Co-creation of AT with Users

So the next session is Co-creation of Assistive Technology with users and would like to introduce the session chair. Dr. Akila Surendran. Dr. Keyless reentering is a senior engineer at the Center for Assistive Technology and Innovation in National Institute of Speech and Hearing, Trivandrum with a background in biotechnology and a doctorate in computational and systems biology, Akila shifted to the field of assistive technology and has been with carriers since its inception in 2015. Her focus areas include examining and overcoming for recovering the last mile implementation difficulties in AT, especially for communication and computer access. She believes in using free open source and low-cost technology tools for rehabilitation, as well as following a transdisciplinary evidence-based approach for need assessment, matching technology with person and follow-up.Thank you.

Akila S: Thanks. Good morning, everyone. It’s always nice to be at Empower conference, where I feel I’m among a group of like-minded people, a lot of familiar names, friends. So it’s always a delight to be at Empower. It feels like a second home. So moving on to today’s session, Co-creation of Assistive Technology solutions along with end users. I think this is a very, it’s a very important topic that keeps repeating itself in different ways throughout this conference, because it’s nothing about us without us. So persons with disabilities have to be included when developing solutions for them. We have two very stellar speakers in the lineup for you today. The first speaker is Mr. Sayomdeb Mukherjee popularly known as Dan Welcome to the session. Here to introduce him. He’s a multifaceted, yeah, he’s a multifaceted personality. He had started his career as a Lotus Notes programmer with a group, but he joined the social sector to work with persons with disabilities. And since then he’s worked with multiple organizations, he’s on multiple projects, from research disability advocacy in AAC. So interestingly, Dan himself was an AAC user earlier. And then he is bought as a radio jockey, and as an executive producer in a Bengali movie. And now, he’s been with Enable India AI labs since April 2019. And he’s been the lead in a very important project, a very exciting project called Project Discovery about which he will be talking to us today.

So Project Discovery has resulted in this treasure house of videos on YouTube. It’s like a treasure house of open source information with very users high end users of ad that is persons with disabilities themselves, demonstrate the solutions that they have developed to cope up with their everyday challenges. And each video is very exciting, and it’s very well curated. And then we’ll share with us about the experience of going about this whole project discovery. So thanks for making it here today.

Sayomdeb Mukherjee: Thank you. It’s my honor and pleasure to join this conference Empower confidence. And let me share my screen first, then I will start the journey of Project Discovery. So, just a brief about my chair, that is I joined EnAble India in the month of April 2019. And I actually migrated from Kolkata to Bangalore, why this is important because understanding solutions started during that time, I come from a severe disability background. And coming from a severe disability background switching to a new city to a new area to a new social diaspora. It’s very, very risky and also it’s a journey.

So, what made me happy after I switched my karmbhoomi to Bangalore. So, enable India In India is a place that has empowered persons with disabilities and the stakeholders, we need to understand primarily that persons with disabilities population of over 1 billion people has to be added with a number of the family members, which would be doubling the number of 1 billion, which would go up to 2 billion at the minimum because we are intriguingly knitted to our families.

So, solution, what made us start for the discovery? So, he islands first let me talk about your lodge, what EI Lodge has come forward with. So, our main motto is catalyzing the community for SSP solutions with the sole objective of zero barrier for a person of disability and here in the subtitle line, that is a place where it has not to be written that it has to be hearted that is nothing about us without us.

So, how do we take the journey forward? Number one: reach, number two: connect, number three: catalyze. Keeping these three concepts we made our journey, started the journey in 2020 during the pandemic, during the peak of the pandemic, I should say the peak of lockdown because the peak of the pandemic was actually in a second wave, firstly, it was manageable. So, the first wave was the peak of lockdown where we understood lockdown solutions and then after that, the real second wave hit us s,o going out of the context Oh yeah, speak of lockdown. During that time, we did not know how to scale we did not know because this is was a vertical which was born just one month before the lockdown. So, from there our journey started. So, here you can see a replica of society. So, I want all of you to remember this particular photograph the picture and let me know at the end of the presentation, that whether you found any persons with disabilities doing any form of activities in this particular photograph. So, remember my question, do you find any persons with disabilities doing any activities in this picture, which resembles the society that we live in.

So, coming to the next part, Project Discovery was ideated in the month of April 2019. And gradually we realize that is a huge and outstanding opportunity for crowdsourcing DIY solutions and by the person with disabilities and stakeholders because when we are working with a person on a personal level, my experience also says that when we are working with a person on a personal level, you have to give a customized process which can be termed as a solution because it would enhance the journey of that person. And here I would like to tell that developing a hypothesis team after two years of journey, that is, space and time is related to the person and the solution to make the maximum amount of impact to the sector, to the economy, do the empowerment of people with disabilities.

And their our thought was to catalyze the community and collect a handful of SSP solutions to understand what was going on or what is going on in the grassroot where people are there, as we all know, that disability is a silo based sector, because all of us work, all of us work in wonderful ways. But we are all in silos. So can we make a bridge? That was a question that is that has emerged out of Project Discovery. And then, during the journey, we realized something is happening, what we don’t know because it is a continuous process that we have undertaken. So now, I just like to show one of my favorite most videos, because after seeing the video and going to the next slide, I will tell you that why this is one of the wonderful most videos that is there.

[Video Plays]

So, this particular solution was given by us by a professional who was working with the kid in consultation with the mother in a semi rural area of Jharkhand. So, when we see the kind of expenditure that would cause you to overcome this problem That would be huge in the Western world. But homemade grassroot solution, which is very much a scientific way to develop a particular movement, or solve a particular problem is something that we all want to take forward and understand. Because when we understand our grassroot at that point, we reach those people who are not reached. And this project objective was to make sure that we gathered solution videos from the grassroot so that we can understand the value. And we can provide the value to those people, why we’ll come to that later.

So, now, this was the journey of last year, as you can see on the screen. So what we have done, as you can see that we had prize money, because we wanted to give more value to the people. And we wanted to make this project interesting, like any reality show, but we wanted to have some kind of transactional benefits, which would empower the area of SSD solution, that’s why we made it a competition. And thereafter, last year, we had two lakh rupees of prize money this year, we are having 4.5 lakh rupees of prize money this year, Google is finding interest in it and they are partnering with us. And thereafter we had last year also this year also the outreach programs to connect to all over India, with various people, stakeholders and organizations working in the field, the domain of disabilities. Then, last time, we connected to almost 21 states, this time we have connected to other than we have connected to almost all the states except maybe two or three, seven sister states got remained. But other than that we have connected to all those stage. So what happened last year, we made a Community Connect of 700 people 900 people this year, we have a connect of more than 2000 people.

Last year, we got documents, kind of videos, we received 600 odd videos. And this year, we have reached a whopping 1634 videos, because we wanted to disseminate our thought to various parts of India in a strategic manner in an innovative manner. So that more and more people can find value in this particular thing. And they can understand the bridging factor of design flows, which would help us to transfer the innovations to other parts of India and other parts of the world with the means of payment platform, which we intend to make. And in that common platform. At this point in time. We have 200 Odd videos uploaded on the YouTube channel. But we know that there are a huge amount of videos that has to be uploaded and the 200 videos that we uploaded last year are kind of the top 200 videos that we shortlisted do that mean uploaded at this point of time. And this year. This primary shortlisting number would be more than 400 videos which we will upload but it would be a tedious process we know because we need a huge amount of human resource hours to do that and volunteering hours to do that. This particular project was not only done by EnAble India or EI lab, this was the effect of community mobilization with the community made sure they did on their own understanding assistive solutions when we work towards it all along.

And co-creating assistive solutions for the people with disabilities is something that we all do, but in silos and bridging the silos, we cannot break the silos. Unfortunately, we need to bridge the silos to find the effect of space and time to provide a solution to a person with disabilities. So all these activities that you can see, all these activities and mode, were kind of collected as video solutions. And all these activities were done by person with disabilities by using certain amount of solution, which was an innovation to take their life forward. And one more thing that we did with this particular project, we did not hold it back for any form of disability, we made sure that all 21 categories of disabilities are covered. And there, we identified that last year, and this year also, the disabilities like Thalassemia and hemophilia are also getting integrated into the mainstream of disabilities. Because understanding their perspective we can know that tell us EMEA, hemophilia and other disabilities other than the mainstream hardcode disabilities, right visible disabilities are the leading more factors and they kind of get left out. So this area also has been covered in this particular project, all 21 categories. At this point in time, I can tell you that only disabilities and solutions we have not received are acid attack victims and sickle cell disease. Other than that, all other disabilities, including psychosocial disabilities, have been covered in this year’s project discovered it’s because we have gotten certain videos from these disabilities.

Now, this year, what we have done, I told you that we have received those amount of videos that number of videos. So, what are the categories that we have made? There are four categories, daily life solutions, where we have received kind of 753 videos, educational training, second largest, 519. I will come to the social inclusion part at the end. Before that, I would come to workplace solution. We have received 124 social inclusion solution is something new, that we tried this year solutions, which are making people socially included. How can they be made public so that people can get an idea of taking those kinds of solutions ahead also, because we may see that in a house where a person with visual impairment is there. People make play cards, but the person with visual impairment may not be able to participate in the card game. We have received a solution this year.

I’m announcing that that the visually impaired person made sure that she is included in this by Braille marking that starts where she could also join the activities and get included in the social inclusion part and contribute socially in the family and family matters.

So, I mean to the next level, this is the question that, so what we have done so many things, so, what what would happen, we have done so many things, this project has done certain things. So, what what happened? What is the what is the what can be done, what can we do? So, what. So, keeping the idea of catalyzing the community for SSP solutions and sharing in the very poll we live we would like to take it forward to develop a solution centric mindset. In all over the disability sector, make assistive solutions mainstream this has a deep understanding being a person with disabilities, I know that whenever we talk about assistive solution, the first thing that we visualize is a fancy gizmo tech kind of thing, which would help me to do so many things. And it would cost around about $2,000 and it would be a high tech machine to help something else.

But we can understand now, practically, that assistive technology comes under the umbrella of SSP solutions, because assistive solutions is the main umbrella under which assistive technology is a part not the other way around. Make a spiderweb network of organizations across India I was telling about connecting the virus bridging the silos by making a spider web network is possible in the next Empower conference next year, I think I will be able to give more impact of this particular thing because some things are getting evolved, because organization to organization connect are getting established. And organizations are developing synergy gradually exchange their thought their their their wonderful work.

That is the whole intent change of the thought process from beneficiary to innovators all the time, we say that whenever we write any proposal, whenever we write anything about persons with disabilities, or the stakeholders or the people, we all the time mentioned that the thought process is about the beneficiary through get benefited. But this particular project has shown us that the word beneficiary can be actually covered and innovators, grassroot innovators can actually come up from the grassroots of the sector of disability sector create a catalog system of SSP collusion in videos. So, we are already in the process of creating that and this particular aspect would be an open source platform that people would be able to come see immolate ideate solutions to help any person with disabilities in India and across the world and then comes breaking the geographical boundaries to unite the sector. So, if we keep it open source if we keep it digital, automatically, the geographical boundaries of be broken, shattered.

We in India as person disabilities, I can say that I am a privileged one. But somebody who is living in a war stricken country. In a civil war stricken country, we don’t get to know about the people with disabilities because there are so many things are to be sorted by the world authority world community there, people can just help the people with disabilities from this particular collection that we are making, and also next year, we are trying to make this project International to collect assistive solutions, videos from all over the world. And the designing aspect of that is worked on at this point in time.

