What are we Publishing & Why?

The Bharat Inclusion Initiative is geared to impact large-scale change in India. We are committed to enhance financial inclusion of the underserved in India by leveraging the massive potential of technology and the unparalleled determination of entrepreneurs. Our efforts towards this are grounded in robust research and authentic understanding of the segment, ecosystem, gaps, challenges, and the interventions needed.

Large-scale and sustainable change often comprises a re-crafting of the discourse. We believe that it is imperative to draw attention to the realities of a large segment of the population remaining underserved. Such mainstreaming must also bring forth efforts being made to correct this imbalance. In our quest towards this, we are creating a knowledge and experience sharing platform under the Bharat Inclusion Initiative.

Through this platform, we have been sharing our experiences and learnings in two broad directions — Understanding Bharat and Building for Bharat.

Through Understanding Bharat we share insights from research every Wednesday. Here, you would find the Bharat Inclusion Research Fellows sharing their perspectives, experiences from the field, and findings of their studies. We have just begun work on a few in-house research projects. Findings and insights from these studies will also be shared through the Understanding Bharat section on our blog.

The second direction — Building for Bharat — brings out the experiences, updates and insights from entrepreneurs and technology specialists working on creating inclusion solutions. In this direction, we continue to feature our interactions with entrepreneurs and start-ups working in the space of financial inclusion. Here, we often have experts unravel the potential of high-impact technologies. We link to begin our week getting right to business –most Building for Bharat updates and publications are rolled out on Mondays. To evangelize entrepreneurship in the space, every month we create and publish a use-case of how existing technology can address critical needs of the underserved in India.

These two directions — Understanding Bharat and Building for Bharat — address and inform both knowledge and action for financial inclusion. However, is that enough for us to create an impact? Over the last few months, we have wondered and debated about this. What else is needed for sustained change? How can we inspire and energise more entrepreneurs towards creating solutions for financial inclusion? How can we mainstream this conversation? What is missing?

Empathy.

Empathy is one of the strongest forces behind human action. It signifies understanding, sharing and identifying with feelings and experiences of the other. Empathy makes problem-solving more motivated and real. Deep research and insights into technology are important for creating strong solutions and interventions. However, the desired positive impact would happen when those who identify with the problems and challenges craft these solutions. Therefore, we are setting out a new publication direction that aims to enhance identification and empathy — People of Bharat.

Here, we will be publishing real stories of the underserved in India. We believe that data and statistics are critical to making well-informed decisions, but sharing the realities of Meera, Vinay, Ajmal and Sasanth would help craft and offer solutions that bring desirable change. We will share stories fortnightly — on the second and fourth Saturday of each month. We begin with presenting Vinay’s story to you today.

To summarise, through this triad — Understanding Bharat, Building for Bharat and People of Bharat — we seek to create more grounded knowledge in the space of financial inclusion, energise entrepreneurial activity, and create empathy so as to mainstream conversations that have remained in the periphery.

We are deep believers in collaboration. We take this opportunity to invite you to contribute to this conversation. If you have insights or experiences in the space that you want to share with the larger community, please write to us. We will continue to feature efforts of change-makers, entrepreneurs, and enterprises working towards financial inclusion in India. Please reach out to us if you know of any such change-makers. Finally, if you know of a real story that stirs empathy, we will be humbled to share it on our platform.