Given that women in rural India are not willing and sometimes not even allowed to travel far from their households, we needed to find a feasible and sustainable way to take the Internet to them. So instead of asking them to come to us, in 2015 we brought the Internet to them through Internet cycle carts operated by specially trained ambassadors called Internet Saathis. Inspired by ice cream carts that go from door to door, we built a fleet of Internet cycle carts that carried Internet enabled devices. These carts were attached to a bicycle to be transported around the village.

Women influencers were appointed as ‘Internet Saathis’ to cycle the cart around the village and train other women on how to use the Internet.

The Self Help Groups are informed about the opportunity to become an Internet Saathi and invited to a training session spread across two to three days. The women who usually have little or no exposure to even a smartphone device are taken through different modules of using the Internet right from the basic of how to use a smartphone to how to start finding relevant information online. Once trained they are tested on train the trainer skills. The ones who make the cut are provided Internet Cycles equipped with Internet enabled devices.

Every Saathi trains women in her own and neighboring villages on a regular basis, conducting 2 to 3 hrs. of training every day as well as providing access through the devices given to her.

We will scale the initiative to 300,000 villages covering over 20M households.

Currently 1,000 Saathis are active in 1,000+ villages and 50,000 women have already been brought online. Each Saathi is training upwards of 50 women and providing them regular access to the Internet.

The women are using the Internet to help fulfill daily needs in their own lives as well as lives of their families and community. They are using it to get information in farming, cattle, skill development such as stitching, embroidery, henna designs, cooking and finding job opportunities through government related schemes.

Overall level of independence and respect has increased for women across these villages helping uplift their status in the society.

More importantly we are seeing the online gender gap reduce substantially in our areas of operation.