Indian Innovation Icons 2025: Winners, Highlights & Inspiration From The Grand Finale

The 10th edition of MIF’s flagship awards platform concluded this week, unveiling the Indian Innovation Icons 2025 winners. The programme, designed to discover and celebrate currently hidden, potentially game-changing Indian innovations, culminated in a grand ceremony on March 6th that showcased the remarkable intersection of ambition and ingenuity across the country.

In a fierce competition that drew a record-breaking 1,170 applications, seven trailblazers emerged victorious following an eight month-long rigorous evaluation process by a distinguished and independent jury with support from our Knowledge Partner, Deloitte India. Their innovations weren’t simply about technological supremacy; they were about both pioneering new possibilities and reimagining solutions across sectors—from space exploration to financial systems—positioning India at the forefront of global innovation.

“Innovation is the life force of any progressive nation – even more so of a country like India which is on the journey of being Viksit Bharat before it turns 100-years-old. This force has been gathering serious momentum every year over the past decade, as evident through the massive 63% jump in Indian Innovation applications for the awards this year. We received an overwhelming 1,170 applications, with both business and social categories growing at around the same rate.”

-Amit Chandra, Honorary Chairperson, Governing Council of MIF, during the Indian Innovation Icons 2025 showcase

Indian Innovation Icons 2025 Winners

The following four innovations won the Indian Innovation Icons (previously ‘Innovation for India’) awards in the business category, outshining 929 other applicants: 

• Astrome Technologies is providing high-speed, affordable broadband using millimetre-wave Gigamesh technology, eliminating expensive fibre-optic networks. This drives digital transformation while fostering education, healthcare, and economic growth in underserved regions, and enables defence forces to maintain critical communications in challenging operational environments. 
• Skyroot Aerospace is democratising space access through cost-effective, reliable, reusable launch vehicles. As the first private Indian entity building fully 3D-printed cryogenic engines, they use lightweight, modular systems for rapid manufacturing, affordability, and minimal waste. This strengthens India’s space self-reliance and positions it as a key player in the global space economy.
• Indra Water is addressing inefficient, expensive wastewater treatment with decentralised solutions using patented ElectroX technology for chemical-free electro-coagulation and modular design. These significantly reduce space and operational costs while enabling rapid deployment, conserving billions of water litres, reducing pollutants, and fostering sustainability.
• Chara Technologies has developed rare-earth magnet-free Synchronous Reluctance Motors (SynRM) with unique outer rotor design. This provides cost-effective, high-performance, low-carbon alternatives for India’s EV and industrial motor sectors while supporting transition to clean mobility and net-zero emissions with long-term sustainable solutions.

In the social category, the following innovations emerged winners for their outstanding impact on societal challenges, from among 241 contenders. 

• Assistech Foundation is India’s first accelerator supporting startups building assistive tech solutions for people with disabilities. Their multi-stakeholder approach fosters collaboration between startups, corporations, policymakers, and NGOs to create scalable, affordable technologies. They’ve nurtured 50+ startups, produced 110+ products and 59 patents, raised substantial funding, advocated for accessibility reforms, and improved nearly a million lives.
• People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI) is a pioneering digital platform amplifying rural India’s diverse voices through multimedia archives in 15 languages across 26 categories. Its open-source, volunteer-driven model empowers grassroots storytellers, while actively shaping rural journalism and education through 180+ partnerships and workshops. With 2.5 million annual viewers, PARI preserves India’s vanishing traditions, languages, and histories worldwide.
• Rocket Learning transforms early childhood education by delivering curriculum-aligned content via WhatsApp and YouTube. Their multi-stakeholder approach bridges gaps between parents, teachers, and communities, while AI-driven tools and gamified incentives maintain engagement, increasing school readiness by 70%. Through government partnerships, they impact over three million parents and children across 140 districts.

In a distinct category, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) was honoured with the Global Gamechanger recognition. Unlike the other categories, this prestigious distinction is conferred directly by the Governing Council of MIF, based on recommendations from the ecosystem and the Knowledge Partner. NPCI earned this recognition for revolutionising India’s financial ecosystem by building Unified Payments Interface (UPI), RuPay, Immediate Payment Service, and other disruptive technologies enabling seamless, secure digital payments at scale. This drives financial inclusion for millions of unbanked individuals, with UPI accounting for over 80% of India’s digital transactions and making mobile-based banking a reality for 350 million users.

“The solutions we have witnessed today reflect the creativity and diversity of services and products emerging from India. I am sure the winning innovators will scale to newer heights just as many of our past winners have.  For example, Dozee – 2023 Business category winner, has helped save over 16,000 lives and 14 crore in nursing hours.”

-Harsh Mariwala, Founder, Marico Innovation Foundation, during the Indian Innovation Icons 2025 showcase

 A Celebration of Indian Innovation 

The awards ceremony itself gathered industry leaders, social innovators, academics, and policy-makers – an ecosystem increasingly recognising that India’s most pressing challenges require collaborative intelligence. 

The true measure of the winning innovations will be their ability to bridge critical gaps in access, sustainability, and inclusion – transforming not just isolated problems but the larger systems in which they exist. That journey continues long after the awards night concludes, and MIF will continue supporting these visionaries through enhanced visibility, leadership development, and access to valuable networks to help scale their impact across India and beyond.