So thank you, and hope you have lots of questions and interaction can happen. So if you have any other question that comes after this presentation, please feel free to reach out to me in this email id or my phone number..

Akila S: Thanks a lot, then. That was a wonderful talk. As usual. You are a great speaker. Like I experienced that every time you talk. And you. I mean, it’s the lived experience of a person with a disability, right? Nothing can equate that none of us can. Although we use the word empathize, I don’t think we will ever be able to empathize so well. Like, understand these issues at a deeper level compared to a person with a disability himself or herself. And you were able to give us both the micro-level as well as the macro level understanding that was quite fascinating. So we’ll take questions after the next speaker. So hope you will stay around for 30 minutes and yeah, thank you.

So that makes the speaker that we have is from Tikkun Olam Makers. His name is Mr. David Daković. I hope I’m saying that correctly. So David is a product development enthusiast marketing professional and organizational development consultant with 20 years of experience in various fields from services to manufacturing. He is now with Tikkun Olam Makers in Belgrade, Serbia, and talking about Tikkun Olam Makers. It’s completely in line with the talk that we saw from then. It’s this is an international, not-for-profit movement that utilizes modern design and digital manufacturing. And it connects it’s again, a community-driven approach, like what AI Lab is doing with Project Discovery. And they connect local innovators with local need knowers and they address neglected solutions as neglected challenges, especially in the field of disability and inclusion. So I’m very happy and excited. I’m looking forward to hearing David talk over to you, David.

David Daković: Thank you, Akila. Hope you’re all. Remi. So thank you for this announcement. Thank you for inviting me to speak. I’m excited to be here. And Dan story’s really great. And it really, it already gave me some ideas. And as Akila said, my name is David. I’m the director of TOM Belgrade community one of the over 70 communities that have done global dedicated to tackle neglected challenges of people living with disability.

I would like to share with you my experience about innovation in assistive technologies lived through over the last couple of years being with TOM, and this is a question that that pops out to me. A lot of times, and TOM community, as I said, is dedicated to tackle the everyday challenges of people with disability. And I will talk more about later on.

So the first question to me what, what is innovation and while preparing for this conference, I’ve read a lot of definitions about innovation. But I’ve still had this feeling of missing something. And one thing that that always comes up to my mind is something that my dear friend and colleague from Israel told me once and that people are innovating from the dawn of human civilization and innovation is was on some level, the engine of evolution, but I don’t think that innovation was there for the sake of evolution. I can’t imagine a bunch of people sitting in the cave and ones going, Okay, we need to evolve. So we need to innovate, you know, I’ll believe that it was more like people we need to survive, we need to, if we don’t hunt, effectively, we cannot survive and we will perish.

So, if we take, for example, sharpening the stone, killing it with another stone and making a spear that will provide much more effectively, food on the table, it’s about survival. It’s about overcoming everyday challenges that people have in their lives. No, but today, I listened a lot about neuroscience, blockchain, robotics bionics, and those are really great stuff and needs to be there. But, again, innovative companies are imagining the future and trying to reach it and to achieve sustainability or profits. Governments and funds are sponsoring new ideas, thus, you know, pulling people to think in that way so the startups and innovators are creating these really amazing new new new things, but in order to try to reach the next round of investments. And all the time, this kept me thinking, Are we missing something? You know, I think that there’s this great bubble made of all this new and exciting words and line became thin blurry between innovating and inventing, and invention, innovation became this mysterious hard to reach thing that we started to scare off.

