Funding story
The highly innovative citizens engagement platform LocalCircles recently managed to obtain a huge boost by securing funding from Mahindra Group Chairman Anand Mahindra, who will also be joining the company’s Advisory Board.
What does LocalCircles do?
Set up by Sachin Taparia, K.Yatish Rajawat, Mukesh Gupta and Abhishek Gupta in 2013, LocalCircles has been focusing on creating a holistic platform aimed at ensuring transparency and accountability in society. The procedure which LocalCircles focuses on, in order to ensure the attainment of these goals is by bringing together citizens on this easy-to-use platform. Registration on this platform can be done by Indian citizens everywhere, and is completely free—this was done to bring on board as large a segment of the Indian population as possible.
LocalCircles aims at channeling the citizens’ voice in order to solve key problems in a number of diverse fields. These include Law&Order, Emergency Assistance and Corruption control, among others. LocalCircles’ harnessing of the citizenry’s opinion has already made its impact felt as regards the Swach Bharat Abhiyan, the brainchild of the Ministry of Urban Development. The Ministy was able to collect valuable inputs from the citizens regarding the progress of Swach Bharat, as well as the various aspects of the progamme which needed improvement. Overall, this startup’s aims also work well with the Central Government’s long-established desire to promote e-governance. LocalCircles also greatly aided in flood relief operations in Monsoon 2014 in the NCR region, with citizens being able to file complaints much more effectively through their platform, defeating the characteristic bureaucratic babudom which has long been a significant obstruction in the path of effective service delivery.
The road ahead
With Mahindra joining the highly illustrious line-up of Nadir Godrej and Maruti Chairman RC Bhargava on the Board of Directors, LocalCircles looks set to keep its promise of facilitating effective service delivery through citizen engagement. A bright future awaits not just the startup itself, but also the “governance through citizen engagement” concept also.
To join the project, check out their website here.
