Poket
Here, in places like Toronto, Canada from where this application is being written, we have access to rich datasets, platforms like Google Maps for citizens to access community-based data, and tools for civic engagement to uncover inefficiencies in key infrastructure.
Unfortunately, marginalized communities across low and middle income countries (LMICs) often do not. They are overall data-scarce - we know very little about them compared to Western countries and community-members have very few localized tools to be able to report and access key information. This particularly extends to healthcare systems and programs. In addition to community members, organizations who deploy healthcare interventions and programs require robust M&E methods and systems to be able to collect key insights around the current state assessment of a community and eventually, the effectiveness of their programs.
For example, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation may send free birth control to a community in rural Bangladesh as a healthcare intervention. However, they will then need to collect data to track whether access to this free birth control program resulted in less unwanted pregnancies, STIs, etc. in the rural community in Bangladesh. They may also require a mechanism for community members to understand where they can access this birth control in a safe, secure and affordable way in the future.
Unfortunately, M&E processes (mostly field data collection) continue to be plagued by many different challenges. A KMPG study (linked below) conducted with the top 35 international development organizations (representing US $100B of international programming annually) found 3-key challenges:
Poor Data Access: 72% of international orgs have challenges accessing/collecting data in low-resource settings. This is often because these programs are deployed in low and middle income countries (LMICs) in rural communities that are difficult to travel to for data collection, and often have intermittent internet connectivity.
Timeliness/Speed: Feedback loops are very slow due to a lack of real-time data. International orgs often have to send out field researchers every few months to do in-person surveys, meaning there is very little to no real-time data, and high recall bias from beneficiaries being surveyed/interviewed. 90% of international orgs said it takes 3-months or more for evaluation results to lead to program performance improvements.
Low Budgets: 70% of international orgs dedicate less than 5% of the entire program budget to M&E. A large portion of this must be spent on hiring field researchers / interviewers to physically travel to locations and collect data, since M&E remains to be a very slow, manual process. Reducing the need to travel unlocks massive resources for investing in remote, self-reported and software-based approaches.
Overall, use of new technology in M&E lags behind other sectors of development which have more readily adopted new technologies. Fortunately, there is a key opportunity that can help address all of these challenges: with the rapidly falling cost of ICT services and smartphone hardware, LMICs are the final frontier remaining of the offline population rapidly coming online, primarily via smartphones. A 2022 Hoostuite report indicates that there are now 6.3B connected smartphones globally, which comprise 77% of all mobile connections. Of course, this is higher than any previous point in history. This rapid adoption of key infrastructure means that even the most remote communities will soon gain access to smartphones and smartphone-based internet.
This unlocks a tremendous potential for M&E - which is the power to have these users use their smartphones to self-report on indicators on a high frequency basis (daily, weekly, monthly). With the right incentives in place and some training on how to use our very simple tools, global health organizations cannot only save tremendous resources on M&E, travel etc. but also have richer, granular, more frequent and self-reported, grassroots data to inform their programs in real-time.
Most importantly, with the power of Poket’s mobile-based solution that leverages crowd-sourcing and location-based technology, we can create feedback loops of this data back into the communities who report it to allow them to make better informed health decisions. Poket is the first platform to bring all of this technology into one simple, affordable mobile application specifically designed for international development organizations to access real-time data both quickly, affordably, and offline!
POKET is a software solution for community-based data collection and crowdsourcing, mostly for social and behavioural health projects in LMICs. We retrofit our suite of mobile/desktop tools for our clients/partners (international NGOs, research agencies and researchers). They then put our tools in the hands of community members, beneficiaries, citizens, community-health workers and patients to empower them with a tool for self-reporting data. The key focus here is on enabling the high-frequency, self-reporting of data from users on the ground vs. traditional forms of extractive data collection. Using crowdsourcing in this way is a very disruptive approach compared to the traditional form of manual door-knocking and household surveying. There is also a key focus on having the data act as a feedback loop within the app so users can benefit from the larger data as a whole. POKET’s solution consists of three-key tools:
1) Crowdsourcing App (for contributors): An app for contributors (community members, beneficiaries, citizens, community-health workers, enumerators, etc.) to generate location-specific data about themselves/their communities, and get rewarded for it. If data generated is approved by the client, then citizens get points. These points can be converted into real-world rewards like mobile money transfers, gift cards, digital currencies, etc. So, citizens are incentivized to complete self-reported data tasks within their communities and are rewarded for their contributions and time.
