India is now the fourth largest start-up hub in the world, with a wide range of startups in mobile media, Internet of Things, analytics, ed-tech, food-tech and more. Social entrepreneurs and NGOs are also active on the mobile front, backed by a range of venture capitalists, government grants and impact investors. “India is fast becoming…
Meet Piyush Ghosh, 20, founder of The Optimist Citizen newspaper and a winner in the e-News & Journalism category at the Manthan Award 2015. He is, perhaps, the youngest ever to win this prestigious award. His newspaper focuses only on positive news and change makers. The newspaper has both a print media version and an…
Over 90 folk musicians from villages around Jodhpur in Rajasthan have learnt about how they could use social media to directly promote and market their art to the world and thereby break the grip of middlemen who exploit them at their will. They were participating in a Social Media for Empowerment (SM4E) workshop on December…
The Soochna Seva and the CIRC teams are participating in a 100-day “Paardarsita Javaabdehi Yatra” (Transparency & Accountability Campaign) that started on 1st December, 2015 and will cover more than 100 blocks across all the 33 districts of Rajasthan in 100 days. The Yatra is designed to raise awareness of the people about the RTI…
US-based film-makers Daniel Oxenhandler and Will Sloan along with DEF team members Rohit Dhall and Udita Chaturvedi undertook a day-long visit to CIRCs around Alwar on 19th December, 2015 to shoot for a documentary called ‘One Billion Stories’ that the duo are producing to explore the impact of India’s unprecedented expansion of network and digital…
After tasting success at digitally empowering the Chanderi weaving cluster through its Chanderiyaan project, DEF initiated DigiKala in 2014 as an integrated programme to digitally empower more such weaving clusters in India. The programme has now gone to scale and has become an umbrella brand under which five specific weaving clusters are being digitally empowered…
Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF) is planning to launch two major initiatives in 2016. The first initiative will enable farmers to directly link up with scientists by using digital tools available at Community Information Resource Centres (CIRCs) set up by DEF in remote rural areas. In the second initiative, DEF will set up a for-profit social…
This article was first published in the Mint newspaper on December 25, 2015. John Nelson is in his 30s and lives in Cuddalore district of Tamil Nadu. Cuddalore was severely affected in the recent floods. Nelson also runs a non-profit called Saranalayam. On 3 December, while he was engaged in relief operations, he called Ram Bhat,…
This article was first published in the Mint newspaper on December 18, 2015. There are 12 million people in rural India who are either on the rolls of the government or elected members of local bodies, and all of them have cell phones. They can change India for the better. The country is on the cusp…
This article was first published in the Mint newspaper on December 9, 2015. Starting 1 December, for 100 days, citizens across the 33 districts of Rajasthan will come out and ask the government about information that may not be easily available. We know how information has different roles to play in our country. While the most…