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Anganwadi workers across India play an important role in preparing young children for school, yet research suggests that only around half of children are school-ready by age six. For Preeti, an Anganwadi worker in Bhopal with over five years of experience, limited access to diverse activities meant that lessons for children aged three to six were becoming repetitive. As children lost interest, attendance suffered and there were fewer opportunities to build early literacy and physical development such as coordination and movement.

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Rocket Learning helped Preeti bring greater variety to her daily lessons through simple, accessible content shared on WhatsApp. Every evening, she received activities she could incorporate into her lessons without adding to her workload. Hands-on training also equipped her with practical techniques to support children's physical development through games, simple props and movement-based activities. “They taught us how to engage children using both their small muscles, such as their fingers, and their larger muscles. These activities gave the children a chance to exercise their whole bodies while having fun,” she explains.
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Over time, the classroom began to change. Attendance rose from around 20–25 children to more than 30, while children became more confident in recognising numbers, letters and shapes and developed practical skills such as making paper toys. For the children, this meant more regular participation in an environment where learning was active and engaging. For Preeti, seeing these changes renewed her motivation and confidence as an educator.
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Her work was later recognised with an award from the District Office. Rocket Learning's wider results point to what this kind of support can make possible at scale: 75% of learners on its programme are school-ready by age six, compared with a national average of 50%. For Preeti, the programme did more than introduce new activities. It gave her practical ways to create a more engaging early learning environment for the children in her care.

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For smallholder farmers, making a living from degraded or increasingly unpredictable land can mean balancing rising cultivation costs with uncertain returns. Traditional farming often requires significant investment each season, while changing water availability and other pressures can make it difficult to build a reliable livelihood from the land. Farmers for Forests (F4F) is working to change this by helping farmers turn their land into productive agroforestry systems that can generate both environmental and economic value over the long term.
For Mahesh Shinde in 2022, the challenge was becoming increasingly familiar. Rising labour costs meant that traditional crops barely covered expenses, while erratic water availability made annual yields unpredictable. He wanted to find a way to make his land a more productive asset for his family's future.
With support from F4F, Mahesh brought seven acres, around 70% of his land, under agroforestry. He planted more than 2,700 trees across fruit and native species including mango, jackfruit, guava, jamun, amla, tamarind and bamboo. Alongside saplings and regular field guidance, he received ₹9,000 in phased cash transfers over three years, helping him manage the costs of maintaining the plantation while the trees established themselves.
The changes are already visible. Mahesh reports improvements in soil structure and water retention, as well as a noticeable change in the microclimate around his farm as tree cover has expanded. Most of the trees are still approaching maturity, so the larger economic returns lie ahead. Mahesh sees the plantation as a “pension scheme” for his family, with future income expected from fruit, bamboo and carbon credits. “We didn’t do this for the money today. The real benefit will come tomorrow,” he explains.
His experience is also beginning to influence other farmers. Initially met with scepticism, his plantation now draws farmers from nearby villages who come to see the orchard and seek his advice. What was once viewed as a risky experiment is becoming a model others are considering.
Mahesh’s seven-acre plantation is one example of what F4F is working to make possible at scale. By March 2026, its agroforestry model had restored 3,000 hectares of land and reached more than 6,000 farmers, while its open-source agroforestry monitoring tool had been deployed across 13,000+ hectares.

