At a time when India is moving from digital access to meaningful inclusion, the role of technology in creating equitable opportunities has become more important than ever. The focus is now on helping underserved communities not just connect, but also build the skills, livelihoods, and confidence needed to participate in the digital economy.
As Nasscom Foundation enters a new phase of expanding its technology-led social impact efforts, the organisation is strengthening its focus on bridging the digital divide across rural and underserved regions. In this conversation with TheCSRUniverse, Jyoti Sharma, CEO , Nasscom Foundation, shares her key priorities in this phase and her perspective on how technology can drive inclusive growth. She discusses youth skilling, women’s entrepreneurship, inclusion of neurodivergent talent, last-mile digital access, and the growing role of partnerships and ecosystem-driven CSR in building a more inclusive and future-ready India.
Scroll down to read the full interview.
Q&A
Q. As CEO of Nasscom Foundation, what are your key priorities in this phase, and how do you see technology-led social impact evolving in India today?
A. At this stage, our key priority is to consistently bridge the digital gap at both ends of the spectrum—addressing regions and communities where access to technology still remains a challenge, while also enabling those who already have access to move towards deeper, more meaningful digital adoption. While India has made significant strides in expanding digital reach, access alone is not enough. Large sections of the population continue to need targeted support to build digital confidence, apply technology in practical ways, and leverage it to scale opportunities. Our focus is on ensuring that technology becomes a real enabler of improved livelihoods, employability, and long-term economic mobility, particularly through solutions that are inclusive, scalable and sustainable.
The real opportunity now lies in leveraging technology to unlock aspirational districts and blocks, PVTGs, rural regions, and Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities, where untapped potential can accelerate India’s progress towards Viksit Bharat. Technology is increasingly closing infrastructure gaps, strengthening digital literacy, and enabling livelihoods across sectors from financial inclusion and e-commerce to education and public services. These regions are no longer peripheral to India’s growth story; they are central to it.
An equally important priority is embedding inclusion at the core of growth, ensuring that technology works for everyone—especially women, persons with disabilities, and marginalized communities. When designed inclusively, technology becomes a powerful equaliser, expanding economic participation, amplifying voices, and strengthening community resilience. India’s journey toward sustainable and equitable growth will depend on how intentionally technology is used to empower people where the need and opportunity are greatest.
Q. What outcomes are you seeing from your skilling partnerships with tech-based organizations, particularly in terms of employability and long-term career pathways for underserved youth?
A. Our skilling partnerships with tech-based organizations including IBM, HDFC, Capgemini and others are helping youth from underserved and marginalized communities gain in-demand, future-ready skills that translate directly into employability and long-term career pathways in the digital economy.
Through these collaborations, young people are being trained across emerging technologies such as AI, cloud computing, cybersecurity, data analytics, and IT/ITeS roles, alongside structured professional development and soft skills training. The focus is on making students job-ready—building not just technical capabilities, but also communication skills, workplace readiness, problem-solving abilities, and confidence to succeed in formal work environments.
A key strength of our approach is the blended skilling model, which combines digital learning with mentorship, hands-on projects, and placement-linked training. This ensures learners are prepared for immediate entry-level roles, while also equipping them with the adaptability and continuous-learning mindset needed for long-term careers in a rapidly evolving digital economy.
Through Nasscom Foundation’s Skilling and Employability Program, we empower youth from marginalized communities by delivering industry-aligned training in IT/ITeS and emerging technologies, with a clear and sustained focus on employment outcomes. The program bridges the skill gap by aligning learning pathways with current and future industry demand, strengthens employability through certifications and workplace readiness modules, and enables job linkages through close collaboration with corporate partners and placement networks.
The impact created in 2024–25 reflects the scale and effectiveness of this approach. Nasscom Foundation established 95 skilling centres across 19 states, partnered with over 150 colleges, and facilitated 450+ placement drives, collectively enabling 26,000+ marginalized youth to become future-ready and better positioned to access meaningful employment opportunities.
Overall, these partnerships demonstrate that technology-led skilling, delivered with a strong employability lens and inclusive intent, can create sustained career pathways for underserved youth while contributing to a more equitable digital workforce.
