Our Work
Assessing and Building AI Readiness
AI readiness begins with individual datasets, as organisational readiness is ultimately built dataset by dataset. Four questions determine whether a dataset is AI-ready:
Can it be found?
Can it be read?
Can it interoperate?
Can it be trusted?
Together, these provide a simple framework for assessing whether data is discoverable, machine-readable, connected through common standards, and supported by sufficient metadata and provenance.
DATA DHARA - 7 Stage Data Lifecycle
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Identified
Datasets get identified and listed.
Described
Datasets get clear descriptions with metadata.
Interoperable
Different systems recognise the same thing.
Catalogued
Data is discoverable and queryable.
Governed
Access controlled, consent enforced.
Accessible
AI can pull the exact piece it needs.
AI-ready
Safe for AI application and automation.
What this life-cycle is useful for is diagnosis: it tells a team not only how ready a dataset is overall, but exactly where to focus next. We work through three connected efforts.
Diagnosing the Data Journey
We enable you to map where data and data flows are blocked across the Prepare → Action journey. We help you diagnose which stage is holding you back — and what it will take to move forward.
Building Institutional Readiness
Making data work across institutions is not only a technical problem. We work on the coordination, trust mechanisms, and operating models that make it possible.
Tools & Playbooks That Transfer
Efforts 1 and 2 together produce two things: a technical toolkit and a coordination playbook. Both are designed to transfer. The next institution doesn't start from zero. This is how pilots become a pattern.
Our Offerings
Four artifacts from the Data DHARA Pathway
For Data Custodians
Know Your Data Set (KYDS)
Simple form for data custodianProfiles and characterises a raw dataset so its trustworthiness is known before anything is built on it.
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Convergence
DATA DHARA Toolkit
7-stage DATA DHARA lifecycleCarries a dataset through a 7-stage lifecycle, ending in a catalogued, AI-ready dataset.
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Convergence
DATA DHARA Sandbox
Where the journeys meetGoverned access point where a ready dataset and a scoped request meet and the build starts.
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Know Your Use Case
Know Your Use Case (KYUC)
Guided intake for data requestsA self-serve, minutes-long way for a use case idea to become a scoped, defensible request.
DATA DHARA envisions a future where
EXPORTS
India has 63 million MSME firms - most of them with no access to the trade data that could help them export. When fragmented trade records, regulatory timelines, and market demand data are made ready and joined, a first-time exporter in Surat can know which markets want her products, what certifications she needs, and what the path looks like.
Public data, made ready, turns the export long tail from a policy aspiration into a navigable reality.
RESEARCH
India’s scale is one of its most underleveraged assets. Questions about disease patterns, learning outcomes, agricultural productivity, and economic mobility could be answered with actual ground truth — if the data that already exists were made accessible and trustworthy.
Ready public sector data turns India from a place where researchers work around data gaps, to one where the data itself becomes the evidence base.
GOVERNANCE
When health records, welfare enrollment, demographic data, and scheme delivery data can be joined and queried, the question “are our programmes reaching the right people?” becomes answerable. Governments stop designing new schemes to compensate for old ones that didn’t land - and start making the same resources work with far greater precision.