Born into a small businessman’s family in Kolkata, Rukhsana Khatoon was pursuing Plus 2 when she joined the digital data services firm iMerit. Five years later, she now holds a master’s degree in Political Science.

At the Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) conference here, Ruksana deftly marks images of cars, trees and the sky on a huge screen, at the kiosk the company had set up for the event. Rukhsana is one among iMerit’s 1,000 employees mostly drawn from the marginalised sections.

“As many as 82 per cent of our employees are from the below poverty line layer. And, our focus continues to be on remote geographies with such populations,” Radha R Basu, founder and Chief Executive Officer of iMerit, told BusinessLine .

These youth are now working on technologies like machine learning, artificial intelligence and autonomous cars. They are earning salaries in the range of ₹6,000-30,000.

Social entrepreneurship

Basu is here to take part in the four-day global conference ICT4D. A profitable firm now, iMerit sees the potential to reach a revenue of $100 million and an employee base of 10,000 in the next five years as it plans expansion into Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.

Radha Basu, who set up HP in India back in 1987, foresees imminent change in IT services delivery. “I saw the advent of digital and wanted to do something in that space with a social impact. While the IT revolution has touched the top cities, I have decided to tap the huge potential available in the non-urban areas,” she said.

Commending Radha Basu’s work, Nasscom, the software industry policy body, had said the idea to set up iMerit had come from Anudip Foundation’s co-founded by Radha work in Metiabruz, a town with a large number of Muslims in south of Kolkata. “Anudip trained over 65,000 youth in IT skills. Five years ago, about 39 of them in online digital skills. I saw a huge change happening at the workspace, with demand for digital services and I thought these youth from the BPL sections could do well,” Basu said.

The firm helps data scientists improve search and image relevance, machine vision engineers develop complex algorithms, financial analysts keep their finger on the pulse of real-time events, and service leaders track sentiments in customer feedback.

“Mostly, we hire people among the poorer sections of society and train them in the latest digital technology services. I went to the Sunderbans in Bengal, to Jharkhand and to the outskirts of Bhubaneswar looking for talent,” she said.

eBay founder Pierre Omidiyar, Dell and Vinod Khosla supported the venture. Refusing to talk on the revenue numbers, she said the firm has turned profitable and will invest on its expansion.

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