May 12, 2025 by Pooja Harmalkar
When Avni first launched (back then as OpenCHS), we had a grand vision: bake every community medicine protocol into our system so that every health program in India could use it. Supported by experts, we charged ahead—only to realize how naive we were.
Field feedback hit us hard: "Almost every program follows the national protocol, but no two implement it the same way." Small, on-the-ground adjustments—natural to field workers—required endless custom coding. Templates? Useless. Configurations? Never enough.
So we pivoted. Hard.
Now, each project gets its own tailored solution—built from scratch, designed for real-world chaos. We embraced flexibility, moved to a generic platform, and even started dabbling in AI. But today’s story isn’t about tech—it’s about how we tackled the wild world of social security benefits.
Spoiler: One-size-fits-all failed here too.
Social security isn’t new to Avni. We’ve worked with NGOs across India, and no two operate alike. Here’s what we found:
This approach is found in non-profits that are deeply invested in a community. They try to ensure that the schemes announced by the government work for their beneficiaries.
These organisations often help beneficiaries to access hard-to-get benefits such as ration cards. Field workers in such organisations do much more than just secure social security benefits. They work on multiple objectives depending on the needs of their community.
Some organisations work only in securing social security benefits, are capable of delivering multiple benefits, and choose to scale out in geography when an area is saturated. These organisations believe in bringing financial benefits to as many eligible citizens as possible.
Here, the organisation typically works to get one specific benefit in the hands of as many people as possible. These organisations treat the benefit in mission mode and have a structured process that works like a factory.
Organisations here work at a population scale, often in partnership with the government. The idea is to enable a large vulnerable population to access one or a basket of schemes. Beneficiaries are given details of schemes and encouraged to apply.
NGOs often work on lists provided by the government to identify potential beneficiaries. Frequently, call centres and mass communication tools such as flyers and advertisements are used for outreach.
Now we look at the requirements of a software product that helps with delivering social security.
We will ignore model 4 in our discussion because it is a completely different beast. What we build for them will not be relevant for any of the other models. On to the components.
The program flow across all three models is different. However, they have a few essential components - a beneficiary, a benefit, a status, and a follow-up date. As long as we can structure these easily, building a solution should benefit from it.
Modeling the different schemes, their benefits and prerequisites is the most complex part of the system.
Each benefit has a specific beneficiary in mind. The basic prerequisites to claim a benefit could be
It might seem possible to build a system based on the above information, but this is just the documented part. Even here, new schemes could be added, old ones removed or new conditions added to existing schemes.
Then comes the undocumented part.
Instead of overengineering, we built a system that:
The rest? Trust the field workers. They know best.
Saaras is a model 2 organisation that works across 5 states. They provide access to around 45 schemes (capability and priorities of the NGO).
12 of the 45 Saaras' basket of benefits are national schemes. 15 are for women only, 4 are for children, 2 for old people. For any beneficiary, there would be about 10-15 schemes available after the state, age, and gender filters are applied. This makes it a strong and practical filter the system can apply before the user verifies eligibility.
The beneficiary and the community worker then decide on the best possible scheme to apply for.
Saaras prefers a lightweight process on the app, leaving the complications of applying for a scheme to the users and the beneficiary. These users are knowledgeable in handling situations. All necessary actions are performed outside the app. Avni helps with maintaining status and gives reminders to follow-up where necessary.
The application needs space to grow primarily in two dimensions - the schemes that get added, and the geographical areas where Saaras wants to expand.
Avni allows both these dimensions to be managed through its web interface.
Relevant parameters of a scheme - the state, gender and age - are maintained in what we call "concepts". Schemes added automatically flow into the mobile app.
Users and locations can be added directly through admin options on the web application.
Social security is a hard domain. There are quick wins though. Don’t let being “perfect” prevent you from doing what is “possible”.
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