A key component of this app is to allow the contributors to see each other’s contributions. One example of this is a Waze-like community-based map - we are exploring the use of this for citizens in Cote D’Ivoire to be able to report where they can access COVID-19 tests/vaccines and have this info be viewable by other users. Another example of this is community-facing dashboard that shows averages of wait times and prices for accessing this test to all contributors. You can see a brief overview of this tool here:
2) Mobile Data Verification Tool (for clients): This is a tool for the client (international NGOs, research agencies and researchers) to screen the crowdsourced data. For example, if the image is unclear, the description is poor, or the data is no longer relevant, our AI-engine combined with human verification allows the client to send live feedback to the contributor or reject it to ensure only high-quality data enters the database and is viewable by other users. You can see a brief overview of this tool here:
3) Desktop Dashboard (for clients): A web-based tool for clients to visualize all crowdsourced data, with customized filters and insights. It also enables the client to see the activity of participants in the community and issue rewards to the right user. Lastly, it allows the client to export the data as a .CSV file to visualize, analyze, publish, etc. with any 3rd party tool. We do not take ownership over the data that our clients generate using our tools. You can see a brief overview of this tool here:
You can see more wireframes and sample use-cases on our website (www.poketapp.com)
Below are 6-key differentiators that allow us to stand out compared to other solutions:
- International organization-centric: We have built a scalable software solution for international orgs and researchers to deploy in the LMIC communities they serve. They tell us their tasks/data needs for the community and we retrofit our suite of tools so they can mobilize citizens and deploy them. This saves these international development organizations and researchers (who are not tech companies) time, resources and gives them a new way to generate M&E insights, while rewarding their community members and contributors in the process!
- Gamification & Rewards: We have created a schema for clients to incentivize end-users for contributing data. This is a score that gets tabulated for each user based on the # of validated tasks they have completed. Then, clients can choose what rewards users can receive for their contributions (ex. mobile money, gift cards, etc.) A leaderboard also shows who has contributed the most in a group/community.
- AI Data Verification Tool: We have built an AI-based tool so crowdsourced data is screened for quality and also ensures that the same data is not duplicated.
- Project Codes: Based on client feedback, we have created a feature for orgs able to generate different instances of the app for different groups of users. This could be different versions of the app with unique questions and incentives for treatment arms in a randomized control trial, different geographies, demographics, cohorts, etc.
- Feedback Loops to Community: Instead of using the mobile tools to just enter data and receive rewards, we have built our technology in such a way that the data entered by contributors can be shared across the entire group of users, whether on a map or on a dashboard, so that users can be empowered by community-based data. For example, if someone has mapped a place that has availability of the COVID-19 test/vaccine, other users can see this reported location in real-time. Similarly, if one user has reported the availability or cost of a drug/service, all other users can view this data in-real time and make a more data-informed decision.
- Optimized for Low Bandwidth Settings/LMIC contexts: We have spent tireless hours engineering all of these great features around gamification, rewards, mapping, community-driven insights, etc. to function in low-bandwidth settings, particularly in rural communities. Once downloaded our tools are completely functional without an internet connection, so data can be collected/entered completely offline and synced later. The user-interface throughout the field tool is almost made extremely simple to accommodate folks with low literacy. Lastly, we have engineered the solution to work on budget, low-spec smartphones and earlier/basic versions of Android - this has taken years to perfect but now we have an exciting product that can be used by virtually anyone, as long as they have a smartphone!
