An Indian professor has won the 2016 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Parashar Kulkarni's Cow and Company beaten almost 4,000 entries for the 5,000 pound award.

Judge Gillian Slovo said that, Parashar Kulkarni's Cow and Company "succeeded in exploring serious issues in a way that can make us laugh."

Kulkarni was presented the Prize by Man Booker Prize Winner and former short story judge Marlon James at the Calabash Literary Festival in Jamaica.

Kulkarni, an assistant professor in Social Sciences at Yale NUS College in Singapore, became the first Indian author to win the award. The £5,000 prize rewards "the best piece of unpublished short fiction in English" by a Commonwealth writer.

"I am very happy to receive the Commonwealth Short Story Prize which provides an inclusive, accessible and international platform for participation which is particularly helpful for new writers," Kulkarni said in a statement.

Gillian Slovo, Chair of the judging panel, said, "In 'Cow and Company', Parashar has conjured up a large cast and their way of life, and at the same time he has succeeded in exploring serious issues in a way that can make us laugh - and all of this in a few thousand words."

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Nandini