Aapti Institute

Astha Kapoor is at the G20 Brasil 2024 side event 'States of the Future' in Rio De Janeiro. She'll be present at the roundtable titled 'Digital Transformation: Innovations and Challenges' today! Learn more about the event: https://lnkd.in/gXhfdpkv

The Economic Times quoted Sarayu Natarajan in their article ‘AI Must Reboot, Not Delete, Jobs.’ She shares how ‘AI presents India’s opportunity to gain big for its people if we solve for human capacity, compute and data while paying attention to gainful employment.’ Read more to find out how India’s livelihoods could be reshaped by the AI boom! 🔗 https://lnkd.in/gyDUer-D

Last night, we launched the ‘Bridging the Gap: Women powering Tech Policy' program in partnership with Microsoft and Young Leaders for Active Citizenship (YLAC). This is a part of the Asia edition of ‘Conversations Unscripted’, an initiative of Microsoft aimed at empowering women in the tech policy landscape. We were honoured to host a fireside chat with Mr. S Krishnan, Secretary of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, who emphasized the necessity of applying a gender lens to developments in the digital economy and technology policy. We also had a wonderful panel discussion with Dr. Preeti Banzal - Adviser/Scientist ‘G’, Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India, Nivedita Mehra - Managing Director, US-India Strategic Partnership Forum, Dr. Sarayu Natarajan - Co-founder, Aapti Institute and Arjun Venkatraman - Program Officer- Digital, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The panel discussed the different experiences that women have had in the public policy field and areas of further research to study gendered impacts of tech policy. We thank all our panelists and attendees for contributing to this vital conversation. Thank you to our partners Garima Rathore, Sandeep Aurora, Jyoti Pawar at Microsoft for supporting this important initiative. Stay tuned for more engagements and opportunities as a part of this program! Aparajita Bharti | Rohit Kumar | Sanskriti Bhatia | Manan Katyal | Ishita Bagchi | Himani Chouhan | Shivangi Tyagi |

Read Rohan Pai’s piece ‘India’s AI development faces challenges, calling MeitY’s attention’ which explores the urgent need for the Ministry of Electronics and IT to foster the creation of open and accessible public datasets to drive AI innovation in India, while focusing on extending necessary protections to users from rampant data scraping and copyrights breaches that are becoming commonplace with the advent of generative AI. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/gJAVbcnM 

Sarayu Natarajan attended InGovern Research Services’ roundtable where she spoke about diversity of gig work, and need for more granular and nuanced regulations required to address how digital mediation has changed the nature of gig work. Read what her and other experts shared on this panel on the growing gig economy in digital India! 🔗 https://lnkd.in/ggGtK4D4 Soujanya Sridharan Ritvik G. Gautam Misra

🔔 Don't miss this! Make sure to catch Sarayu Natarajan on this panel speaking about her perspective and experience as a woman in tech policy!

We’re launching our new website ‘Data on the Move’ where you can explore our latest research examining the intersection of human mobility and data infrastructures, focused on safeguarding the rights of people on the move in the digital age. 🔗 Explore the webpage https://lnkd.in/g_MjRsPZ Our latest case study ‘Digital negotiations in Student Migration: Infrastructures and impact’ examines the digital journey of an ‘international student’ or ‘student migrant’ when moving from India to Germany, depicting existing inequities in the global knowledge economy by mapping digital systems and data infrastructures that a student interacts with during their migratory journey. 🔗 Read the case study https://lnkd.in/gW5JBRrK This case study is a part of our ‘Data on the Move’ project studying digital and data infrastructures in human migration. Rohan Pai Amrita Nanda Sameer Bajaj Supratik Mitra Poorvi Yerrapureddy Nandini Jiva #tech #migration #student #digitalinfrastructure

This is an Amba Salelkar hype post. Anyone who knows me also knows I am a cynic about facilitator-led workshops. But this time, on the back of lots of rapid growth, frictions and conflicts, and big ambition, we felt we needed someone to guide us to our path forward. We needed an approach that made sense and was grand and wicked and audacious and achievable all at the same time. I reached out to Amba asking for references to someone who can basically be everything, hoping she'd say this person doesn't exist. But she went "I will do it bro" (yes, "bro"). She brought grace and sagacity to the process, steered us to something achievable now/in the short term, and helped us frame the grander ambition as well. This was my first Path workshop, and it helped me see and act in the here and now, to a bigger and better future. Indeed, good facilitation can work! Besides the facilitation of course, Amba did a short session on building empathy in the workplace and thinking through reasonable accommodation, which was deeply helpful. Astha Kapoor and I are keen to build Aapti Institute into an impactful organisation, we are also insistent that we build a kind and safe organisation. This session helped us think about how our core values are translated into org culture and practice. Also, it was lots of laughter and fun. If you are thinking about building and framing your vision/strategy, or more deeply about values and culture, reach out to Amba to learn more about her work and practice, and her repertoire of methods. #strategy #workshop #facilitator #pathmethodology #organisation #culture Vinay Narayan Kunal Raj Barua Soujanya Sridharan Amrita Nanda Ava Mumtaz Haidar Aishani Rai

New work! My team at Indian Institute for Human Settlements hosted a convening to share evidence on how informal women workers interact with digital and platform services for their livelihoods. Our goal was to gather data that can reimagine community-led digital ecosystems that can be safer and more useful for women. We conducted this research with the Rajasthan Mahila Kamgar Union, SEWA in Delhi and LabourNet Services India Pvt. Ltd. We also had an opportunity to work with Achyutha Sharma through the project where he brought industry experience of designing for women users centrally into our methods and analysis. Toward this, we have spent the last year gathering evidence on 🔎 :  -how women use the internet, smartphones and platforms for their livelihoods -what questions to ask when assessing their proficiency of usage, and digital literacy  -how women seek help and aid in using digital tools -who mediates women’s access to internet, smartphones and platforms  -quantifying patterns of women’s aid-seeking and ranking mediators for their role as restrictive, facilitative in programs around digital empowerment  This research, supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, was reviewed by academics, practitioners, and experts at the intersection of the digital economy, design, and community-built ecosystems at our convening last week. ⭐ Important takeaways: 1. Digital Trust - through design and context - are key to bring women on to digital infrastructure: We workshopped the design of ‘trust’ with Aapti Institute to delve into how women navigate digital platforms through mediated settings. Participants co-created tech designs and policy ideas to improve women’s digital trust, financial independence, and safe digital engagement. Emphasis on collaborative efforts, data accessibility, and context-sensitive solutions to foster digital trust among women. 2. Worker-centric Organizations need Digital Economy Agendas: This session focused on adapting the agendas of worker-centric organizations to the evolving digital economy. NGOs, CBOs, SHGs and unions are key stakeholders for the end user. Respecting their role in building this trust is incredibly important for technology creators. The workshop participants highlighted the critical need for ongoing mediation, collaborative platform development, and educating funders to support worker-centric digital economic agendas. 📢 Thank you to everyone who engaged with our findings and shared their experiences from eGov Foundation, Aapti Institute, IT for Change, JustJobs Network, Civic Data Design Lab, Treemouse, Dvara Research, Institute of Social Studies Trust (ISST), Jagrati Sewa Sansthan, Caregram, SEWA Cooperative Federation, Sambhav Foundation 📢 shout out to the team at IIHS: Antara Rai Chowdhury, Raghav M., Sona Mewati, Sukrit Nagpal, Achyutha Sharma

Aapti Institute, in collaboration with Indian Institute for Human Settlements, held a workshop to understand digital trust in the context of shared access. We presented a usage table defining the framework of individual, shared, and mediated usage. With insights from experts and academicians, we discussed designing more inclusive and effective digital solutions for women, focusing on their roles as service intermediaries, their recreational usage, and their engagement with welfare and livelihood services. Participants also engaged in a dialogue about their diverse digital needs and the importance of context-specific solutions. We took away some critical insights from our discussions: 👉 Devices don’t reflect shared realities, which are primarily socio-patriarchal - we have to push back on the expectations of individual experiences around digital goods, services and interfaces. 👉 Women need more intuitive financial user interfaces and experiences, both at the digital and institutional levels. We need to be granular about their versions of risk, and not a gender-agnostic framework of it. 👉 As the device is a contested resource, we need modes of verification that do not compromise essential service delivery and safety - this means sometimes looking outside of digital forms to include more direct communication. 👉 Livelihood opportunities are also shared resources, which can impact individual aspirations in a community. It is important to think of mediators in this context, and ensuring that incentives cater to their aspirations. 👉 Physical infrastructure for digital infrastructure remains in a critical stage. In light of that, human infrastructure has to be strengthened and appreciated - this means looking at local digital champions and mediators, visibilising the nature of work by them as efforts made, not just expectations set. Astha Kapoor Ava Mumtaz Haidar Manvi Parashar Antara Madavane Akshobya Reddy Aditi Shah