Our solution is acquired by global health research agencies, international development organizations/NGOs, and health researchers. These are our clients. After the tools are configured for their respective projects, the cleint puts the tools in the hands of the people who they are looking to engage and have contribute data. These can be patients, community members/citizens, community-health workers, beneficiaries of an intervention or even research participants in a global health study. These are often people who are relatively young (18-45), have access to smartphones, and have some degree of literacy in their local language.
The common thread between these users is that they are often residing in marginalized communities in low and middle income countries that lack access to community-based information and insights. Unfortunately, they don’t have any type of online database or registry that is hyper-localized in being able to find important details on nearby healthcare outlets, service availability, product availability, wait times, building accessibility, service quality/quality of care indicators etc.
These are the information gaps that our platform addresses. By using our tools, these community members not only get rewarded / compensated by our clients for submitting data about these indicators as they experience them, they also receive a feedback loop of this data that empowers them with data and insights to make more informed healthcare decisions. For example, understanding real-time access to COVID-19 testing facilities nearby, their wait times, availability of tests, whether they are safe spaces for minority groups, building accessibility for those who are physically impaired, etc. are all the types of indicators that are lacking in any existing digital solutions - until now!
Our founding team has a deep connection with the target population that we serve. The majority of our team has been born and raised in low and middle income countries and have experienced first-hand the challenges of not being able to access key healthcare information at the localized level. In fact, many times our platform is used in phases - firstly to understand what the indicators of a study should be after hearing from the community, and then to launch and track these indicators from the community who expressed a need.
One of our co-founders was born and raised in the outskirts of Karachi, Pakistan while another one was born and raised in Awka Ibom, Nigeria. Kamil, the co-founder and key applicant has lived and travelled to 15+ LMICs with a focus on public health projects. We also lived in Nigeria until we were displaced back to Canada when COVID hit in 2020. All of this gives us a unique perspective in understanding the importance of a heavily localized solution for different regions and projects, with a focus on Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Alongside our implementing partners, we configure our platform so that it is heavily customized for the target community that it is being deployed in. Below are a few of the many ways in which we do this:
- Language translation - we translate the entire platform to the local language in which it is being deployed in so that knowledge of English is not a barrier to acceptance. Our platform has been translated and deployed in several languages already, from Bangla to Vietnamese.
- User interface - in many cases we change the user-interface of the platform to accommodate particular communities’ digital literacy levels. In some cases, we use more images and illustrations to communicate particular ideas or prompts so that the platform is inclusive of more folks in a community where digital literacy may be lower. In other cases, we increase privacy / security customizations to make the data more anonymous for sensitive applications and projects.
- Reward localization - we work with our implementing partner to understand at the grassroots level what kind of incentives will drive engagement and adoption of the platform. For example, in a country like Kenya where mobile money adoption is high, m-pesa may be a way to motivate participants to self-report / crowdsource data and compensate them for their time and effort in completing questionnaires and answering questions. In other cases, the reward has been things like a local radio interview, a certificate of good citizenship, and even a new bicycle for the top contributor.
All of these are based off of deep grassroots knowledge of the communities where the platform is being deployed in, thanks to a combination of our team’s experience and the deep connection that our implementing partners have with the communities they are working with.
