Union Minister for Communications and Development of North Eastern Region, Jyotiraditya M Scindia, conferred the Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya Telecom Excellence Awards 2025 on two organisations for their outstanding contributions to telecom technology and innovation. The award recipients, Amantya Technologies Pvt Ltd and Finaara, were recognised for advancing India’s telecom ecosystem through cutting-edge products and solutions. The ceremony was attended by Union Minister of State for Communications Chandra Sekhar Pemmasani, DoT Secretary Amit Agrawal, and other senior officials.
What Are the Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya Telecom Excellence Awards?
The Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya Telecom Excellence Awards are annual awards instituted by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) under the Ministry of Communications to encourage innovation and promote excellence across the telecom sector. The awards recognise outstanding contributions in areas such as telecom innovation, skilling, services, manufacturing, and applications.
The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) was formed in 1985 and is headquartered in New Delhi. It is responsible for policy formulation, licensing, and spectrum management for the telecom sector in India. The department also oversees the Telecom Commission, which was established through a government resolution on 11 April 1989.
Each award carries a shawl, citation, plaque, and a cash prize of ₹2 lakh. Up to five awards may be given in a year, subject to suitable candidates being found by the award committee. The selection is conducted through the Rashtriya Puraskar Portal, managed by the Director General, Awards, under the Ministry of Home Affairs.
The awards are named after Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya (1916-1968), a prominent Indian philosopher, political thinker, and economist. He is best known for formulating the philosophy of Integral Humanism, which the Bharatiya Jana Sangh adopted as its official doctrine in 1965.
The 2025 Award Winners
Amantya Technologies
Amantya Technologies Pvt Ltd is a full-stack product engineering and software development company headquartered in Gurugram. Founded in 2018, the company operates across India, the USA, the UK, and Canada, serving Tier-1 telecom operators, enterprises, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and system integrators.
Amantya has built a strong portfolio of carrier-grade telecom products, including a cloud-native 5G Standalone (SA) Core developed under the Telecom Technology Development Fund (TTDF) scheme of the DoT. Its other products include AutoRAN, an AI-powered radio access network testing platform, and ORCA, an AI-led validation tool for 4G and 5G core networks. The company has also joined global ecosystems such as the Nokia SMO Marketplace and the EIAP Ecosystem, reflecting its growing international footprint in telecom innovation.
Finaara
Finaara is a Chennai-based TechFin company founded in 2019 by Shobana Uthayashankar and Uthayashankar Vijayaratnam. The company delivers an AI-powered unified banking ecosystem that brings together cross-border remittance, foreign exchange, digital banking, payments, wallets, compliance, and financial switching on a single platform.
Finaara’s solutions include Digital Banking Units (DBUs), mobile banking units, and its flagship Bank on Wheels concept. These solutions are designed to extend modern banking services to underserved and rural communities, aligning with the government’s financial inclusion priorities. The company has previously won the Best Fintech Startup award at the Fintech India Awards 2025.
Past Winners and the Award’s Legacy
The Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya Telecom Excellence Awards have recognised some of India’s most prominent telecom innovators in previous years. In 2024, the award was conferred on Niral Networks, a startup nurtured by the Software Technology Parks of India (STPI), for its contributions to software-defined networking and network security. In 2023, Tejas Networks, a Tata Group company and a leading manufacturer of wireline and wireless networking products, won the award in the ‘Telecom Equipment Research and Manufacturing’ category. The Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT) is another distinguished recipient of this honour.
Why This Award Matters for India’s Telecom Sector
India’s telecom sector has undergone a rapid transformation over the past decade, driven by the rollout of 5G services, the rise of homegrown telecom manufacturing under the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme, and the government’s push for Atmanirbhar Bharat in telecommunications. The PLI scheme for telecom and networking products, launched in 2021, has attracted significant investment and boosted domestic production of telecom equipment.
Awards like the Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya Telecom Excellence Awards play a dual role. They provide recognition and visibility to innovators, startups, and institutions working on critical telecom technologies. They also signal the government’s priorities to the broader ecosystem, encouraging more players to invest in research, development, and manufacturing within India.
The involvement of diverse awardees ranging from established manufacturers like Tejas Networks to emerging startups like Amantya Technologies and Finaara shows that the government is casting a wide net to promote innovation across the telecom value chain from core network equipment to financial inclusion technologies that ride on telecom infrastructure.
Key Takeaways
- The Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya Telecom Excellence Awards 2025 were conferred on Amantya Technologies and Finaara by Union Minister Jyotiraditya M Scindia.
- The awards are instituted by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), which was formed in 1985 and is headquartered in New Delhi.
- Each award includes a cash prize of ₹2 lakh, along with a shawl, citation, and plaque, with a maximum of five awards given annually.
- Nomination and selection are managed through the Rashtriya Puraskar Portal under the Ministry of Home Affairs.
- Past winners include Tejas Networks (2023), Niral Networks (2024), and C-DOT, reflecting the award’s focus on telecom equipment research, manufacturing, and innovation.
- Amantya Technologies, based in Gurugram and founded in 2018, has developed a cloud-native 5G SA Core under the TTDF scheme. Finaara, based in Chennai and founded in 2019, provides AI-powered banking solutions including Digital Banking Units and Bank on Wheels.