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For women who manage households and care for their families, earning an income can be difficult when available jobs require fixed hours, travel or leaving home. In many low-income communities, the lack of flexible work means that women who want to earn can have few options that fit around their existing responsibilities. For Lakshmi, a woman in Saharanpur, finding work she could do from home had been difficult. She had been searching for opportunities without success until her brother-in-law introduced her to Karya.
Karya's platform offered her digital work that she could do from her phone, on her own schedule, without leaving home. The tasks were straightforward, from recording sentences and identifying shapes to answering questions, and she could complete them in short 15 to 20-minute sessions around her household responsibilities. “It felt difficult at first, but once I understood how it worked, I had no problems. If I made a mistake, I could simply delete it and try again,” she recalls. She was also paid reliably each week.
Over roughly six months, Lakshmi earned around ₹4,000, her first income from an online platform. The amount mattered not only as an income of her own, but because it allowed her to contribute to her household. “Now I am able to contribute to my household with my own income,” she says. The work also changed how she viewed the time she had available. “Earlier, I would spend my free time sleeping or doing nothing. After joining Karya, I began using that time to earn an income.”
Lakshmi also shared the opportunity with friends, who joined the platform and began working themselves. For her, Karya showed that earning did not have to mean choosing between work and family responsibilities. Her experience illustrates the potential of flexible digital work to open up income opportunities for people who may otherwise be excluded from conventional employment.
Karya's reach shows how this model can extend beyond individual stories. Karya has so far enabled 177,000+ workers to increase their annual incomes by an average of 25.8% by contributing voice and other datasets to the AI economy.

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For students across India, Class 10 board exams often shape what comes next, from the subjects they can pursue to the opportunities available to them after school. Yet access to quality academic support remains uneven, particularly for students who cannot rely on expensive coaching. For Deepika, a Class 10 student in Chandauli, Uttar Pradesh, her school moved quickly and her classroom was full, leaving little room to ask questions. Offline coaching was meant to fill that gap, but with around 30 students to one teacher, many of her doubts went unanswered. As the boards approached, she kept studying but struggled to build the understanding and confidence she needed.
Searching online for a more accessible option, Deepika came across Vidyakul and downloaded the app. Its affordable, Hindi-language courses offered live and recorded classes, doubt-solving sessions, practice papers, mock tests and handwritten notes in one place. “If I miss a live class, I watch the recording. I also join the doubt-solving sessions to ask my questions. There are practice papers for every chapter, handwritten notes and notes from the live classes, so I can study everything in one place,” she explains.
The difference was not just access to more resources, but the ability to understand concepts at her own pace. “The teachers explain concepts five or six times in very simple language, and they explain every topic in depth,” she says. When Deepika started, she could solve around 50% of previous years’ exam questions on her own. By the time she completed the course, she could solve around 90%.
Her approach to studying changed too. She went from studying for around two hours a day to regularly putting in five to six hours of self-study. “Before Vidyakul, I wasn't able to understand topics on my own, so I didn't do much self-study. After using Vidyakul, I started studying independently and now I can understand and study on my own.”
Most importantly, her expectations of herself changed. “Earlier, I thought I would just somehow pass. Now I believe I can score good marks.” For a student who once hoped simply to get through the exam, that shift in confidence is an important part of what better academic support can unlock. Vidyakul's wider results suggest this is not an isolated experience, with more than 80% of its students passing with first division, compared with 34% across its benchmark states.

Working professionals across India increasingly need to build new skills to keep pace with a changing job market, yet affordable, high-quality and job-relevant learning remains difficult to access. For Praneet, a working professional in Dehradun, moving into data analytics was the next step he wanted to take in his career. But finding training that went beyond generic or theoretical content proved difficult. He had explored other learning platforms but struggled to find courses that connected concepts to practical, industry-relevant examples. Without that practical understanding, he lacked the confidence to demonstrate his skills in interviews and make the move into analytics.
Praneet discovered LearnTube through reviews and recommendations on Instagram and found a data analysis course for ₹2,000. The platform's example-driven approach made the content easier to understand and apply. He attended sessions every week and found the practical teaching particularly useful. “The examples the teachers gave were very helpful. The content was good, and that is why I continued with the course,” he explains.
As he progressed through the course, what had felt like a difficult skills gap became more manageable. He was able to build his understanding of data analysis in a structured way and, importantly, put those skills into practice.
That learning translated into an opportunity. Praneet appeared for a data analytics interview and received a job offer, which he attributes directly to the skills he developed through the course. For Praneet, this meant more than learning a new skill. It gave him the confidence and practical capability to pursue a role that had previously felt out of reach.
What began as a desire to move into data analytics became a tangible career opportunity. For Praneet, accessible and practical up-skilling helped turn an aspiration into a job he could pursue with confidence.

