NASSCOM Foundation Tech for Good Report 2021

India is a hotbed of innovation. Given its demography and diverse population, it is also the world's largest sandbox to try out innovative technologies and models. Of late, we have seen technology companies focussing on developing high-end Tech for Good that can help solve numerous of the country's problems. Yet, Tech-based transformations at scale remain notoriously elusive. Most of the innovations are piecemeal activities done in silos. There is a considerable gap in understanding of social issues, technologies, and implementation processes between the people who create these innovations and people who use them.

This study focuses on finding these gaps between the ecosystem partners, catalyzing collaboration and sharing best practices on how tech transformation can make change happen at scale.

The report created with inputs from 548 organizations, of which 119 are established companies, 124 are social enterprises/ startups, and 305 are NGOs, covers a wide array of topics.

DOWNLOAD PDF

Key Findings

Over 90% of the companies are developing or have plans to develop Technology for Social Good.

The Tech for Good is not only in harmony with the companies' business strategy but aligns with it (66.38%), even more than it aligns with the company CSR strategy (51.72%).
The Tech for Good development is also more aligned with the local causes (55.26%) than the global causes (42.98%).
Education (56.9%) gets the most Tech for Good focus followed by Livelihoods development (50.43%).
While mobile apps (81.36%) and web apps(84.48%) rule the tech for good development space as the most preferred technology, Artificial Intelligence (64.10%), Big Data (54.78%) and Cloud (72.65%) are also growing in this niche.

Tech for Good Practices across companies

On an average, 30 employees (full time and part time) get involved in a company's Tech for Good practice per year
A company spends on an average $36,515 on Tech for Good per year. This is over and above their regular CSR contributions.
Most companies (57%) engage in long term Tech for Good projects (spanning for more than a year)
For most companies (79.31%) direct impact is the most important Key Performance Indicator for their Tech for Good project success while only 35.34% of companies have KPIs to help with company CSR.

Tech for Good for Social Enterprises and NGOs

Some of the key drivers for social innovations include creation of cost effective solutions, reaching a maximum number of people in need and sustainability.
Lack of Funds (92.6%) form one of the biggest challenges for social enterprises, followed by lack of internet and mobile connectivity at the ground level (76.10%)
Only 27% social enterprises have access to CSR funds to scale their solutions
Mobile Apps (80.98%) by far are the preferred Tech for Good usage choice of the NGOs
There is a huge gap of 40 percent points in the development of Artificial Intelligence based solutions by the companies and the usage by NGOs.
- There is also a large gap for Big Data (29.21), Cloud (31.01) and Blockchain (27.98)
The study also exposes a significant skills gap for the NGOs across all technologies with 20 percent point gap in mobile app usage skills, 28 percent point gap for usage of software apps, 30 percent point gap for web apps and 21 percent point gap in usage of cloud based solutions.

NASSCOM Foundation Tech for Good Report 2021

Key Findings

Get The Report