- Employ unconventional or proxy data sources to inform primary health care performance improvement
- Provide improved measurement methods that are low cost, fit-for-purpose, shareable across information systems, and streamlined for data collectors
- Leverage existing systems, networks, and workflows to streamline the collection and interpretation of data to support meaningful use of primary health care data
- Provide actionable, accountable, and accessible insights for health care providers, administrators, and/or funders that can be used to optimize the performance of primary health care
- Growth
When our team read the description of this challenge, we practically jumped out of our seats in excitement of how relevant the challenge was to our work. Below are some of the reasons why we think we have a very strong solution that addresses some of the key criteria of this challenge, some of which we have described below:
- Employ unconventional or proxy data sources to inform primary health care performance improvement -> Poket does this via enabling crowdsourcing data for community-based insights and then creating a feedback loop for communities to access this data at large
- Provide improved measurement methods that are low cost, fit-for-purpose, shareable across information systems, and streamlined for data collectors; -> Poket does this via customizing their platform for a specific community to self-report data for more granular, high frequency grassroots measurement
- Leverage existing systems, networks, and workflows to streamline the collection and interpretation of data to support meaningful use of primary health care data; -> Poket works with clients and partners who already have access and deep connecting to the communities they serve, but require a digital solution for self-reported data and community-based data collection. In this way, we do not need to focus on user acquisition, help find representative samples, etc. We piggy-back off of existing systems and networks.
- Provide actionable, accountable, and accessible insights for health care providers, administrators, and/or funders that can be used to optimize the performance of primary health care; -> Poket does this via their self-serve analytics dashboard which can be made open-source or accessible to funders, researchers, public sector groups to track the data and insights in real-time. We also allow all of the raw data to be exported with one click and do not maintain any IP of the data that is generated using our platform.
With this said, we are facing several challenges that we believe the Novel Measurement for Performance Improvement can help us address.
1) Exposure and Visibility: We have been actively investing in making our solution more accessible, inclusive, robust and secure so that it can be deployed at scale. However, this leaves limited resources for us to invest in marketing efforts to get the word out about our solution. Being selected as a winner for this challenge would give us more visibility, exposure and credibility to global health organizations, research agencies and researchers, international NGOs, etc. that would not have otherwise known about our tool. In fact, we have even been struggling to connect with the right folks at the Gates foundation, so perhaps that can be a great starting point for us to begin!
2) Legal Barriers: Negotiating contracts for some of these engagents can be very slow, cumbersome and expensive due to the localized and unique nature of each engagement. We have also been wanting to explore HIPAA and GDPR compliance for our platform so it opens the door for more projects. Unfortunately, this process requires resources and expertise our team doesn’t necessarily have today. We are hoping that winning the prize could help connect us with resources that will help us attain this level of compliance sooner than later.
3) Technology Barriers: Currently, the platform is not a pure end to end automated Software As a Service (SaaS). Our team is still involved in doing ad-hoc configurations and customizations for individual clients based on their unique requirements for a project. This, on average, takes our team 5-10 days to complete. Of course, this is not a scalable approach if we wish to expand and grow exponentially. The proceeds from this prize will be used towards making our platform for automated, specifically to build out more “self-serve” capabilities that allow partners to configure the platform for their needs without the hands-on assistance of our team.
4) Financial Barriers: In this inflationary environment, our costs of international expansion continue to rise, and the platform is increasingly difficult for local organizations in LMICs who are, in many cases, struggling with hyperinflation. Unfortunately, our software costs are fixed and we can only subsidize them so much for these partners. Funding from the challenge will allow us to cover some of these ongoing software costs we incur (ex. AWS server costs, Google Firebase, Google Maps APIs, 2-Factor Authentication, customer support, outreach etc.). We are used to working day and night, and will continue to do so, however any resources from the prize will enable us to keep the platform accessible and affordable to local partners in LMICs while also continuing to grow our platform’s features, security requirements, etc.
Given the rapidly falling cost of ICT services and smartphone hardware, LMICs are the final frontier remaining of the offline population rapidly coming online, primarily via smartphones. A 2022 Hoostuite report indicates that there are now 6.3B connected smartphones globally, which comprise 77% of all mobile connections. Of course, this is higher than any previous point in history. This rapid adoption of key infrastructure means that even pastoralists, smallholder farmers, patients, communities in the most remote of remote places are gaining access to smartphones and smartphone-based internet. This unlocks a tremendous potential for M&E - which is the power to have these users self-report on indicators on a high frequency basis (daily, weekly, monthly).