So I want to share to illustrate also my thoughts and, you know, companies innovated in knee units, 15,000 years, they’ve innovated in bionics 50 to 70,000 euros, and people that are not aware of what are people with disabilities are living through? They’re asking, Wow, that’s great new technology, you know, what’s the next big thing? But I see that rarely people ask, What can these two guys afford? And, you know, let’s make it in scale it on the global level, and see data about how many people are really struggling with some basic things. So probably most of you know this data but nevertheless, I would like to share so according to World Health Organization and World Bank study, there’s over 1 billion people living with disabilities, that’s one in seven, and they have the same health care needs as any other person, but it is two times more likely that they will encounter inadequate skill sets from health care providers, it is three times more more likely that they will be denied the health care, it is four times more likely that they will be treated badly.

Half of them cannot afford health care, and 50% of them will encounter catastrophic expenditures, pushing whole families into poverty. And what about assistive devices? So 970 million people still need vision aids. 75 million people need a wheelchair. So it’s five to 15% of people that need wheelchair only has access to one. Current manufacturing capabilities for hearing aids is three to 10% only of market need. And these are some of the basic assistive devices needed for for function. What about something more mundane? And we saw the story from Dan. And I think that story with potato is really great. And we can you know, talk about turning on and off the lights, having a glass of water or having a glass of wine. So all these things are creating this great gap between what society does to provide and what is going on with people that cannot reach and afford those things. Those new things and new things are getting newer and more expensive. Et ctetera So these are the neglected challenges existing wall around the world that we had TOM recognize. So what is all about?

What is TOM all about? So TOM is all about empowering community innovation. You know, we gather people around a person with a disability, we call it the need nowhere to try to tackle some of its everyday day challenges and find solution does try to, even for a little bit improve their life. Every solution is documented as an open source solution and disseminated through a global platform. So it’s really easily reachable across the world. And this is what TOM does and what it stands for. And ways in which we do you know, we do through make Natanz, those are three day marathons where people had a month to work on concepts and then three days of Marathon to try to build it. It could be individual projects, so single projects, it can be corporate events, we done also that, and this is something that that for us represents a local solution, global impact. So by helping one person, you can help many. And the next question is, okay, who are those people who are innovating and who are those innovators?

Well I saw everything people, people usually think of cutting edge labs filled with really smart, uneducated people backed up by great budgets, and by my experience, and what I have seen through TOM is that high school kids can innovate, students can innovate. Professionals Of course, when you gather those people in one place, they can do amazing things. And people come from all walks of life. For example, on this picture, you can see Natalia and Anna. Natalia was back then a student of data analysis and analyze the industrial design. So they met and they worked on this solution for add on for a wheelchair that will help a little girl to rescue her head while reading she likes to sit in her wheelchair and read but her neck muscles are getting tired fast. So she needed something to support her head while she reads. So there’s really a lot of lots of solutions and when you create some of those solutions and you document and there is a really great example how one product traveled between communities across the world. So I’d like to share with you also that story.

This is Noam. So Noam is an amputee and he has this electronic prosthesis and it’s heavy for him to wear it, though all day. So he joined Makeathon and he asked his team could they make something that is lightweight that he can easily use and utilize around the home. The name PJ prosthesis comes from pajamas so it’s something that he can wear around the house and feel comfortable. So they’ve created these add ons and procedures that he can utilize for different chores around the house. So this product was documented went on global platform and it travel to Singapore.

So meet Boon. Boon is a double amputee. And he also needed something affordable and something that he can easily mount and use for daily activities. So his team took over PJ prosthesis and modified to his needs and possibilities.

From there, the product traveled to Israel. So meet Yael, she plays the violin, and she needs something really lightweight, that can be maneuverable, and what she can use for playing the violin. So her team adapted again, this PJ prosthesis to her needs. And at the end comparing two standard prosthesis and those adaptable this prosthesis costs around $60 to be made. So it’s far more cheaper than anything could be found on the market today, as far as we know. And we’re now talking about innovation and products and solution but for me, there’s one underlying story about TO M that is for me equally important as as products and solutions and this is this is not innovation. This is about connecting sharing and nurturing this community spirit, for example, on the first time I was working on I was concerned how people will how much they will dedicate themselves and how will they interact because we excluded any material rewards because we wanted this to be a collaborative and not competitive event because as soon as you include rewards, you get the competition on most of them. So on the second day of Makeathon, I was talking to a colleague and at one point I turned around to face the venue and I saw all team members from every team standing around one desk around one team trying to solve one issue that this team has. For me this is a power this is this is getting back innovation to the people and amount of knowledge they share amongst themselves and they share the three day of their lives by building something that is usable. This is for me really really one great thing about TOM that I really love and enjoy and they’ve continued some of them continued working long after Makeathon and unfortunately I cannot transfer to you feeling of one maketh on but I will try to share a video with you. So let me try this once again if I can do it.

