Tackling extreme poverty
and fighting for the India we believe in
The India we believe in is secular, socialist and
gives all its citizens all the opportunities they need to fulfill their dreams.
Give Work
We use technology to give dignified aspirational work . The kind of work that gives our most vulnerable populations agency and control over their lives. It also gives them a profound sense of confidence in their own ability to learn new skills and it pays them more than enough money to fuel their dreams. We currently do this in over 1,000+ villages across India.
Move People Out Of Poverty
In the last 2 years, we have moved 10,000 rural Indians out of poverty . We start by understanding local communities and the history of local interventions. We provide free Android smartphones which villagers use to build computational language models for their dialects, digitize local government documents and perform other kinds of paid digital work.
Provide Universal Basic Outcome
Universal Basic Income is an excellent idea, but one that leaves much to be desired. Just providing everyone extra money may certainly help people, but it can't fix generations of social inequity. The idea of universal basic outcomes starts with providing everyone a basic income, and then specifically works with the marginzalised communities to make sure those generational inequities are fixed. We provide a universal basic outcome in India's 52 most vulnerable villages.
Fund Bold Initiatives
Finally, as a foundation, we fund bold initiatives that tackle issues we are passionate about, like social mobility. We think of social mobility in India as a ladder with no rungs at the bottom. Interventions that create these missing rungs are heavily funded. We are also very interested in supporting initiatives led by women, queer communities, religious minorities etc.
Talk at Dasra Philanthropy Forum
We had the honor to speak about our work at the Dasra Philanthropy Forum, an annual conference of India's top philanthropists.
Our TED Talk
This talk focuses on Project Janta (our initiative to tell positive stories of hope from rural India) and Project Karya (giving our most vulnerable populations work).
Talk at CHI Glasgow
This talk was delivered at CHI Glasgow and it focuses on the rural crowdsourcing economy. Our research shows that rural Indians outperform traditional data employees, when performing digital work (in both accuracy and cost) and show high levels of enthusiasm for digital work.
Talk to Stanford Alumni
This was a fun talk that our founder, Manu Chopra gave to his fellow Stanford alumni. We have linked it here, because it's our most recent talk, and gives updates on most of our projects.