In India, specialist eye care is often concentrated in larger hospitals and urban centres, making it harder for people in smaller towns and peripheral communities to access screening close to home. Without early screening and referral, conditions such as diabetic retinopathy, a diabetes-related disease that can damage the retina and lead to vision loss, can go undetected until they have progressed. For Dr. Karthika, an ophthalmologist involved in community eye care services, screening was largely limited to patients who could travel to the hospital. Even among those who made the journey, her team could screen only three to four patients from the community each day using a basic ophthalmoscope. Without a fundus camera, which captures detailed images of the back of the eye, there was limited capacity to screen people closer to where they lived. As a result, many patients were reaching the hospital only after their eye condition had progressed, with no way to identify and refer them earlier from closer-to-home health centres.
Forus helped extend specialist screening beyond the hospital by enabling peripheral centres to capture and upload retinal images and patient information for remote review. Specialists could review cases without patients first having to travel to a hospital, while automated alerts helped them identify new cases for timely review and referral. The system also gave health administrators visibility across centres, helping coordinate screening and specialist care across districts.
The difference in screening capacity was significant. Daily fundus screenings increased from three to four patients to 30 to 40. With screening available closer to where people lived, conditions including diabetic retinopathy could be identified earlier and patients referred for specialist care before their conditions progressed.
For Dr. Karthika, the change was also about extending the reach of specialist care. Instead of waiting for patients to arrive at the hospital, screening could reach people through primary health centres, creating an earlier point of contact with specialist eye care. For patients in communities where specialist eye care may otherwise be difficult to reach, this can mean finding a problem earlier and getting to the right care before their condition progresses.

For 16 years, Anitha has served as a frontline health worker at Basrur Primary Health Centre in Udupi District, managing the care and records of up to 60 patients each day. Over the years, she has also seen an increase in conditions such as hypertension and diabetes. “Every house has one or two people with BP or sugar,” she says. Before the introduction of digital tools, community health surveys were conducted on paper, making the process difficult to track and standardise. Without a structured system, Anitha observed that data collection could also be inconsistent, with some workers conducting only “half surveys.”
KhushiBaby's Samasta platform brought together applications for non-communicable diseases, maternal health and inventory management into a single system. For Anitha, this “brought uniformity to the work” by helping health workers collect data more consistently. It also meant she could access a patient's complete medical history without having to search through physical registers.
With a patient's complete medical history readily available, Anitha could build a fuller picture of their health and discuss conditions such as heart disease, hypertension and diabetes in a single interaction. Having this information in one place enabled her to offer more comprehensive assistance in less time. Patients were often surprised and reassured by this continuity of information, feeling that “she knows everything about me.”
For Anitha, the platform helped make each patient interaction more comprehensive and informed, while allowing her to provide more personalised care. Just as importantly, the continuity of information strengthened patients' trust and confidence in the care they received.

India's public healthcare system still relies heavily on paper records, particularly across primary and community health facilities. When patient information is spread across registers and facilities, doctors and health workers can struggle to access a complete medical history, making it harder to coordinate referrals and provide timely, continuous care. In palliative care, where patients may need regular follow-ups and coordinated support across home and hospital settings, these gaps can be especially consequential.
For Shazma, a palliative care nurse at a taluk hospital with eight years of experience, maintaining patient records was a significant part of her daily workload. Each patient required multiple physical records covering follow-ups, diagnoses and vital signs. Completing the documentation could take more than an hour per visit, leaving less time for care and making it difficult to quickly retrieve a patient's history when needed.
OHCN's CARE platform brought these records together digitally. Although Shazma had never used digital tools for her professional work, training helped her make the transition. Once she became familiar with the platform, documentation that had previously taken more than an hour could be completed in around 10 minutes. More importantly, she could quickly access a patient's previous services, doctors' notes, lab results, medications and nursing procedures in one place, giving her the information she needed to coordinate care.
One case showed Shazma what this could mean in practice. When a bystander called about a cancer patient who needed urgent attention, the primary nurse referred the case to her. Shazma immediately accessed the patient's history and medications on CARE and contacted the doctor for a remote review. The doctor prepared a treatment plan through the platform, and the nursing team then visited the patient's home. According to Shazma, the digital coordination meant that critical care could be delivered within 30 minutes.
For Shazma, the change meant less time spent managing records and more ability to act on the information those records contained. At a system level, CARE demonstrates how digitising patient information can help connect health workers, doctors and patients more quickly, strengthening continuity of care across India's public health system.