[Video Plays]

There is not much of the talk. This is a few short sentences, but I don’t know why there is no audio. I tried this streaming and it worked perfectly. I will share the video with everyone. So thank you for listening to me. And I’m again sorry about the technical difficulties. I hope that I succeeded in transferring a bit of thoughts about innovating and about assistive technologies and what we do and I’m leading from Belgrade community but I’m also a part of on global for example, we had now this global Makeathon on with 55 teams from five continents, doing amazing things. And now it’s it’s ended, we’re waiting for results, because we’ll have three winners that will go to Dubai Expo to present their, their solutions. And for now, we’ll have I think 23 solutions from this global Makeathon. And this was the first one. So we’ll do really soon. The next one, and hopefully the next one, the next one and the next one. So And please, any questions or anything? Yes, we have raised hands. Sure.

Akila: Thank you. Thank you, David. We could start with questions for both Dan and David simultaneously.

Attendees: My question is for Mr. David. Sir, are you planning on conducting Mand India. It will be a great pleasure to participate in

David Daković: We are open to all communities and we invite you because the community is based by people from the country so it’s nothing mysterious. If you’d like for example, to start your own community in India, you’re welcome. You can contact us we can go through things, what is important how it can be done and we are here to help create new communities so you can take my contact from Akila’

Akila: Please post your questions in the chat box, or you can raise your hand. While we’re waiting, I have a question for David. So I think this concept of open sourcing and community driven approach, it solves the problem of customization, right? Like every individual with a disability is unique. And hence, they would need a unique solution, and then it drives up the cost. But when you do it this way, cuts down costs. But what about longevity, like, it also has to be reliable, the person is depending on the solution every day, and it shouldn’t break down on him, there should be someone to fix it for him later.

David Daković: I understand that and that is a really good question that we discuss often. So, the thing is, that it depends on what type of solution it is. So these are assistive devices. And basically, if it’s something that person might hurt himself or herself or something like that, it needs to be sturdy, it needs to be to have longevity, but again, the thing is, when you want to cut down costs and create something that is affordable, you need to think about also repairing Yes, but also how will you encounter those or defects or breakages or something like that. So we do a couple of things here in Belgrade we have we have something like impact lab where we have some of the machines and we have resources to be there for those people and fix those things if there is certain breakage. So, we try to encounter that from on different levels. One is to try to make it to have some life that is longer. So for example, okay, let me give you an example. This is complicated. So we’ve created this one team on TOM, we have created this assistive device for helping a person from a wheelchair to get to the driver’s seat in her in his car. So it’s basically roll cage part of the roll cage that will be mounted inside of the car and it has this motor with how do you call it it’s not the chain, it’s that he can attach to himself over the harness and he can hold for the side of the car and it pulls him up and gets him in car. So okay, this is something that can be potentially very dangerous for everyone. So we take care of the products by involving people that are highly skilled. So what that mean is that we don’t let people Makeathon just do what they want. We have peoplewho are domain expert that is he has his own production of processes and system devices. So he is the one help we have something we call chief maker and that’s usually engineer that is on some high level experienced in engineering and developing new products. We have also a therapist and we have a couple more people to ensure that whatever is made is safe, is helpful for for the person user. So this is a one way the other ways, okay? If you make for example PJ prosthesis as you seen it it’s normal that that things break. That’s, that’s really normal. So for these things that are not endangering every anyone’s life, we we try to calculate and find a way how to fix it when it breaks down. So I hope that I’ve answered.

