The SoochnaPreneur Programme, launched by the Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF) in 2016, works to reduce information gaps and improve digital access in rural, semi-rural, and semi-urban areas of India.
Many people in these areas do not receive correct or timely information about government schemes, digital services, education, health, and financial support. The SoochnaPreneur Programme was created to solve this problem by bringing information and services closer to the community.
Under this programme, DEF selects and trains local individuals and supports them to set up small digital centres in their villages or towns. These centres help community members access government schemes, fill online forms, learn digital skills, use financial services, and get support for education, jobs, health, and livelihoods.
The programme follows a community-based approach. SoochnaPreneurs use their understanding of local needs along with digital tools to support people in simple and practical ways. The focus is on reaching groups who are often left out of digital systems, such as women, elderly people, persons with disabilities, youth, and other marginalised communities.
Along with service delivery, the programme also builds local livelihoods. SoochnaPreneurs earn an income through their digital centres while continuing to serve their communities. This creates local employment, builds trust, and strengthens community ownership.
Overall, the SoochnaPreneur Programme helps connect people to information, services, and opportunities, making digital access more useful, inclusive, and meaningful at the last mile.
Background
The Government formulates policies, programmes, projects and schemes to accelerate rural development. All these programmes and schemes are implemented by the concerned ministries and departments of the Union and State Governments in the areas of education, health, women’s empowerment, sanitation, transport, agriculture and infrastructure at the grassroots level. The schemes, policies and programmes of rural development aim at alleviating rural poverty, generating employment, and eliminating hunger and malnourishment, accompanied by the enrichment of the quality of human life, as reflected by a significantly improved Human Development Index. The objective of rural development, however, is not merely the development of rural areas, but the development of rural communities to dispel ignorance and poverty and to assist the process of creating a self-reliant and self-sustaining community. However, due to a lack of timely and relevant information, these objectives have remained unattainable.
DEF believes that information is the most dynamic tool that propels the empowerment of marginalised sections of society. It is a great enabler for the educated, while it can also act as a blocker, causing hindrances in the participation rate of people in development interventions at the village level. Availing the benefits of government schemes is part of our constitutional rights, irrespective of caste, class or religion. The main problem is that people are hardly aware of the schemes and benefits run by the Government.
Objectives
- To promote new-age social entrepreneurship, including scope, possibilities and exploration in rural information services among unemployed youth in India, as a social venture using digital tools and applications.
- To bridge the real and serious gaps in access to and delivery of public schemes’ information and services, and the eventual realisation of citizen entitlements in backward districts in India.
- To address the need for decentralisation and democratisation of information in India, where critical information resources remain centralised, controlled and insufficiently democratised.
Network of Support
The ‘SoochnaPreneur’ initiative was launched by the Digital Empowerment Foundation in 2016 with grant support from Qualcomm under its ‘Wireless Reach’ programme. Since then, the solution, traversing diverse scopes, challenges, and opportunities, has been able to reach underserved areas and communities by providing access to information, public entitlements, and digital resources through community-led ‘SoochnaPreneurs’. The solution has, by now, received support from diverse partners and stakeholders towards replication and scale-up, with the vision of creating ‘SoochnaPreneurs’ in every village/Panchayat in India as information and digital change agents.
The seed of ‘SoochnaPreneur’ was sown in 2007, when Intel and DEF joined hands to establish the first Community Information Resource Centre (CIRC), managed by a community coordinator—the earlier variant of today’s SoochnaPreneur—in Ranchi district of Jharkhand, around the same time that the government’s Common Services Centre (CSC) programme was being designed and launched. Support from Intel was once again extended in 2019–2020 for a dozen CIRCs managed by SoochnaPreneurs.
The partnership of Vodafone Foundation and Indus Towers with DEF was the first major intervention to scale up the CIRC programme in an entrepreneurial mode across multiple states. This enabled DEF to experiment with CIRC coordinators as entrepreneurs to serve and deliver a range of ICT-based services within communities. The experiment generated a multitude of learnings and lessons that eventually helped redesign and shape the SoochnaPreneur model as a rural information service delivery solution.
From 2014 to 2018, DEF, with a long-term grant from the European Union in India, rolled out an expanded and refined CIRC programme under a new ‘Soochna Seva’ (Information Service) initiative. This was implemented through community-based ‘Soochna Seva Kendras’ (SSKs) — Information Service Centres — run by Soochna Sevaks/Sevikas/SoochnaPreneurs (Information Fellows/Entrepreneurs).