Q. Why did Nasscom Foundation choose to focus on neurodivergent youth, and how has industry responded to inclusive hiring so far?
A. Nasscom Foundation’s focus on neurodivergent youth is rooted in our belief that inclusion is a powerful driver of business growth, organizational success and sustainable development. For India’s digital economy to truly progress, inclusion must be intentional, holistic and embedded into how the future workforce is built. At Nasscom Foundation, inclusion goes beyond representation; it is about mainstreaming inclusive practices across the technology ecosystem. While gender inclusion remains vital, digital inclusion must also address the needs of underrepresented communities, including neurodivergent individuals.
Neurodivergence is often an invisible disability, making it more complex to identify and address in traditional skilling and employment pathways. However, neurodivergent youth bring unique cognitive strengths such as high attention to detail, strong pattern recognition, and sustained focus which make them particularly well-suited for emerging roles like data annotation and other AI-driven functions. These capabilities are increasingly critical as AI and data-led technologies become central to the future of work.
Under our Inclusion and Diversity Program, our efforts to empower Neurodivergent individuals goes beyond technical skilling to include soft skills training, mentorship, and confidence-building, ensuring participants are truly workplace-ready. Equally important is the post-placement engagement, where Nasscom Foundation works closely with employers to create sensitized and supportive work environments that enable retention, career progression, and long-term success.
I feel that industry response to inclusive hiring has been encouraging. There is growing recognition among corporates that inclusive workplaces not only create social value but also drive innovation, productivity, and team diversity. Through sustained partnerships and structured employment linkages, industry is increasingly embracing inclusive hiring models. While momentum is building, scaling these efforts remains critical to ensuring inclusion becomes a norm rather than an exception in India’s evolving digital workforce.
Q. Under the Women Entrepreneurship Program what have been the biggest challenges in helping rural women-led enterprises move from digital access to sustained income and growth?
A. Under the Women Entrepreneurship Program, while access to smartphones, connectivity and digital tools is a critical first step, the real barrier lies in translating this access into consistent market linkages, reliable demand, and financial confidence.
Many rural women entrepreneurs face limited access to stable buyers and formal markets, making price discovery and demand predictability difficult. Constraints related to working capital, quality standardisation, logistics, and compliance often restrict their ability to scale beyond local or informal markets. Additionally, limited exposure to digital marketplaces, low familiarity with online payments, and gaps in financial literacy reduce their capacity to fully leverage digital platforms for business growth.
Socio-cultural factors further influence enterprise continuity. Women often have limited decision-making power, particularly in financial transactions, along with unpaid care responsibilities and seasonal livelihood patterns that affect the time and consistency they can invest in their enterprises. Access to finance remains another challenge, constrained by lack of collateral, limited credit histories, and barriers to entering formal financial systems.
Addressing these challenges requires a holistic approach combining digital skilling with market access, financial literacy, mentorship, and ecosystem support. Sustained growth for rural women-led enterprises is achieved not through access alone, but through continuous handholding that builds confidence, strengthens market linkages, and enables women to participate more fully in formal and scalable economic opportunities.
Q. What has worked well in your public–private partnerships, including initiatives like the Aspirational Blocks Programme and digital literacy efforts for Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs), and can you share examples of on-ground outcomes?
A. What has worked well in our public–private partnerships is a last-mile, community-led approach that aligns government priorities with private sector expertise and local facilitation. Under initiatives such as the Aspirational Blocks Programme and our digital literacy interventions for PVTGs, the focus has been on building trust, simplifying access, and strengthening local capacity rather than just enabling technology.
One of the most effective elements has been the Digital Ambassador model, where trained community members from within the community act as facilitators for e-governance services. In one of our recent projects under the Aspirational Blocks Programme, 99% had received direct support from Digital Ambassadors, indicating strong community acceptance and outreach. This has translated into tangible outcomes on the ground.
For instance, awareness of e-governance platforms increased sharply to nearly 68%, while actual access to e-governance schemes rose to almost 88% of participants.
Digitization of ration cards improved significantly, which in turn enabled higher access to social security schemes and identity services. Over 84% of households with digitized ration cards accessed social protection benefits, compared to negligible access among those without digitization.
