New Delhi: NASSCOM Foundation, in partnership with CGI, released India’s first Tech for Good Report today to demonstrate the intent and focus of organisations, social enterprises and civil society towards the creation and use of technology for social good.
The Tech for Good report contains insights from the inputs received from 548 organisations: 305 non-governmental organisations (NGOs), 124 social enterprises and startups, and 119 corporates. The report provides unique insights into how the industry focuses beyond traditional Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) to create tech for good solutions to help build a better, more sustainable society. It highlights the challenges social enterprises face and the existing gaps in the social technology supply and demand.
Key findings of the report:
- Clear Tech for Good focus: 91 per cent of the organisations view Tech for Good as a strategic focus. 61 per cent have already established a Tech for Good practice, while for 30.3 per cent, it is a key strategic focus. 6 per cent plan to create a new Tech for Good Practice and 2.5 per cent is not currently looking at Tech for Good.
- Education and Livelihoods emerge as top focus areas for Tech for Good: 9 per cent of the organisations rated Education as the highest Tech for Good focus. Livelihoods closely followed this as a focus area for 50.43 per cent of organisations.
- Tech for Good aligns with business strategy: For 93.97 per cent, Tech for Good development aligns with their business strategy, while 66.38 per cent reporting complete alignment and 27.6 per cent displaying partial alignment with their plan.
- Current local issues influence Tech for Good more than the global issues: 26 per cent reported aligning Tech for Good to solve local issues, while 42.9 per cent of organisations aligned their Tech for good to solve global issues.
- Employee engagement and innovation quotient: 3 per cent of organisations align their Tech for Good with employee engagement and innovation quotient development.
- Dedicated teams for Tech for Good: Over 65 per cent of the organisations have dedicated teams for Tech of Good, of which 36 per cent of the organisations have these teams present across various business units.
- Budgets for Tech for Good: A company with a clear Tech for Good practice spends an average of $36,515 on Tech for Good per year. This is over and above their regular CSR contributions.
- Mobile and Web apps are the preferred choice: While mobile apps (81.36 per cent) and web apps (84.48 per cent) rule the tech for good development space as the most preferred technology, Artificial Intelligence (64.10 per cent), Big Data (54.78 per cent) and Cloud (72.65 per cent) are also growing in this niche.
- Lack of Funds is the largest challenge for social enterprises to scale their tech for good solutions, as pointed by 92 per cent of them. Only 27 per cent of social enterprises received CSR funds for scaling up.
- Gap in Tech creation and usage: There is a massive gap of 40 percentage points in the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) based solutions by the companies and their use by NGOs.There is also a large gap for Big Data (29.21), Cloud (31.01) and Blockchain (27.98).
- Gap in NGOs Tech Skills: The study also exposes a significant skills gap for the NGOs across all technologies with a minimum 20 per cent point gap in mobile app usage skills and a maximum 50 per cent point gap for the usage of AI-based solutions.
COVID-19 lockdown ushers in change: Several organisations felt the strain due to the pandemic. 72 per cent of social enterprises claimed their business was severely affected by COVID-19 and 57 per cent of the NGOs reported a hindrance in their monitoring capabilities.
The whole ecosystem found new opportunities in adversity with 63.5 per cent of the organisations (corporates, social enterprises and NGOs) creating new technologies to tackle various challenges.
- 6 per cent worked on creating tech for remote work
- 9 per cent worked on tech for remote Education
- 9 per cent worked on new ways of monitoring and reporting
While releasing the report, Ashok Pamidi, CEO, NASSCOM Foundation, said, “India is a country brimming with innovation potential with the technology industry leading the way. While business innovations are a norm, the last few years have seen the industry invest in meaningful tech-based social innovations. To demonstrate this tech for the good potential of the industry, its best practices, and to encourage more organisations to follow suit, the NASSCOM Foundation is proud to present India’s first-ever Tech for Good report.”
“The report covers inputs from 548 organisations, including companies, social enterprises and the NGOs. It provides critical insights for companies to create new tech for good innovations and exposes the current gaps in the tech ecosystem and NGO skills. It also recommends solutions to fill those gaps. We are happy to have a like-minded partner in CGI and hope that the report can act as a baseline and an inspiration to all the companies who have a strategic intent towards tech for good to find scalable and sustainable solutions to our country’s social issues,” he added.
“Technology and innovation play a critical role in enhancing the overall social and economic well-being of our communities,” said George Mattackal, President, Asia Pacific Global Delivery Centers of Excellence, CGI. “We are pleased to partner with NASSCOM Foundation on this report which highlights Tech for Good insights that will aid other organisations and us to drive relevant and responsible innovation in support of our communities.”
Detailed Tech for Good Report:
