Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw gets 'Othmer Gold Medal 2014'

1.    Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw gets 'Othmer Gold Medal 2014'

i. Biocon has announced that its Chairperson and Managing Director, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, has received the ‘Othmer Gold Medal 2014’, in Philadelphia, USA.

ii. Established by the Chemical Heritage Foundation (CHF) in 1997, the annual award honours outstanding individuals who have made multifaceted contributions to chemical and scientific heritage through outstanding activity in such areas as innovation, entrepreneurship, research, education, public understanding, legislation or philanthropy.

iii. Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw is the third woman to receive the Othmer Gold Medal and the first Indian to make it to this prestigious group.

iv. Carsten Reinhardt, President and CEO, CHF, handed over the foundation's top award to Mazumdar-Shaw during CHF’s Chemical Heritage Day celebration that culminated with the presentation of the Othmer Gold Medal.

2.  Captain Nair, founder of the Leela group, passes away

i. A doyen of the hotel industry Capt. C. P. Krishnan Nair, Founder Chairman of The Leela Palaces, Hotels and Resorts, passed away peacefully at the age of 92, following a brief illness.

ii. His family was beside him, a press release from the hotel group said. The last rites will be performed tomorrow, Sunday, May 18, at 3 pm at Pawan Hans crematorium in Juhu, Mumbai. A memorial prayer ceremony is scheduled at The Leela Mumbai, Sahar, at 4 p.m. on Thursday, May 22.

iii. A freedom fighter and an officer of the Indian army who later built a luxury hotel chain, Capt. Chittarath Poovakkatt Krishnan Nair is a Padma Bhushan awardee.

3.  Crayon Data selected as winner at TiE50 Awards

i. Crayon Data, a Singapore-India (Chennai) based big data start-up founded in 2012 by enterprise analytics veteran Suresh Shankar and seasoned entrepreneur Srikant Sastri has been selected as a winner at the 2014 TiE50 Awards programme in San Jose, California.

ii. This achievement, comes on the heels of Crayon being shortlisted as one of the 25 finalists at the IBM Watson Mobile Developers Challenge in May 2014 and as one of the 50 hottest Big Data start-ups at CeBIT in March 2014.