Technology and Innovation for Social Good
Innovation and technology are transforming how organizations and governments operate. Connecting people with technology can reap extraordinary benefits and opportunities. Technology is the key to build a thriving, resilient world, especially in India where high mobile penetration and the government’s digital initiatives can work in tandem to bring a sustainable and affordable transformation for societal needs.
Talking about technology in India, in the last two decades we have seen two major transformations: during the demonetization, which led to the overall digitisation of the banking system, and then during the Covid-19 pandemic, when everyone had to resort to technology and the digital mediums to carry out their operations.
“Even the vegetable vendors who earlier used to sell their produce through middlemen, now managed to connect with their customers directly and had a payment transfer over their mobiles.”
Big startups and corporates are playing a role in this technological transformation in India and even in Asia.
Where will this transformation take India further ahead?
The covid-19 pandemic has turned the IT sector’s dreams into reality. Now everyone has resorted to the “anywhere ecosystem”. Earlier there was customer resistance and even employee and management resistance in this sphere. But then in almost three days, the whole nation had to suddenly change their whole perspective of what “working in office” means.
“We ran a survey very recently within our organisation and realised that 50% of people actually don’t want to come back to work.”
Adoption of technology during the pandemic has actually acted like an accelerator to many things. The government has been constantly trying to make things reach the people. Everybody in the social lower economic sector who migrated back to their villages received some kind of help from the government.
“Several of the Guru’s could not teach us how to manage time COVID-19 scenario has taught us how to manage time. “
Talking about the “work from home” culture, the managers of the organisations specifically started finding it as more easier to manage and time management.
Transforming the corporate world and encapsulating it for the startup?
It’s been an interesting journey from a corporate structured standpoint and one thing that is extremely important is patience and virtue of seeing things through long term and not taking a short term view on things all the time. And this applies to startups as well because startups are a combination of energy and advancements. But then there is a need to focus on their grey areas.
The startup ecosystem is booming. Technologies like AI and machine learning are being embraced beautifully by some of the startups. They are now going into the innovation stage. If we look at the tech ecosystem around us, in Microsoft, Google, IBM, they’ve also taken a keen interest in some of the startups around India as well. It’s a part of using the right technologies, doing some innovation, but also taking guidance from some of the corporations that are just lending that technology or willing to have that discussion.
Technology and social good
“Each one of us at our hearts has always got some section for social good”
The first challenge for doing something in the social sphere is collecting funds. There is a need to collaborate with likeminded people who can share likeminded opinions.
The next challenge is trust; trust to give each other money, trust to make decisions.
Then, the organizations also need to focus on their marketing, mainly social marketing and crowdsourcing and crowdfunding.
‘Like we have these people who plant trees, and they give you a certificate, that is the tree that you planted on your behalf”. Recognition and utilisation of efforts are also crucial. Technology today allows people to ensure that the deployed money can be physically seen at some other place. Bringing in that transparency is the largest source of the idea. So, whatever our idea is, we should use technology and innovation to make sure that when we’re collecting money for good, we’re deploying it for good.
On the other side we see hoarders. The ideas must come up from the people who are working at the ground route, and then need to consult with the technologists. Those ideas should come from those people who are actually working on it.
Recommendations for startups
The biggest challenge for any start-up is to have a more profound kind of mission, a more driven mission. And the second thing is how they innovate within that.
We can have a process start-up but if we ponder upon these challenges and try to solve them, and take up on good technology and good platforms, we can transform our own ventures into something bigger.
There are some of the areas that will continue to attract attention and funding and give the start-ups the growth they need. But now it’s time to look at a little more complex and niche areas and focus on them and their operations.
Written by: Yashu Saini
Metta Social solutions Pvt Ltd
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