While working for a development organisation called Samuha in college, the idea of Mahiti, providing technology for NGOs, was born. Samuha incubated Mahiti and we moved on to becoming an independent social enterprise in 2003.

I have always believed that technology gives immense scope for creativity and innovation to social initiatives. We started Mahiti with the larger goal of making technology tools and applications affordable and accessible for social initiatives. In my opinion, I feel that the ideology behind free and open source software (FOSS) is very similar to how social initiatives work. Unless we share and exchange information, we cannot scale the change we hope to bring about in society.

Mahiti’s primary focus lies in empowering marginalised sections of society to access, use and even innovate with technological tools. We have helped various causes of the development sector including disability, displaced communities, urban and rural poor, education, etc.

In my personal opinion and experience of working in the sector for above a decade now, the only way to learn and use technology is to embrace it. By empowering people to use technology as a tool, we hope to make the adoption of technology in the social sector, easier. We do not emphasise on training people about tools and applications, but on making people in the sector understand techniques and methodologies in detail, so that their understanding and use of technology evolves with technology itself.

The journey so far has been great! I have enjoyed every bit of action. In all honesty, I never thought Mahiti would grow to be such a lovely institution. The challenges faced have only helped us grow - they make you come out of your comfort zone and urge you to try something different. It is best to not run away from them but to face them with all your strength and learn from the experience. I am proud to be a part of it. Now, I would like us to grow to a higher scale of innovation.

                                                                                                       - Sreekanth S Rameshaiah, Executive Director, Mahiti