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 Praggyan, a Pune based organization was founded by Yeshasvi Pachpore in 2016 which focuses on data collection for village level development planning. Her idea came about while volunteering for CSR activities where she realised that there was a gap between the actual needs of the beneficiaries and the focus of interventions. Once when they were distributing books in village schools bordering the industrial area, they found that their roofs were leaking and children were not even attending school. The books were unnecessary if there was no one to read! This made her think about information gaps and how these could be bridged.
In order to reduce this gap, Praggyan was founded. She came across many NGOs that needed impact assessment studies. Government institutions, corporate, philanthropic foundations all supported social development and initiatives but they lacked data on when and where to invest, the impact on investments, is there an actual need for support, etc. Existing survey methods were also inappropriate which often resulted in no data or outdated/unsearchable data.
With the idea of working for the social good, she took an online social entrepreneurship course. At the end of the course, there was a business plan competition where more than 185 groups participated with their ideas. Her idea was to develop a health sector database for effective decision making along with a platform to aggregate social organizations working in health and medicine suppliers. After winning the competition with a seed funding of US$ 5,000, she started exploring the idea further and realised the dire need for data based decision making in the social sector and decided not to limit the idea to health data. This led to developing Data101, the data collection app.
It was never Yeshasvi's dream to become an entrepreneur. However, her ever learning attitude and willingness to try different activities led her to become one. She manages multiple activities like business development, technical deliveries as well as operations, although it comes with its own set of challenges. Sales is the biggest challenge for any first time entrepreneur, especially when one is trying to work outside one's domain experience.
Yeshasvi cites that entrepreneurship is hard and every day is a struggle. But it brings a new challenge and one must not give up. One must not blindly keep working on things which you think are required for the idea to work. She advises that women entrepreneurs should work on their strategies and make changes according to the market. While there can be many external challenges, the main challenge comes from women themselves - lack of self-confidence and tendency to not take risks. Leadership does not depend on gender.
To know more about Praggyan, please visit www.praggyan.com
For her efforts, Yeshasvi deserves a Standing Ovation!
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