Case Studies
Who we are
DATA DHARA is an initiative of EkStep Foundation. We apply the same thinking that shaped India's Digital Public Infrastructure to the data layer:
We are not vendors.
We embed with institutions, work toward shared goals and leave them with the capacity to continue.
What EkStep does
A mission - not a platform, not a service.
The DATA DHARA mission by EkStep, helps to make a nation's data work for the nation. Data should be used for:
DATA DHARA helps build outcomes for people who need them the most, with connected efforts through Samaaj, Sarkaar and Bazaar.
In Practice
Where data readiness and coordination is already changing outcomes. These are not hypothetical use cases. They are live initiatives where data is the difference between a system that works and one that doesn't.
Case 1
VITAL STATISTICS
The Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Govt of NCT of Delhi holds decades of records on births, deaths, disease patterns, labour and prices for 20 million people. The data existed but sat in formats that couldn't be joined or queried.
As a knowledge partner, EkStep Foundation mapped their holdings against the DHARA 7-stage life cycle identifying what was analysis-ready, what needed structuring and what, once linked, could power real-time health and planning decisions.
Other Sources
Case 2
ECONOMIC MOBILITY
Investor decisions run on data: schemes, incentives, policies, land availability, infrastructure readiness, workforce profiles, regulatory timelines. EkStep Foundation is helping InvestUP connect these datasets so that what used to take weeks of navigation could surface in a single AI-powered conversation.
Case 3
DAIRY & COOPERATIVE DATA
Amul, Sarlaben
Amul has served 3.6 million women milk producers in Gujarat for five decades, accumulating over 2 billion procurement transactions and records on 30 million cattle. EkStep Foundation built Sarlaben on that data foundation.
Sarlaben is a voice-based advisor in Gujarati, available on basic feature phones, delivering livestock guidance, vaccination alerts and breeding advice to every farmer in the network.
Case 4
BLUE DOTS: MAKING A DISTRICT'S ECONOMY VISIBLE TO ITSELF
A commerce graduate leaves Ghaziabad for a job in Delhi while a firm two kilometres away spends weeks looking for someone like her. A person with a disability needs a rehabilitation service, while one exists a few kilometres away. A local guide has a trek to offer, but the tourist searching for that experience never finds them. Neither knows the other exists. Thatʼs the paradox of proximity: demand and supply can be close, yet remain invisible to each other.
In Ghaziabad, a two-minute voice call enabled personalised, proximal discovery of demand and supply, lighting up 10% of the districtʼs MSMEs and surfacing more than 12,000 jobs, against fewer than 100 visible on national platforms. The ‘Blue Dots Economyʼ approach helps unlock the potential already present in local economies. That potential is often hidden in plain sight, and addressing it can drive economic growth and social impact while creating value for youth, women, PwDs, MSMEs and the communities around them.
Case 5
NATIONAL DATA HARMONISATION
Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation
The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation(MoSPI) has set out a national goal for data harmonisation: making datasets which are held across ministries and states comparable, linkable and machine-readable rather than trapped in incompatible formats.
MoSPI leads on NMDS and sets the standards. As a knowledge partner, the EkStep Foundation co-developed concept notes, helped shape various national summits, presented at them, and worked to translate the framework into something states could act on.
Working alongside different state departments, the EkStep Foundation is helping in the application of MoSPI's approach to MoSPIʼs holdings; aligning datasets to common geographic and beneficiary identifiers so that data stays with its custodian while becoming queryable across sources. What is defined nationally has to work department by department, and that is where the dividend is realised.
Ecosystem Partners