Across four states and 12 aspirational blocks, the programme reached over 51,900 individuals and facilitated more than 67,000 government linkages to critical welfare schemes spanning health, education, livelihoods, and financial inclusion.
These outcomes reinforce that public–private collaboration, when combined with local capacity building and government convergence, can meaningfully bridge digital and administrative gaps for those who need it the most.
Q. How do you decide which social innovations are ready to scale, and what factors determine whether they can sustain impact beyond pilot funding?
A. Nasscom Foundation’s Social Innovation for Youth (SIFY) programmes, such as thingQbator and TechForChange, assess social innovations for scale based on demonstrated viability, real-world impact, and long-term potential beyond the pilot stage. The focus is on enabling promising ideas to transition from prototypes into sustainable ventures through structured mentorship, seed funding—such as grants of up to ₹5 lakh for top teams—and strategic partnerships. Key evaluation criteria include validated prototypes, economic feasibility, ecosystem readiness, and, most importantly, the effective use of technology or the clear potential for technology to drive scale and amplify impact.
Minimum Viable Product
A functional MVP or prototype is essential, showing real-world testing and iteration via hands-on makerspaces with tech like AI, IoT, and 3D printing. Programs assess if it solves SDG-aligned challenges (e.g., health, education) with user feedback, as in TechForChange and thingQbator's checkpoints refining prototypes before demo days. Without a validated MVP, innovations don't advance to incubation.
Business Feasibility Plan
Feasibility hinges on cost-effectiveness, unit economics, and clear paths to revenue or blended finance post-pilot. Nasscom evaluates plans for scalability across states, like deploying 14 startups in 10 states, ensuring CSR investments make solutions sustainable. Market readiness and support needs are probed to confirm full-fledged viability.
Market Fit
Strong product-market fit is proven through last-mile adoption, retention, and alignment with underserved needs in tier 2/3 cities or specific cohorts. Examples include SaveMom (Harvard-featured) and Jancare, validated by corporate adoption (e.g., AstraZeneca) and government ties. Narrow fit leads to deeper segment focus before expansion
Pitch Quality
Pitches are rigorously judged at demo days with structured formats. Top pitches secure seed grants and scaling support; unreviewed ones are ineligible. Emphasis is on value proposition, hypothesis validation, and differentiation.
Sustaining Impact Beyond Pilot
Sustainability factors in long-term operations via partnerships, CSR capital, and replication potential, bridging pilot to market with metrics like reach. Programs foster ethics, inclusion, and empathy for enduring relevance, as seen in alumni ventures like Cograd. Blended models ensure ongoing funding and deployment.
Q. Based on your experience across development organisations and now leading a tech industry foundation, how do you see CSR in India evolving from compliance-driven spending to ecosystem-building, and what role should technology play in that shift?
A. CSR in India is undergoing a fundamental shift from compliance-driven spending to ecosystem-building that delivers long-term, measurable outcomes. This transition closely mirrors the role technology has played in transforming development delivery: enabling inclusion at scale, expanding access, and creating stronger collaboration across government, industry, and civil society. The focus is no longer on isolated projects, but on building platforms and systems that can sustain impact over time.
Technology is central to this evolution because it addresses structural gaps rather than surface-level symptoms. Investments in digital access and literacy have shown how technology can unlock participation in public services, financial systems, education, and livelihoods. CSR efforts that strengthen these digital foundations are not just inclusive they are foundational to equitable and resilient development.
Beyond access, technology is powering innovation, entrepreneurship, and future-ready livelihoods. CSR initiatives that support digital skilling, innovation ecosystems, and data-driven solutions are enabling employment pathways and enterprise creation, particularly for youth and first-time entrants into the formal economy. This represents a decisive shift from short-term interventions to enabling systems that continue to generate economic and social value.
Equally important, technology brings greater accountability, coordination, and intelligence to CSR. Data-led programme design, real-time monitoring, and digital collaboration tools allow organisations to learn faster, course-correct, and scale what works. When applied with an inclusion-first lens, technology elevates CSR from obligation to collective impact, aligning business participation with India’s broader social, economic, and environmental priorities.
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