IndianTelevisionAcademy.com

The Event
The Kelvinator GR8! Women Awards, 2012

A momentous initiative of GR8! Magazine, the 11th Kelvinator GR8! Women Awards, 2012 was held on the 15th February, ’12 at Bhavan’s Cultural Ground in Andheri. Entering the 2nd decade, this annual Event celebrates the glory of Indian Womanhood with rare razzle-dazzle and this time, too, it was done with great panache.

But above all that are the core concerns that lie behind these Awards! Over the years, these have fulfilled a huge lacuna concerning Women Achievers in the country. Today, Women are second to none and have made tremendous strides into all possible fields, but despite that their achievements have been rather frugally recognised.

There has hardly been an exclusive platform to accord recognition to the Women Achievers. This wrong has been redressed by the GR8! Women Awards!

This ceremony has become that exclusive platform where distinguished women are saluted with scintillating pageantry. And since its inception, some of the biggest Women A listers in the country across all genres have been anointed with the GR8! honours, like Asha Bhosle, Nita Ambani, Sheila Dixit, Rajshree Birla, Mahashweta Devi, Ambika Soni, Yamini Krishnamurthy, Sonal Mansing, Medha Patkar, Maharani Gayatri Devi, Aishwarya Rai, Ekta Kapoor… and many, many others of the illustrious ilk.

This year some of the ‘Women of Substance’ being crowned are Shamshad Begum (GR8! Golden Laurel), Vidya Balan (Versatility in Acting), Salma Sultan and Tabassum Govil (GR8! Scrolls of Honour), Juhi Chawla (Cinematic Excellence – Acting), Ekta Kapoor (Entertainment), Vishakha Mulye (Banking), Gia Maanek and Rashmi Sharma (Television) and so on.

The entire Event has been punctuated with rocking performances by the current TV stars like, Gia Maanek, Kavita Kaushik, Aishwarya, Sanaya Irani, Aamir Ali, Sanjeeda Sheikh, Priyal Gor, Gurmeet Chaudhary, Divyanka Tripathi, Rathi Pandey, Suhasi, Drashti Dhami, Jaswir Kaur, besides the big screen sizzler, Neha Dhupia.

The entire vision of awarding Women Achievers as well as the ‘beti’ movement is shared by Messrs. V N Dhoot, Pradeep Dhoot & Anirudh Dhoot, (Chairman, President and Director, respectively of the illustrious Videocon Group) and their Kelvinator has been sponsoring the ceremony for 5 years now. Elaborating on this, Mr. Anirudh Dhoot says, ‘The Dhoot family is proud to be associated with the GR8! Women Awards for the 5th time in a row. It’s an honour to felicitate Women for their invaluable contribution in their respective fields. Moreover, this event is even more special since it supports the crusade against Female Foeticide called ‘beti’. I strongly believe that women are great at multitasking and balance their work and home life with equal élan. It’s an absolute privilege to salute these women and be a part of this great gathering!’

Says Shashi Ranjan, Publisher, GR8! – ‘We are proud to have created such a dazzling annual Event to celebrate Women’s glory. These Awards have been path-breaking in that and it is so heartening to see the unqualified and unflinching support & goodwill it has garnered from all across. Be it Corporate sector, Public Life, Arts or Entertainment, they have all stood by and with us in commemorating Womanhood and conferring honours on the Women Achievers, exclusively!’

The Awards are also a platform for ‘beti’, a movement against Female Feticide. Dwelling upon it, Anu Ranjan (Editor, GR8!), stresses…
‘Both ‘beti’ and the ‘GR8! Women Awards’ have become synonyms of each other, today. While the Awards celebrate Female glory, ‘beti’ is a clarion call to protect the Female Foetus. And the sea of celebrities that we have had year after year has been instrumental in spreading awareness against playing havoc with the Gender-balance as created by Mother Nature by sex-selection in the womb! We have been relentless in this pursuit and would continue to be so to the last iota of our energy and effort!’

The Evening was attended by the crème-de-la-crème from all the segments of society…