Social Impact Summit: How customised AI can drive grassroots change

In a session on tech and AI in scaling change, panelists highlighted ways in which they'd each worked with technology and underscored how it could be customised to local contexts.

Aniket Doegar, co-founder and CEO, Haqdarshak, spoke about his organisation's use of tech to help people access the government's 20,000 schemes, including cash transfers, from which many are excluded because of "information asymmetry". AI use, on the other hand, was more evident on the "supply" side, with governments using it to simplify and standardise scheme data across states.

S Senthilkumaran of Reliance Foundation highlighted how his team has been using AI to turn IMD's weather-update PDFs into advisories in local languages and across content formats, including YouTube videos.


AI is woven into the training Maker Bhavan Foundation imparts to young innovators and engineers in tier-2 and tier-3 cities, where its innovation labs let students experiment, create prototypes, and patent and commercialise them, said CEO Gautam Khanna. Even as AI is framed as the engine of growth, Richa Gautam, director of CSR and Sustainability at Schneider Electric India, argued for continued relevance of hands-on technical work.

Meanwhile, Jyoti Sharma, CEO, NASSCOM Foundation, said AI should not be positioned as a substitute for people and should function as an enabler - helping teachers reach more students, for instance, without making the teacher irrelevant.