Seema Devi a woman entrepreneur from Khunti, Jharkhand who is engaged in lacquer bangle business, designs attractive and colourful bangles and sells them in the nearby market and contributes to her family income. She lives with her husband and two children. The main source of income for the family is by farming. The COVID-19 pandemic…
“My brother thought I was making a children’s diaper” said Shreemati Devi, a digital entrepreneur involved in the production of Smartpads. Smartpad is a re-usable sanitary pad. As Shreemati explained the benefits of using it a group of young boys stood around us listening to her. However, as they realized what she was talking about…
Located about 50 kilometers from Lucknow, Saidanpur is nowhere close to the capital in terms of development and education. The entrance into the village is with the ruins of various havelis that are about 150 to 200 years old. DEF’s digital center is located in one such dilapidated but refurbished ruins of a haveli. Noori…
Schools in India have finally re-opened after a long break because of the COVID-19 pandemic. To fight the pandemic and the deep digital divide that has come about and become obvious because of it, DEF set up a digital literacy classroom, Digigyan in a government senior secondary school in Karnawas, Haryana. DEF’s team from Delhi…
I saw a group of girls practicing embroidery at DEF’s digital centre in Chinna Kondur, Telangana. Deepika, the embroidery trainer who was herself a student earlier has been training girls for the last 2 years. The embroidery training enables these girls to earn a livelihood for themselves. This allows them freedom and helps them make…
Over the last seven years DEF has created a network of SoochnaPreneurs who serve their villages by providing digital services like access to government entitlements, digital financial services, tele-health services and computer classes. During the pandemic they became more active and spread information related to COVID-19, social distancing, the importance of masks and vaccination. In…
DEF’s centre in Chinna Kondur, Telangana is located at the main chowk of the village making it accessible to all. Jagdish and Vamsi, the project officers for DEF in the region took me around the village. An old woman saw us walking on the street and she shouted “Vamsi!!”, we turned and walked to her…
The Access (In)Equality Index [AEI] of OP Jindal Global University, 2021 puts a sharper and timely light on growing inequality in India in terms of access to health care, sanitation, water, education, decent work and other socio-economic opportunities.
When the lockdown was first imposed in March 2020 and everything was shut down, rural and remote India was the worst hit. Unlike the urban populations, people from rural and remote locations in India didn’t have access to…
The Legatum Center at MIT has been conducting research on Innovation-driven enterprises (IDE) that are unlocking significant business and societal value by solving systemic problems that conventional business models have not been able to solve.
