impact initatives
I’m continually inspired by collaborators who took the plunge to start and sustain mission-driven organizations in service of societal impact goals. Most of these initiatives got their start from research innovations, which allowed them to convene disparate stakeholders and mobilize collective action in stagnant or neglected areas. Once momentum was created, however, the novel technologies often took a backseat to the more important (and far more challenging!) work of creating meaningful and lasting change with beneficiary communities.
| Impact initiative | Formative research | Leads |
|---|---|---|
| Everwell builds health platforms that have supported over 40M people across India and other countries (2015-present) | 99DOTS implementation & evaluation @ MSR India | Andrew Cross, Nakull Gupta |
| Karya has offered dignified digital work to >30,000 people in rural India (2019-present) | mTurk, mClerk & Karya studies @ MSR India | Manu Chopra, Vivek Seshadri, Safiya Husain |
| CGNet Swara has published >30,000 stories and >300 impact reports from rural Central India (2009-present) | CGNet Swara design, evaluation, & comparison studies @ MSR India | Shubhranshu Choudhary |
| VoiceDeck is creating new business models for journalism (and from 2017-2022, scaling incentive-linked social campaigns) | Learn2Earn @ MSR India | Devansh Mehta |
| 22bate7 scaled low-cost classroom polling to >300,000 students (on pause since COVID) | qCards @ MSR India | Abhinav Tripathi |
| Microsoft Community Training has engaged >10 million learners (2015-present) | Massively Empowered Classroom @ MSR India | Champions in Microsoft |
| Innovators In Health doubled rates of TB case finding and halved maternal mortality among >3M population in Bihar, India (2008-present) | smart pillbox @ MIT | Manish Bhardwaj |