With the right incentives in place and some training on how to use our very simple tools, global health organizations cannot only save tremendous resources on M&E, travel etc. but also have richer, granular, more frequent and self-reported, grassroots data to inform their programs in real-time. We are the first to enable this opportunity via a scalable software-based approach, and while we are early, we know that the path to adoption is clear. To finish answering this question, please once again refer to the 5-key differentiators from question 2, copied below: Below are 5-key differentiators that allow us to stand out compared to other solutions:
International organization-centric: We have built a scalable software solution for international orgs and researchers to deploy in the LMIC communities they serve. They tell us their tasks/data needs for the community and we retrofit our suite of tools so they can mobilize citizens and deploy them. This saves these international development organizations and researchers (who are not tech companies) time, resources and gives them a new way to generate M&E insights, while rewarding their community members and contributors in the process!
Gamification & Rewards: We have created a schema for clients to incentivize end-users for contributing data. This is a score that gets tabulated for each user based on the # of validated tasks they have completed. Then, clients can choose what rewards users can receive for their contributions (ex. mobile money, gift cards, etc.) A leaderboard also shows who has contributed the most in a group/community.
AI Data Verification Tool: We have built an AI-based tool so crowdsourced data is screened for quality and also ensures that the same data is not duplicated.
Project Codes: Based on client feedback, we have created a feature for orgs able to generate different instances of the app for different groups of users. This could be different versions of the app with unique questions and incentives for treatment arms in a randomized control trial, different geographies, demographics, cohorts, etc.
Feedback Loops to Community: Instead of using the mobile tools to just enter data and receive rewards, we have built our technology in such a way that the data entered by contributors can be shared across the entire group of users, whether on a map or on a dashboard, so that users can be empowered by community-based data. For example, if someone has mapped a place that has availability of the COVID-19, other users can see this location in real-time.
Optimized for Low Bandwidth Settings/LMIC contexts: We have spent tireless hours engineering all of these great features around gamifification, rewards, mapping, community-driven insights, etc. to function in low-bandwidth settings, particularly in rural communities. Once downloaded our tools are completely functional without an internet connection, so data can be collected/entered completely offline and synced later. The user-interface throughout the field tool is almost made extremely simple to accommodate folks with low literacy. Lastly, we have engineered the solution to work on budget, low-spec smartphones and earlier/basic versions of Android - this has taken years to perfect but now we have an exciting product that can be used by virtually anyone, as long as they have a smartphone!
2026 Impact Goals:
1. 5,000,000+ contributors (community members/citizens, community-health workers, patients, beneficiaries, research participants, etc.) have used Poket to contribute data or receive insights about some type of community-level healthcare indicator.
2. 500+ international research agencies, researchers, international NGOs, and public sector organizations are working with Poket to empower their contributors with a platform for community-based insights
3. Poket has deployed the platform in 100+ countries across several languages, communities, and projects (even beyond healthcare)!
One of the reasons we decided to launch POKET as a software platform was to maximize scalability. By providing a tool for organizations to empower the communities they work in, we are able to create a "rinse and repeat" model. Often, a few days are spent customizing the tool for a specific project/stakeholder, who then puts it in the hands of communities. Whether it be 10 citizens or 100,000 citizens, our platform is continuously being built to be robust enough to handle citizen-generated data at scale, since the marginal cost of adding a user is minimal. All it takes is downloading an app in the Google Play / iOS store, entering in a project code and the user is ready to enter data and receive rewards.
We are also very fortunate to be members of the Trade Commissioner Service of Canada who have been instrumental to facilitating introductions across the world to prospective clients. This, in addition to support from MIT SOLVE, Utopia’s Urban Innovation Challenge, the Creative Destruction Lab, and ESRI have been instrumental in helping us address a footing and connect with other organizations in this space. However the majority of our engagements come from cold-emails and outreach in the COVID-era was a true struggle for our team. We are extremely excited by the opportunity of tapping into the network of partners that the Novel Measurement for Performance Improvement will give us access to, who we believe will be very interested in our solution and unlock new growth opportunities to hit these some of these key milestones.
