A clever business plan to popularise one of the most universal ingredients in our cuisine — joni bella (jaggery) — got the first prize in Manthan 2011, a business plan competition established by the Federation of Karnataka Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FKCCI).
Its mastermind, Mangala V. Patil, a student from the University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad, received a trophy and a cash prize of Rs. 50,000 at the award ceremony on Friday.
Great potential
If marketed intelligently, “joni bella can replace ice-creams and health drinks and even compete with soft drinks,” believes Ms. Patil who hopes to add flavours and aromas to jaggery — including cocoa, jeera and lemon — and sell the product in attractive packaging.
Ms. Patil proposed to increase production and sale of joni bella, known for its nutritive qualities, through value addition and publicity campaigns, even road shows. By boosting its medicinal properties through additives, jaggery can be used to serve different therapeutic needs: for pregnant or postnatal women, diabetics and children.
Runners-up
The second runners-up were Amal Anthony and Vikram Kamath from PES School of Engineering (Bangalore) who created a service to provide public transport route information via SMS. A team of three students from the BVB Engineering College (Hubli) was first runner-up: Chaitanya U. Pujar, Prabhanjan Gai and Raghavendraprasad S. Suryavanshi designed an eye-insert, made of biopolymer, for efficient drug delivery against glaucoma.
The runners-up were awarded a cash prize of Rs. 20,000 each. Manthan hopes also to create a platform to help find venture capitalists to fund these proposals.
Giving away the awards, C.N.R. Rao, honorary president, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, said that an “innovation climate” was vital for India if it had to secure a place among global leaders in science and technology.