Sayomdeb Mukherjee: So Akila just to interject in one thing, that is at the beginning part of the, the beginning part of the presentation, I showed a picture. Right. And I was waiting for David’s presentation to get over to ask all of you that, what we do see, and whether you saw any visibility there amongst that those people. I gave 30 seconds to watch that picture. Any disability that you would saw that was there in the picture? And if yes, what was that? If no, or why didn’t you see?

Raheel: In the short span of 30 seconds, I didn’t see anyone they say, well, that’s sad. Because, you know, normal. When we think of societies or draw pictures of societies for our young age, we do not even have small kids, when we ask them to those who say they don’t move on disabled people inclusive as a part of the society. I mean, they consider them as outer casts, etc. so that’s very sad, which is, which starts from the young age itself. I couldn’t see.

Sayomdeb Mukherjee: So when solutions are coming out of that picture, that that is resembling the society, when the solutions are coming out of that place of grassroots, you wouldn’t be able to see all those disability, because automatically, the solution is been identified in that place, in that time, and any form of solutions that has been given. And I’m quite surprised to see that kind of rural NGO, working in the field of disabilities, where the money is less. Organizations may not spend money towards making a logo, even, they may not have a logo, but they are working for the people. For the tea gardens for North Bengal, in the slum, where disability is rampant. They are getting that motivation and innovation all the time. Because they’re continuously thinking, how to help the person, how to connect to the person, how to connect to the family, how to make a family within the society, how to make a society within this district, how to make a district within a state, how to make a state within a country, how to make a country within a world and how to make a world in a universe.

So this is the LUMO effect of having solutions, which have been used in the grassroot and this has helped to understand one more very important point that is restoring agency to the person with the disables and the stakeholders. If we don’t fund the agency, rescued the agency. At that point of time, solutions are to come out and where assistive tech is needed. We had to find something like TOM’s ideation because that has to be pan socioeconomic culture of the world not only even one country. Pan socio-economic culture of the world that has to reach the unreached. That is the whole objective, of having technology developed for people with disabilities. Thanks, still.

Akila: There’s a question for you in the chatbox. How do you ensure the sustainability of an initiative like Project Discovery? And how do you handle dissemination and awareness building around such an initiative given that many households may still not have access to the digital channel?

Sayomdeb Mukherjee: Sustainability is one of the particular thing that we are trying to do, our objective is to collect, 15,000 catalogue solutions in five years from around the world. And once we collect those 15,000, access to solutions from around the world, we will be able to get almost all the spectrums covered believe me. If we don’t get covered all the spectrums with the research, continuous research, then we will continue Project Discovery, which is a collection of SSP collection videos for some more time. But we believe that the sustainability of the platform is very important. And once we make sure that that becomes an open source , one with the continuous evolution of connectivity. And getting everyday people who did not have a smartphone connection having a smartphone connection, overall growth of the people, digital literacy of the people, continuous evolution in the tech sector, would make this project sustainable. This is a vision. Because without a vision, we won’t be able to work at all. And having this vision we are trying to take this project forward.

Akila: I also remember Enable Vani, the phone call enable communications. So I really inspiring to see EnAble India tackle all these questions at the ground level

Sayomdeb Mukherjee: So now Enable Vani has scaled up to an app. Because we found a need to integrate an app, because that would help people to connect even more. And people can record and I would like to all of you to download Enable Vani a and try that to see what’s the difference between the IVR from calling system and the app.

Akila: Thanks. Are there any other questions for Dan? Or David? If not, I think we can close this session. Thanks a lot, David and Dan. And then I think we’re all we all got a different perspective from the sessions that have been happening. Which we’re focused on high end technologies.Thank you.