Some KPIs we use are:
1) # of organizations/researchers who have deployed our solution in a community
2) # of students/community members/citizens who have used our solution to enter data
3) value of $ that has been awarded to participants on a monthly/project basis via this incentivized approach to self-report data
4) amount and nature of data generated across different use-cases
Please see slide 1 we have produced in this Google Slide presentation: https://docs.google.com/presen...
Our current solution offering consists of a set of mobile applications to collect and verify data and a web-based application to provide custom insights on crowd-sourced data. Our entire technology platform is currently centralized via Amazon AWS services and combines several other services such as Firebase, Twilio, Google Maps, etc. It has also been optimized for low-cost Android devices in settings where bandwidth is low or intermittent. We are also actively investing in building AI for data verification.
Verifying data is, at present, a very manual process. Users of our data verification app make a decision on the quality of collected data by visually inspecting images taken by users of the data collection app, and other attributes like name of the place, phone number, location, etc.
AI provides an opportunity to create an automatic and robust system of verifying data by removing the need for manual intervention. We can use AI to flag and reject duplicate proposals, flag and reject proposals with poor image quality, flag and reject proposals with incorrect phone numbers, and ultimately make AI the arbitrator of data quality vs. a human - which it mostly is today.
We have a unique opportunity at hand here because most of the data that will be collected via our platform has not been used to train AI models previously - such as images of informal pharmacies in Bangladesh, face-mask observations in Mexico or self-reported diseases vectors in Pakistan.
Lastly, we are in the exploratory phases of understanding decentralized applications of our platform via blockchain. This is largely focused on using decentralized approaches to data collection (instead of our current configuration that leverages a centralized AWS databse) and also automating the reward process for questionnaire/task completion via smart contracts where digital currencies can be one of the many incentices/rewards offered for task completion - however we would certainly require more resources to build this out completely!
- A new application of an existing technology
- Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning
- Behavioral Technology
- Big Data
- Blockchain
- Crowd Sourced Service / Social Networks
- GIS and Geospatial Technology
- Software and Mobile Applications
- 1. No Poverty
- 2. Zero Hunger
- 3. Good Health and Well-being
- 4. Quality Education
- 5. Gender Equality
- 6. Clean Water and Sanitation
- 7. Affordable and Clean Energy
- 8. Decent Work and Economic Growth
- 9. Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure
- 10. Reduced Inequalities
- 11. Sustainable Cities and Communities
- 13. Climate Action
- Bangladesh
- Ghana
- Kenya
- Malawi
- Niger
- Nigeria
- Pakistan
- South Africa
- Uganda
- Vietnam
- Zambia
- Zimbabwe
- Bangladesh
- Brazil
- Chile
- Colombia
- Ghana
- India
- Kenya
- Malawi
- Nepal
- Niger
- Nigeria
- Pakistan
- South Africa
- Uganda
- Vietnam
- Zambia
- Zimbabwe
We retrofit our suite of mobile/desktop tools for our clients/partners (international NGOs, research agencies and researchers). They then put our tool in the hands of community members, beneficiaries, citizens, community-health workers, etc. to empower them with a tool for self-reporting data. So, it is this second group who collects the primary health care data using Poket. Some examples of indicators that our platform is used to collect and then make accessible are:
- Nearby healthcare outlets (includes attributes like photos, outlet type, contact information, opening/closing hours, etc.)
- Service availability
- Service quality (ex. quality of care indicators, wait times, etc.)
- Product availability (ex. access of product, prices of product, brands/substitutes of products)
- Building accessibility
- Personal experiences (ex. Mistreatment, abuse, harassment, etc.)
These are some of many examples of the types of data that contributors can enter and then also be able to view aggregate insights about on community-based dashboards and maps.
