Hello, I am the co-founder and CEO of Gram Vaani (OnionDev Technologies Pvt Ltd), a social tech enterprise that builds innovative voice-based community media technologies for the underserved, with a mission to reverse the flow of information. Working closely with communities and partners across sectors, Gram Vaani has touched over 2.5 million individuals, enabling them to not just access and share life impacting information, but also voice their opinions or ask questions. 

I am an Engineering graduate (Electronics & Communication Engineering, University of Madras) and I hold a Master’s in Business Administration (Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning, Puttaparthy, AP) and Business law (National Law School of India Univ, Bangalore). I am an Acumen India 2020 fellow.

Gram Vaani (OnionDev Technologies Pvt. Ltd.)

Vijay Sai Pratap, CEO

India

Gram Vaani is a social tech company incubated out of IIT Delhi. We started in 2009 with the intent of reversing the flow of information, that is, to make it bottom-up instead of top-down. Using simple technologies and social context to design tools, Gram Vaani has been able to impact communities- more than 2.5 million users in over 15 Indian States, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Namibia and South Africa. More interesting than this are the outcomes of what we have done: Thirty rural radio stations able to manage and share content over mobiles and the web, corrupt ration shop officials in Jharkhand arrested due to citizen complaints, Women Sarpanches in Uttar Pradesh sharing learnings and opinions, citizen monitoring of waste management in Delhi. Download our brief profile here. With a strategic partnership with the Life Impacting Services business of OnMobile Global Ltd, we have now created OnionDev, with a lot more unique capabilities to deliver value to our partners.

Though Gram Vaani continues to produce significant published research and receive industry awards, we evaluate success by the social impact of our work on communities. Gram Vaani has worked with several fantastic partners with support from the Knight Foundation, Grand Challenges Canada, Power of Ideas, Rockefeller Foundation, and the Ford Foundation.