Technology Makes Development More Inclusive: Nidhi Bhasin, NASSCOM Foundation

Digital Transformation has undoubtedly been the preferred flavour for the last two years. While the Tech sector’s dependance on constant innovation has put the spotlight on the remarkable digital transformation journeys undertaken by enterprises of all sizes in the space, other industries are also not far behind in technology adoption. The non-profit sector in India has also caught up quickly since 2020 and upgraded its opinions on leveraging technology to reach the last mile.

Recently, BW Businessworld’s Rohit Chintapali spoke to Nidhi Bhasin (CEO of NASSCOM Foundation) to understand how the non-profit sector has adapted to the era of digital transformation and technology. In this engaging conversation, Nidhi shed light on the tech sector’s involvement in helping the non-profits scale through investments and CSR activities. She also spoke about initiatives that are now increasingly working to reach the last mile to ensure that everybody in the country has access to technology to prosper and grow. 

Excerpts:

Technology adoption has been on an hyperdrive in the past decade. But it has further accelerated during and after the pandemic. Now, it is at the intersection of everything. How is it helping communities and the non-profit sector?

Much like the whole world, non-profit sector also opened up to technology adoption. We realised that if we want to work on scale and reach the last mile, its only possible through technology. Many understood that technology can help the sector be cost-effective. In fact, there was a lot of conventional thinking in the sector that COVID broke as more people said ‘yes’ to investing into technology, which was previously perceived to be expensive.   

Technology has helped development become more inclusive. NASSCOM Foundation has been speaking on digital literacy and scaling in the urban areas for a while. But now, we are going more and more into rural areas because we know if we want to have an impact on scale, we need to reach the last mile for inclusive growth. 

India is known for its socio-economic divide, both internationally and domestically. How is technology addressing this apparent issue which is a problem for a large part of our society?

It’s about ensuring access. Let's take the example of COVID. When the pandemic broke out, education system was very stressed. While private schools became tech-savvy overnight, it was important for the non-profit organisations to pay attention to smaller schools to ensure that there weren’t a huge number of students dropping out. While I wouldn’t say it did not happen, but the drop outs were controlled and limited because of technology. This was possible due to the efforts towards enabling access. Enabling cost-effective accessibility to technology is a great way to address the socio-economic divide. 

One of the statistics that emerged from COVID for us was that prior to the pandemic almost 70 per cent of our beneficiaries were males, but now it has reversed. Today, 68 per cent of our beneficiaries are women. During COVID, a lot of women realised that access to something like as basic as internet via phone could affect a change for them and their children/families. 

What is the Indian Tech sector and NASSCOM Foundation doing to bridge the gap of accessibility?

The Tech sector is very committed to this if you look at the kind of investment that's coming from them. Whether they are talking about capacity building of non-profit organisation or other things, their investment into enabling technology accessibility is very high. 

NASSCOM Foundation is actually the biggest software provider to the non-profit sector. We are trying to build a more tech-enabled ecosystem for the non-profit sector. Over the last decade, we have donated software worth USD 1.6 billion to the non-profit sector and helped them save approximately USD 1.5 billion. We are ensuring that that the non-profit sector’s capacity is built through technology. 

How has NASSCOM Foundation’s work been in the rural areas?

We began our journey from urban to rural last year. Our programs are moving towards Tier 2, 3 cities and rural areas. For that, we recently launched a digital literacy and e-governance program in the aspirational districts of India and are looking to cover at least 15-16 states. The whole idea here is to make people digitally literate and help them access government schemes. If people are able to access hundreds of government schemes, their incomes will automatically go up.

Similarly, we have started working in the new area of ‘women entrepreneurs’, which include micro-business owners, those engaged in self-help groups, agricultural farmers and artisans in the rural areas. We are helping these entrepreneurs become digitally literate by introducing them to technology and scale up and become more self-reliant. 

While we may still be doing a few scaling programs that are in urban settings, we are now trying focus a lot on Tier 2, 3 cities and rural areas. We aspire to impact over 100 million lives through our programs.