Kochi : A young Kerala innovator — Unni Koroth of Foradian Technologies, Kasaragod — has been chosen to the MIT Technology Review’s India TR35 list of young Technology Innovators under 35 for 2012 for developing Open source platform for institute management.

Unni Koroth, 26, co-founded the Internet startup Foradian Technologies to launch Fedena, an open source student information system built on Ruby on Rails web development framework which now has more than 7 million users in over 100 countries.

The startup was also the first to launch the Rupee Foradian Font for the new Indian Rupee symbol which was downloaded over 20 million times.

Koroth has built Fedena, a multipurpose school or campus management software, which can be used by educational institutions for all administrative and management activities. The software can be used by schools and colleges and can be scaled up to suit requirements of universities and training centers.

Fedena can help head of institutions to track and monitor all activities of students and the institute. It can also facilitate smooth transfers among different institutions as well as in preparation of certificates, generating various reports related to students, parents, teachers and non-teaching staff, preparation of examination database, preparation of integrated timetable, and more.

“The open source software is a cloud based software that can be accessed by users through a browser, for free. It is now available in Spanish, Chinese, Mongolian, and Arabic, with more translations underway,” says Koroth.

Koroth will present his innovation to an audience of 500 innovators including six outstanding scientists and researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) at the fourth emerging technologies conference of MIT Technology Review’s, EmTech India, starting March 27 at Bangalore.

Bangalore has emerged as India’s hottest technology innovation city with five innovators from the Silicon Valley of India (Bangalore) making it to the ‘India TR35 2012 list of young technology innovators’.

The India TR35 members from Bangalore include Shirish Goyal, 27, of LinkSmart Technologies for creating fool-proof security to prevent data theft; Sumeet Yamdagni, 29, of Instrumentation Scientific Technologies for inventing Optical instruments for Fiber Bragg Grating sensors and Vikas Malpani, 28, of MaxHeap Technologies for bringing communities on a common floor.

Bangalore’s Anirudh Sharma, 24, of Ducere Technologies was named the Innovator of the Year for creating Haptic shoe for the visually impaired. Animesh Nandi, 33, of Bell Labs India, Alcatel-Lucent for devising personalized privacy frameworks. Nandi was the only India TR35 member from a Bangalore based multi-national while the rest were from local enterprises.

The Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, has emerged as India’s hottest technology innovation center with three of its researchers VSK Murthy Balijepalli, 26; Nitin Joshi, 28; and Vanteru Mahendra Reddy, 30, making it to the ‘India TR35 2012 list of young technology innovators’.

While VSK Murthy Balijepalli of IIT Mumbai was chosen to be part of the India TR35 list for developing a novel method to forecast electricity price, grid frequency and load which can assist in making power grids smarter, Nitin Joshi (also of IIT Mumbai) made to the list for developing dual compartment nanostructures which can encapsulate two anticancer drugs, paclitaxel and curcumin, and deliver them in combination to lung cancer patients. Conventional chemotherapy is limited due to its non specificity, poor pharmacokinetics and multi-drug resistance.

Thirty-year-old Mahendra Reddy was chosen for his work on the development of a laboratory scale flameless combustion with liquid fuels by design at IIT Mumbai. The burning of liquid fuels in flameless combustion mode is more difficult as compared to gaseous fuels

Abhijit Majumder, 33, from IIT, Kanpur, is another notable winner for his highly innovative chemical adhesives that mimic some natural principles.

The only woman innovator in this year’s list is Priyanka Sharma, 28, from CSIR-run Institute of Microbial Technology in Chandigarh. She developed a plastic chip which uses simple assay techniques to detect toxic materials in the environment quickly and cost effectively.

Abhijeet Joshi, 28, from the National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research, Ahmedabad, is the sixth public institute winner. Using nanotechnologies, Joshi has developed a multifunctional implantable platform to aid disease diagnosis and drug delivery simultaneously.

The India TR 35 program started in 2010 and in the last three years, Technology Review India has identified 57 young innovators. India lists have so far been dominated by innovators from small and medium size private research institutions.

