Three districts to eleven states.
Most of what the Foundation does today was not planned. It was added because something we had already built turned out to be useless without it.
How it actually went.
- 2019
The Foundation is incorporated
Set up as a Section 8 company by Dollu Ltd, with an initial focus on school connectivity in three districts of Uttar Pradesh.
- 2020
Schools close; the work changes
The pandemic turned a school connectivity programme into a remote-learning one almost overnight. Device libraries began here, out of necessity.
- 2021
Emergency response begins
After Cyclone Yaas, relief agencies asked us for communications rather than supplies. Signal in the Storm was designed that winter.
- 2022
Beyond digital
Health, water and livelihoods programmes started, on the argument that a connected village with unsafe water is not a developed one.
- 2023
Integrated districts
First village development plans agreed with panchayats, funding against the village's priorities rather than our programme targets.
- 2024
Publishing what does not work
Began publishing survival and retention figures at three years and twelve months, including where they disappoint.
- 2025
Eleven states
Programmes running across eleven states, with over four hundred villages engaged and a volunteer network past a thousand people.
Deeper, not wider.
Our plan is to add districts inside the states we are already in rather than collect new states. Depth is what produces results we can stand behind.