Their incentive to collect data can be to receive the community-based insights once they contribute data themselves (in some projects, we have made it so contributors can “unlock” the broader insights and data only after contributing their own). In other cases, our partners have opted for other forms of incentives to reward participants for contributing data. Some examples are mobile money transfers, gift cards, physical prizes (ex. Bicycle to the top contributor), local radio interviews, certificates of good citizenship, and others. We have built our platform so that new rewards and incentives can easily be configured into the user-interface of our applications.
- For-profit, including B-Corp or similar models
Our team has a very strong commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and taking one look at our team is a great example of this. Every person on our team is a person of colour, either black or brown. Our CTO is also a very proud woman in tech, often mentoring and young girls, specifically in the BIPOC community in STEM-related fields. Almost all of us are also immigrants to Canada who were raised in an LMIC, giving us a unique understanding of the challenges in many of the communities our platform is deployed in.
Outside of our founding team, we ensure a very high rigour in maximizing stakeholder engagement from our partners who want to use the tool. Often times, we are asked to configure our platform so that it can be used by wider groups of people, whether they be marginalized youth, folks who have physical or visual impairments, or minority groups who suffer persecution. We have also been part of several programs (ex. Utopia Urban Innovation Program) who has pushed us to critically think about how technology can be used to build more inclusive cities and communities, and design our platform with this key theme in mind.
In fact, we have designed a completely new configuration of our entire platform for sensitive projects to ensure the safety of minority groups that may be compromised if the data generated using our tool gets into the wrong hands. In short, we have put our money where our mouth is when it comes to investing in both our team and technology so that no groups are barred from accessing our platform. Of course, with the assistance of the prize proceeds, we’ll be able to further build out technology features to make our platform even more accessibility friendly.
Please see slide 2 we have produced in this Google Slide presentation for a summary of how we charge for the platform: https://docs.google.com/presen...
For a summary on our offering, please refer to question 2 in this application. Some of the value we provide our clients/partner organizations (outside of what is discussed in question 2) includes customizing the platform for different languages, communities, rewards, security/privacy features, user-interfaces, etc.
- Organizations (B2B)
We currently have 2 sources of revenue that are leading us towards a path of financial sustainability.
The first (and primary source) is revenue. We have a SaaS-based business model where we charge an upfront fee (it often ranges between $5-$50K) for retrofitting our platform for a particular NGO program/research project. These include customizations like language translations of the tool, custom privacy/security features, custom incentives/rewards, specific user interfaces for community-based incentives, etc. If the tools are needed for longer than 12-months, then we also chareg a monthly subscription (it often ranges between $350-$750) depending on the # of contributors (ex. Community members, beneficiaries, etc.) who will be using the mobile app to contribute data.
The secondary funding source so far has also included external investments, which has been some seed funding via grants and campus-based accelerators. These include pitch competitions, government grants, prizes/awards (like this one) and also some initial VC-funding.
Although we cannot share the names of our clients publicly, we have already signed several contracts with NGOs, research agencies and researchers using the SaaS-based business model articulated in the previous question, which has enabled us to launch our platform in 10+ countries in the past year. Many have them have signed on for another year or have expanded the use of the platform in scale or scope.
We have also been successful in raising pre-seed VC funding via a campus-linked accelerator in Canada, funded by Bloomberg Beta, Globalive Capital, Portag3 Ventures, Data Collective. Lastly, we have been fortunate to win pitch competitions, awards and grants from organizations like the MBR Initiative for Global Prosperity, MIT SOLVE, the Roddenberry Foundation, General Motors, and a handful of others. Despite this, as we continue to explore growth opportunities and scale-up our platform, our costs are also increasing exponentially. Funding from the Novel Measurement for Performance Improvement Challenge would be a gamechanger in allowing us to cover our growing technology costs as we try and get this platform in the hands of everyone who needs it!

Co-Founder and CEO