This weblog put up is being visitor written by Shreya Arora on Cisco’s India Money Grant crew, the place she helps the rollout and governance of CSR applications 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 want 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, desires typically collide with obstacles. For hundreds of thousands of households, social welfare applications maintain the promise of a brighter future; nevertheless, the pathways to those advantages are sometimes managed by older, lower-tech methods that may be complicated 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.
By way of our ever-evolving partnership, Cisco and Indus Motion have helped numerous weak residents remodel their lives for the higher by rising their entry to training, maternal well being, labor welfare, and extra. Learn on to learn the way Indus Motion is utilizing inventive digital options to drive ecosystem innovation, constructing extra resilient and thriving communities within the course of.
Bridging the hole: Training for each baby
Training could 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 Data System (EdMIS), an modern 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 complicated administrative workflows and ensured transparency throughout the ecosystem.
Households like Somesh’s, whose son gained admission to a personal faculty underneath RTE, live proof of the transformative energy of this initiative. “With out this provision, enrolling our baby in a personal faculty would have been almost unimaginable,” 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 fast outcomes—it was about constructing scalable, replicable, sustainable options for the long term. 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 underneath the Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana (PMMVY), a welfare program for maternal well being. The target of PMMVY is to provide partial compensation to pregnant girls and lactating moms who have been working and needed to expertise a wage loss as a result of being pregnant.
Impressed by the EdMIS use case, a dashboard and hotline have been developed to streamline operational efficiencies and information monitoring for the state of Uttar Pradesh, whereas offering a discussion board for the recipients to hunt help. Over 18,000 girls acquired 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—reminiscent of 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 underneath the Constructing and Different Development Staff Welfare Board (BOCWWB). Leveraging the teachings realized from RTE implementation, the companions purpose 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’ considerations, Indus Motion has not solely resolved particular person circumstances but in addition used these insights to strengthen insurance policies and processes on the state degree.
Working in 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 indication of how know-how, when paired with Objective, can dismantle obstacles, construct bridges, and enhance essential ecosystems. As Cisco and Indus Motion proceed their journey, the teachings realized and milestones achieved will function a playbook for driving scalable, sustainable change throughout India.
To be taught 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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