Cervical cancer remains a significant health concern worldwide, yet many women face barriers to getting screened early. In India, for women in communities far from specialised health facilities, screening can require long journeys to tertiary hospitals, while fear of pain, concerns about a possible diagnosis and worries about treatment costs can make them hesitant to seek care. For Firoza, an ASHA worker in Sangrur, these barriers were familiar from her work in the community. Before Periwinkle's screening device was introduced, women who needed further assessment often had to travel to centres in Patiala or Chandigarh.
The Periwinkle Smart Scope CX enabled cervical screening to be brought closer to the communities Firoza served. She began using the device in her work the previous year, making screening available locally and reducing the need for women to travel long distances just to be assessed. She also saw a shift in how women responded to the screening itself. Many initially worried that the procedure would be painful, but their fears eased after experiencing it. “It felt painful at first, but after getting the test done, the fear went away,” Firoza says.
Having screening available locally also helped address concerns about accessing treatment. “Earlier, if someone fell ill, we wondered how treatment would happen because we had to go to Chandigarh. Now treatment has started happening locally,” she explains.
For Firoza, the value of screening lies in being able to identify cervical health problems earlier, when treatment can be more effective. She and her team actively encourage women, particularly those experiencing symptoms such as abnormal bleeding or blood clots during menstruation, to get screened. “Women can find out if they have a disease at an early stage, when it can still be treated. If it is detected at a later stage, treatment becomes much more difficult,” she says.
Firoza estimates that awareness of cervical health and screening has now reached nearly 80% of women in her community. For women who might previously have delayed screening because of distance or fear, having the service closer to home is making early care easier to access.

Across India, nearly 90,000 sewer and septic tank workers have been identified through the government's NAMASTE programme. Yet much of this essential work still involves hazardous cleaning conditions, making safer ways of maintaining India's sanitation systems an important challenge. For HCL Foundation, addressing this challenge through its My Clean City initiative meant finding ways to improve worker safety while preserving livelihoods and making sanitation operations more efficient. Across cities in Uttar Pradesh, the Foundation looked for a solution that could reduce the need for workers to enter hazardous drains and manholes themselves.
Solinas introduced a robotic sewer-cleaning solution that allowed workers to operate the cleaning process without entering the drain or manhole. Rather than replacing workers, the model involved training and upskilling them to operate the technology and remain part of the sanitation process. Initially, both municipal authorities and sanitation workers were sceptical of the technology. Demonstrations and hands-on training helped build confidence as workers saw that the robot could improve cleaning while making their own work safer.
As the technology became operational in Noida, the way sanitation work was carried out began to change. Workers could reduce their exposure to hazardous drains and manholes while continuing to play an active role in maintaining them. Municipal authorities also began expressing interest in expanding similar deployments, reflecting growing confidence in mechanised approaches to urban sanitation.
For the sanitation workers involved, mechanisation offered the possibility of doing essential work without having to put their health at risk. It also showed that improving worker safety can go hand in hand with protecting livelihoods and improving the efficiency of essential urban services.
The experience points to a broader opportunity for Indian cities: using technology to make sanitation work safer and more dignified while improving how essential services are delivered.