Since 2016, the partnership with Qualcomm has been a true game changer. Through this collaboration, DEF launched a new line of thinking and action aimed at identifying individuals — particularly women — as digitally equipped entrepreneurs, and supporting them to deliver last-mile information, public entitlements, and digital services while building sustainable income and livelihoods. Under this initiative, all SSKs were transitioned to become and complement the SoochnaPreneur network. Over the past four to five years, this partnership has helped expand and onboard more than 500 women as SoochnaPreneurs.
In partnership with Nokia Networks, DEF took the SoochnaPreneur solution to the next level by expanding and adding another 300 SoochnaPreneurs across half a dozen states. Further, through the FREND partnership, with support from Google and Tata Trusts, DEF scaled up a variant of the SoochnaPreneur solution as ‘Internet Saathis’, identifying, training, and skilling more than 10,000 rural women to become digital information change agents as well as entrepreneurs.
The Internet Society (ISOC) supported DEF in developing a model of last-mile connectivity using wireless technology combined with a community engagement approach. This included building local capacities to maintain and manage networks by creating last-mile Barefoot Wireless Engineers. This pool of trained individuals acted as entrepreneurs, leading to the emergence of many SoochnaPreneurs who were also trained in wireless connectivity, and vice versa. The initiative was implemented across at least 150 locations, with an equal number of Barefoot Wireless Engineers and SoochnaPreneurs. In partnership with the EquallyAble Foundation, DEF further expanded the SoochnaPreneur model to include and reach Persons with Disabilities (PwDs), adding another 200 SoochnaPreneurs.
With the Commonwealth of Learning (COL), DEF strengthened SoochnaPreneur training to enable women entrepreneurs to adopt technology and navigate restrictions caused by COVID-19, supporting them in becoming digital entrepreneurs. This initiative helped train 7,000 women during the pandemic, most of whom came from weaving and other traditional skill-based backgrounds. More recently, DEF has partnered with USAID to build a system aimed at creating 10,000 digitally enabled women entrepreneurs, SoochnaPreneurs.
Further, UN Women India supported DEF in training 60 women as SoochnaPreneurs across six states. These women, drawn from Self-Help Groups (SHGs), were equipped to strengthen their collectives through information access and digital entrepreneurship skills. In partnership with Facebook, DEF implemented a dedicated programme to train 5,000 women entrepreneurs from Common Service Centres (CSCs) to become digital women entrepreneurs (SoochnaPreneurs).
In another development, the US-based US-India Policy Institute (USIPI) partnered with DEF to establish at least 10 Digital Community Information Resource Centres. In addition, the partnership aimed to create 100 SoochnaPreneur (SP) Centres by nurturing digital entrepreneurs from lower-income groups. The initiative placed a special focus on women from deprived communities, particularly minorities, Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), and Dalit groups.
USIPI also supported the development of a strategy through which each SoochnaPreneur centre could function as a point for bottom-up data collection, contributing to research-driven policy development and advocacy.
In partnership with the EquallyAble Foundation, DEF expanded the SoochnaPreneur (SP) model to include and reach Persons with Disabilities (PwDs), adding another 1,000 SoochnaPreneurs under the HOPE-1000 Project. Additionally, 50 centres were established under the HOPE-50 initiative.
Through the SkillUP initiative, DEF and Dentsu aim to empower 60,000 women and youth with digital literacy, media and information literacy, and AI awareness. The programme operates through 50 sustainable SoochnaPreneur Centres led by women master trainers, providing practical learning and long-term access to digital and internet-based opportunities. With a special focus on women and youth, 50 digitally equipped Training Facilitation Centres have been established across 10 states in India to connect communities with the information economy.
Bajaj, in partnership with DEF, established DigiPreneurs Centres run by SoochnaPreneurs trained in digital skills and entrepreneurship support. These centres are located in districts with GI-registered products, specifically in Solapur and Aurangabad districts of Maharashtra.
With support from CAF and Blackstone, DEF expanded the DigiPreneurs model to 15 districts across Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra, with the objective of promoting rural digital enterprise.
The APNIC Foundation is supporting DEF in establishing five Mobile Communication Centres in Una district of Himachal Pradesh. This initiative aims to provide high-speed connectivity and stable mobile networks to unreached and underserved areas.
ZVC India Private Limited is supporting DEF in digitally empowering 100,000 community members, including women, persons with disabilities, and artisans. The initiative strengthens communities by enabling and training 50 women and PwDs as nano digital entrepreneurs and supporting them in establishing their own digital centres in Telangana and Madhya Pradesh.