Selection of six innovators from IITs and CSIR funded labs proved that the Indian technology innovation scene is also expanding its footprint into more sectors. For most part of their existence, IITs were known mainly for their excellent faculty who trained the innovators for the global industry.

“It is heartening to see IITs solving unique Indian problems. This culture of innovation in public institutions will enthuse thousands of bright students pursuing technical programs,” said Mr Pradeep Gupta, Publisher of Technology Review India and a distinguished alumnus of IIT Delhi.

“Indian youth will be attracted to this innovation ecosystem and India will benefit from their work in the near future,” Mr Gupta added.

Another remarkable feature of this year’s India TR 35 list is the dominance of innovators from two hot segments, computing and web applications. India’s software services sector had so far been looked down upon on the innovation quotient. Nine of the 20 winners this year are from these two segments, indicating that product innovation is permeating the corridors of the nation’s software service companies.

This year Technology Review India received over 250 nominations from all over India. Over a period of three months, a panel of 23 expert judges identified 20 individuals who have developed technologies that are likely to benefit the society at large.

Social Innovator of the year Venkatesan Oosur Vinayagam, 28, developed a multilingual speech recognition technology enabled mobile music service that is based on the classic Indian musical game of antakshari. The innovation in Mobile Antakshari lies in adding the right usability and technology elements.

Innovator of the Year Aniruddha Sharma, 24, created a haptic shoe for the visually impaired. The haptic feedback guides the user to the destination by vibrating in front, back, or on either side of the shoe, indicating that the user needs to turn.

Humanitarian of the Year Somnath Ray, 35, redesigned the age-old para-transit vehicle for the disabled that gives them not only mobility, but also a mobile commerce platform.

List of India TR35 2012

BIOMEDICINE

Abhijeet Joshi, 28, Nanosensors in microspheres, National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research, Ahmedabad

Nitin Joshi, 28, Making chemotherapy non-invasive, Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai

COMMUNICATIONS

Shaunak Khire, 22, Enabling businesses to advertise through mobile phone, Camber Tech, Pune

Venkatesan Oosur Vinayagam, 28, Mobile antakshari, Hexolabs Interactive Technologies, Chennai, Social Innovator of the year

COMPUTING

Anthony Vipin Das, 28, Digitizing medical records, LV Prasad Eye Institute, Hyderabad

Shirish Goyal, 27, Fool-proof security to prevent data theft, LinkSmart Technologies, Bangalore

Sumeet Yamdagni, 29, Optical instruments for Fiber Bragg Grating sensors,

Instrumentation Scientific Technologies, Bangalore

Hemanth Kumar Satyanarayana, 29, Virtual trial rooms, Imaginate Software Labs, Hyderabad

ENERGY

VSK Murthy Balijepalli, 26, Forecasting the price and load of electricity, Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai

Vanteru Mahendra Reddy, 30, Flameless combustion with liquid fuels, Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai

MATERIALS

Abhijit Majumder, 33, Making stronger adhesives that can imitate nature, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur

Vivek Nair, 23, Carbon nanotubes from carbon emissions, Damascus Fortune, Mumbai

Priyanka Sharma, 28, Plastic biochip electrochemical sensor for immunosensing applications,

Institute of Microbial Technology, Chandigarh

TRANSPORTATION

Somnath Ray, 35, A viable para-transit mode of mobility, Dplay, Delhi

Humanitarian of the Year

Anirudh Sharma, 24, Haptic shoe for the visually impaired. Ducere Technologies, Bangalore

Innovator of the Year

WEB

Sachin Dev Duggal, 28, Moving desktop computer into the cloud, Nivio Technologies, Gurgaon

Unni Koroth, 26, Open source platform for institute management, Foradian Technologies, Kasaragod

Vikas Malpani, 28, Bringing communities on a common floor, MaxHeap Technologies, Bangalore

Jay Meattle, 29, Demand side platform for selling ad inventories, Shareaholic.com, Delhi

Animesh Nandi, 33, Personalized privacy frameworks, Bell Labs India, Alcatel-Lucent, Bangalore