Changemaker — Digital Transformation: They have leveraged technology to bring positive changes

Technology has come in handy for many changemakers who have leveraged it to bring about a positive change. Their work has cut across sectors from transportation, women empowerment, real estate and even public procurement to name a few areas. The top five nominees in the Changemaker — Digital Transformation category of the BusinessLine Changemaker Awards are:

Lack of transparency and information asymmetry between buyers and sellers have been major areas of concern in the real estate business. At a time when many States are struggling to get the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016 off the ground, Maharashtra has not just implemented RERA, but also successfully on-boarded more than 24,000 projects and over 23,000 agents.

An Aspen Leadership Fellow, Sairee Chahal is the founder of Sheroes, a technology platform aimed at ensuring gender parity in India. The consumer-based internet company supports women-led start-ups, catering to their operational requirements with recruitment, mentorship and career resources. Currently, Sheroes has more than 45 million users. It aims to impact over 100 million women in the next five years.

Public procurements are often riddled with large-scale corruption and inefficiency. To bring in transparency, efficiency and speed in public procurement, which accounts for 20 per cent of the country’s GDP, the Commerce Ministry launched the Government e-Marketplace (GeM) in 2017. It has already recorded transactions worth over ₹47,000 crore, covering close to 2 lakh products and over 22,000 service offerings.

From an investment-starved start-up in 2007 to India’s first unicorn in 2011, InMobi’s journey to the billion-dollar valuation club has been propelled by a series of acquisitions. The mobile ad platform, which was once expected to challenge even the might of advertising giant Google, currently has 60 million daily active users consuming at least one item of content a day.

Started as a mobility solution provider in 2011, Ola is now India’s largest mobility platform, providing employment opportunities to more than 2 million driver-partners. Over the past nine years, the ride-hailing company has not only expanded its footprint to Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, but also diversified its business from core mobility to the electric mobility, foodtech and fintech spaces.

The winners of the 2020 BusinessLine Changemaker Awards will be announced and felicitated at a glittering ceremony in New Delhi on March 6, at the Hotel Taj Man Singh. Entry for the event, supported by Tata Sons, Dell Technologies, Nestle, PepsiCo, Qualcomm and others, is strictly by invitation.

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