One of the biggest challenges ordinary citizens face is the distance between policy and their everyday lives. The digitalization of almost everything complicates the problem, not least because of the so-called digital divide, which is arguably widening dramatically as AI transforms everyone’s ecosystems.

What is more of an inconvenience in some countries is potentially a matter of life and death in India. On the one hand, hundreds of millions of people need governmental programs to survive. On the other hand, India’s size and complexity have produced a massive array of social welfare programs delivered by a bureaucracy that is not known for its efficiency: India ranks 49th in bureaucratic efficiency globally, according to the IMD World Competitiveness Report.

That makes connecting people and services absolutely critical—which is where Aniket Doegar comes into the picture. As a young technologist, he started with a simple insight. Governmental programs only work if people know they exist, understand whether they qualify, and can actually navigate the process of accessing them. So he started building technology to help make that happen. In time, he realized that the tech by itself was insufficient. 

Listen as Doegar explains how he came to build a social enterprise employing more than 50,000 local agents providing the critical last mile between citizens and their government.  

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ABOUT OUR GUEST

Aniket Doegar is the Founder and CEO of Haqdarshak, a social enterprise supporting individuals and micro-businesses in accessing government welfare schemes. He has been building Haqdarshak for 10 years and was named one of the Global Social Innovators of the Year 2023 by the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, Motsepe Foundation, and World Economic Forum. He was also a Rockefeller Bellagio summer resident fellow in July 2024 and has been selected as a Young Global Leader 2026 by the World Economic Forum.

An alumnus of SRCC, Aniket is a Teach for India, Acumen, and Unreasonable fellow. He served on Teach for India’s advisory board for two years, is a trustee of The YP Foundation, and was named to Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia in 2019.

Haqdarshak uses a mobile app and a field force of 67,000+ trained women agents to help citizens access government and private schemes and benefits. It has helped 93 lakh+ families and 1,30,500+ micro-businesses receive over INR 23,200 Cr+ in benefits. The organization also works with companies to help their workers access government welfare schemes.

Haqdarshak has launched the Yojana Card, a digitally enabled social security card combining government schemes, social security, financial services, and other welfare services for families and businesses through a single channel with last-mile support.

Haqdarshak aims to reach 100 million families by 2030 through an open-platform training approach for grassroots organizations in India and other countries.