Swiss Prez to award five Friendship Ambassadors

New Delhi, Aug 31: On Swiss President Doris Leuthard three-day visit to the country, the Embassy of Switzerland will launch “70 Years of Swiss-Indian Friendship” initiative. During the ceremony, the President will honour five “Friendship Ambassadors” from Switzerland and India, who contributed innovative ideas in their fields and continue to strengthen the relationship between the two countries. The Embassy has selected personalities from the fields of Business and Commerce, Food Security, Urban Design and Architecture, Start-ups and Entrepreneurship as Swiss-Indian Friendship Ambassadors. They are: Mr Sushil Premchand, Chairman PRS Group, former president of the Swiss-Indian Chamber of Commerce and strong pillar of the Indo-Swiss Business Community; Prof MS Swaminathan, Father of the Indian “Green Revolution”, close collaborator with the Swiss Development Cooperation on food security and climate change for over 10 years; Ms Barbara Maim, CEO and Co-founder of the Swiss Start-up Minsh, a community messaging system and private social network; Mr Matias Echanove and Mr Rahul Srivastava, Co-Founders of the urbz platform in Mumbai and Geneva. They joined forces in 2006 to engage in projects involving architecture, design, planning, anthropology, pedagogy and technology. UNI