Manthan Award South Asia Categories

1. e-Business & Enterprise:  Support and optimization of business processes; creation of new business models in e-commerce and m-commerce, business to business, business to consumers, internet security and other areas; supporting Small and Medium Enterprise’s on the marketplace.

2. Community Broadcasting : The category considers all efforts in the areas of broadcasting services for the benefit of the communities, especially in the rural India. It serves local communities, reflecting the diversity of their views and needs, and provides access to volunteer participants.

3. e-Culture & Heritage:  Preserving and presenting cultural heritage in line with the challenges of the future; demonstrating valuable cultural assets clearly and informatively using state-of-the- art technology and new media platforms.

4. e-Education:  Empowering the education paraphernalia with new technology tools; transforming schools, universities and other educational institutions through interactive, personalized and distributed learning resources; providing infrastructure for the rural based educational institutions, especially schools.

5. e-Agriculture & Livelihood:  Agriculture is the basis of livelihood for the Indian landscape. Introduction and integration of Information Communication Technology have created new opportunities and added efficiency in livelihood creation. The biggest challenge however is to stress on deliverables, content, and services for the masses. Small innovations and proactiveness can make the ICT used as media rather than just technology and enrich the globalization with local knowledge and wisdom.

6. e-Environment:  The spread of all the concerns is of high importance as far as environment is concerned. Especially with emerging globalisation, environment is being affected badly and it requires all kind of technology and medium to spread the right message and messages about devastation it can create. ICT plays a huge role in responsible dissemination of information about environment; content matters.

7. e-Governance:  Empowering citizens and serving public services clients; fostering quality and efficiency of information exchange and communication services in governmental and public administrative processes; strengthening participation of citizens in information society decision making.

8. e-Health:  Developing the consumer-centered model of health care where stakeholders collaborate, utilizing Information Communication Technology, including internet technologies to manage health issues as well as the health care system.

9. e-Inclusion:  All measures supporting Information Communication Technology integration of least developed states of India into the Information Society. Reducing the "digital divide" and "content gap" between technology empowered and technology excluded communities and groups - such as rural areas and women. Bridging society through multimedia and rich content.

10. e-Learning:  Serving the needs of the learners to acquire knowledge and skills for a complex and globalizing world; creating active e-learning communities and target models and solutions for corporate training, supporting first steps in multimedia for better learning societies.

11. e-Localisation:  Interventions of ICT has been instrumental in empowering life at the grassroots level in many ways such as application in local languages, vernacular content and digital tools to work in oral medium. Agriculture, eco-tourism, ayurveda, artisans skills, organic food, are all being strengthened by the electronic and digital technologies as they move towards localisation.

12. e-News & Media: The expansion of traditional media into new media and leveraging the technology as medium to reach larger masses, offering content in local language and in all form of electronic and digital medium.

13. e-Entertainment: Supplying digitized entertainment products and services; entertaining the user in this world's variety of languages and its cultural diversity; supporting movement from one-way to two-way, from single to multiple players, interactive entertainment and the synergy between analog and digital platforms.

14. e-Travel & Tourism: Use of ICT applications and services for enriching the information society by aggregating digital content pertaining to travel and tourism thus help creating knowledge rich information society; offer of travel and tourism related information and services like real time travel bookings, location and transport information.

15. e-Science: Scientific projects articulated through new media. Use of Information Communication Technology applications in the field of science or by Science departments, institutes etc. Offering real time experimentation using ICT, specially online.