 A foundation in Nair's name, Prof. Guptan Nair Foundation, instituted an annual award, "Guptan Nair Award" in 2007 in his honour.The award carries 25,000 cash prize, a citation and a plaque and M. Leelavathi received the inaugural award.Ambalapuzha Rama Varma (2008), Sukumar Azhikode (2009), Hridayakumari (2010), G. Balakrishnan Nair (2011), O. N. V. Kurup (2012) Panmana Ramachandran Nair (2013), 
Puthussery Ramachandran (2015) and K. P. Sankaran (2019) are some of the recipients of the award.