This weblog put up is being visitor written by Shreya Arora on Cisco’s India Money Grant staff, the place she helps the rollout and governance of CSR packages throughout India. Drawing on seven years of expertise in program growth and fundraising, Shreya brings a holistic view of the nonprofit world and a powerful need to translate native wants into real-world options.
Shreya’s dedication to inclusive, community-driven change is fueled by the inspiration she finds in collaborating with Cisco’s numerous community of companions.
Within the bustling lanes of India’s villages and cities, goals usually collide with obstacles. For hundreds of thousands of households, social welfare packages maintain the promise of a brighter future; nonetheless, the pathways to those advantages are sometimes managed by older, lower-tech methods that may be advanced to navigate. In 2018, Cisco partnered with Indus Motion, an India-based non-profit, to handle this problem, digitally reworking important social safety methods to be extra citizen-friendly and efficient.
Via our ever-evolving partnership, Cisco and Indus Motion have helped numerous weak residents remodel their lives for the higher by growing their entry to training, maternal well being, labor welfare, and extra. Learn on to learn the way Indus Motion is utilizing artistic digital options to drive ecosystem innovation, constructing extra resilient and thriving communities within the course of.
Bridging the hole: Training for each baby
Training may be transformational for anybody—but, for a lot of low-income households in India, it stays elusive. Recognizing this problem, Cisco and Indus Motion joined collectively to assist the implementation of Part 12(1)(c) of India’s Proper to Training (RTE) Act. This coverage mandates that 25% of seats in personal, unaided colleges be reserved for kids from economically deprived sections and teams.
With Cisco’s assist, Indus Motion developed an Training-Administration Info System (EdMIS), an revolutionary know-how platform designed to streamline the RTE admissions course of. The work spanned three states full-time and supported 4 others, making certain admissions for about 2.15lakh (215,000) college students. From faculty and scholar registrations to software lotteries, reimbursements, and scholar monitoring, EdMIS has simplified advanced administrative workflows and ensured transparency throughout the ecosystem.
Households like Somesh’s, whose son gained admission to a non-public faculty beneath RTE, reside proof of the transformative energy of this initiative. “With out this provision, enrolling our baby in a non-public faculty would have been almost unattainable,” Somesh’s mom shared. “This coverage helps households like ours. We hope it continues to assist others like us sooner or later.”
Indus Motion’s flagship undertaking wasn’t nearly instant outcomes—it was about constructing scalable, replicable, sustainable options for the long run. By launching the EdMIS platform in states like Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh, and Haryana, whereas supporting others in Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Uttar Pradesh, the partnership laid the groundwork for lasting systemic change.
Supporting pregnant and first-time moms
In 2020, Cisco and Indus Motion expanded their attain to assist pregnant and first-time moms beneath the Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana (PMMVY), a welfare program for maternal well being. The target of PMMVY is to offer partial compensation to pregnant ladies and lactating moms who had been working and needed to expertise a wage loss because of the being pregnant.
Impressed by the EdMIS use case, a dashboard and hotline had been developed to streamline operational efficiencies and knowledge monitoring for the state of Uttar Pradesh, whereas offering a discussion board for the recipients to hunt help. Over 18,000 ladies obtained all three instalments of the money profit, and the undertaking witnessed over 60,000 new registrations.
Money advantages are delivered in a well timed method, with further enhancements in service supply. Past this, this system has resulted in a rise in health-seeking conduct—comparable to antenatal and prenatal check-ups.
Safeguarding labor welfare
In 2025, Cisco and Indus Motion renewed their partnership with a daring new focus: bettering welfare for staff registered beneath the Constructing and Different Development Staff Welfare Board (BOCWWB). Leveraging the teachings discovered from RTE implementation, the companions goal to deploy know-how to simplify entry to advantages, deal with grievances, and improve governance for staff and their households.
Cisco’s funding in grievance redressal mechanisms has already confirmed invaluable, serving to households efficiently navigate the often-confusing welfare panorama. By listening to residents’ issues, Indus Motion has not solely resolved particular person instances but additionally used these insights to strengthen insurance policies and processes on the state degree.
Working in the direction of a future the place good training is for everybody
Our partnership with Indus Motion is greater than only a program; it’s a motion—an illustration of how know-how, when paired with Goal, can dismantle obstacles, construct bridges, and enhance essential ecosystems. As Cisco and Indus Motion proceed their journey, the teachings discovered and milestones achieved will function a playbook for driving scalable, sustainable change throughout India.
To study extra about Indus Motion’s initiatives and discover methods to get entangled, go to their web site at indusaction.org. Collectively, we are able to create higher social safety methods that work for everybody.
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