, Waste & Water Management, etc.
NotOnMap, with their initiatives like TraVival and NotOnMart, plans to support the livelihood of farmers and craftsmen while boosting the revenue generation of rural pockets and at the same time provide innovative ideas and solutions to solve the challenges faced by the rural communities at the grassroots level. With these initiatives, NoM intends to bring in a major impact on rural inclusion, rural education, empowerment, building resilience, and promotion of the youth and elderly about the potential to rise above the standard benchmark of the market value of rural India. The company started working from those villages/houses where technology & travel influence has been minimal and as a result, they were cut off from getting their true share of economy.
The awards witnessed a huge gathering of industry experts including CXOs, CIOs, entrepreneurs, investors, product leaders and subject matter experts from various industry verticals. The award categories were aligned to capture the current business transformational areas; the nomination categories were divided into – FinTech, Health Tech, Retail Tech, Logistics & Supply Chain, SaaS, Enterprise, Bharat, IoT Hardware & devices, Strategic sector & Cybersecurity.
NotOnMap along with other brands/companies were part of the four-month extensive screening process that started in July 2020. The nominations were reviewed and accessed through a multi-tried process and shortlisted by a panel of 80+ jury members and speakers including industry experts like Saurabh Jain, Vice President, Paytm, Rajesh Thachil, Director, Strategy and Business Operations, PayPal, Sridhar Vembu, Founder & CEO, Zoho Corp, Debjani Ghosh, President, NASSCOM, Kunal Bahl, Co-Founder and CEO, Snapdeal, Ramkumar Narayana, VP Technology and Managing Director, VMWare, Pari Natrajan, CEO Zinnov, Rajat Tandon, President, IVCA and many more.
Commenting on the recognition, Kumar Anubhav, Founder & Director, NotOnMap said, “At NotOnMap, we always have moved forward with the aim to support and empower the rural communities by helping them capitalize on their untapped culture and heritage value. It’s heartening to see such support and recognition from the industry stalwarts and it makes us believe that we are going forward in the right direction.”
“With our initiatives like TraVival and NotOnMart, we believe that we will be able to give voice to the rural communities and at the same time help them address the current challenges faced by the rural communities and train them for travel revival”, Kumar further added.
Commenting on the facilitation, Padmaja Ruparel, NASSCOM Spokesperson quoted, “With the lockdown, it has brought a new and a much larger opportunity for entrepreneurs to innovate and cater to this Bharat market. NotOnMap is one such company who is using travel as a tool to solve distress driven migration and rural livelihood issues using underleveraged cultural and rural heritage assets in India. The technology enablement, its fast-changing consumer behavior is the largest customer basis in the country, the opportunity is not only large in this country but something that can be scaled across other countries as well and according to me this is a huge opportunity waiting to be just harvested.”
NotOnMap is working towards the development and protecting and promoting the cultural heritage of India. The company has been working towards responsible and sustainable tourism through its initiative like TraVival which consist of 150+ training videos for Homestay owners, Village Panchayats, Teachers/Youth and Women of villages and travellers across India covering all stakeholders of ‘Rural Tourism’ in India. The company is presently working under states like Himachal, Jammu & Kashmir, Ladakh, Uttarakhand, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Kerala, Goa, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Assam, West Bengal, Sikkim and Maharashtra where it plans to educate the villagers about the sustainable practices and revive rural tourism in these areas.