The National Commission on Population, India, predicts that in the next 15 years (by 2036), about 38.6 percent of Indians (600 million) will live in urban areas. This brings both opportunities and challenges to the vulnerable groups who have already begun migrating to towns and cities. Women, especially, are likely to suffer the most, owing to the lack of access and awareness across sectors - whether in the field of finance, health care or education. Often monitored by male members of the family, access to basic information remains curtailed to them. Not having access to identity proof, technology or information that can help guide them to government schemes, to public facilities (health care, finances, housing) further impacts the chances of women accessing services.
With the growth of India’s smartphone users to almost 173 million in 2021, one of the most striking aspects of this is the extent to which the digital divide imposes itself on women, particularly illiterate women who constitute a large section of the urban poor. This project aims to empower these women - underserved urban women and adolescent girls and eventually semi-urban, rural women and adolescent girls – to become financially independent and support their families with the help of a dedicated application where video is the primary service of engagement.
This project will require unique technological solutions that enhance the power of information, beyond barriers of language and literacy, along with partnerships and prior approvals from local bodies, bureaucrats, and politicians, as well as non-governmental organizational or foundational support.
Suno Sunao, now in the prototyping stage, focuses on the opportunity of bridging this digital information and education gap to encourage the social and financial mobility for underserved women in urban areas. An AI-enabled tool, Suno Sunao, will focus on increasing information flow through video outputs in local vernaculars.
For more information, please visit sunosunao.org.
Starting in 2020, Fellows of the Japan-India Transformative Technology Network formed several small teams as they discovered common interests and shared challenges. These teams then concentrated their efforts on designing a potential solution to a challenge they face in their professional or personal lives. Having refined these solution ideas with their colleagues in the Network and several external resource specialists, Salzburg Global is supporting select teams to take their project ideas to key stakeholders who can help make them a reality.
If you are interested in working with this project group in any way, please email Jennifer Dunn (jdunn@SalzburgGlobal.org) with your statement of interest.