About niwasi.in
What is Niwasi?
niwasi.in — A community tool for residents, that makes collective action easy.
Our Mission
Facilitate — Milen Kuchh Karen
Key modules of the Niwasi Application are: Resident Sabha module, Resident Sabha date announcement, auto-generated Resident Sabha, giving agenda, agenda prioritising, voting on the proposal, resident's collective decisions and resident's decision tracking, resident's driven urgent Resident Sabha, and historical catalogue of agenda, Resident Sabha, and decisions taken at Resident Sabha.
A resident can get access to multiple communities in the Application with one login credential… and more.
The application also helps residents and its partner NGO to have community-generated summary report in real-time. This community-generated report card gets shared with all the residents and the stakeholders within the community as well as outside. Access control is role-based design.
The community level summary report can be used for collective initiatives.
Basic concept of ‘niwasi.in’ application is rooted from an on-ground implementation of Resident Sabha program for over many years.
Small impacts of Resident Sabha felt: A child learned to read, a woman returned to their in-laws, teacher's attendance became more regular, mid-day meal quality improved, hand pump got repaired… this list of small micro improvements is endless.
Resident Sabha experience: These small benefits were neither the result of an NGO intervention nor were driven by influential community persons, but it happened because collectively related issues were raised at Resident Sabha meetings in the form of agenda, and decisions were taken collectively at the meeting and then acted on by the team of a few residents on the behalf of the resident's sabha decisions.
Challenges We Are Addressing
Improving public services and facilities, with increased government expenditure, access to digital community and other favourable factors, there is a continuous decline in collectiveness of local residents. This, in many cases, results in a reduced participation of residents in collectiveness relating to common services or facilities.
List of Functionalities
Database for community
Streets, buildings, common spaces, land plots; Residents' list including families and businesses; Stakeholder, asset, facilities, utilities
Service level tracking
Sanitation, waste disposal, drinking water; Human development goal & Human rights; Identify beneficiary and benefits tracking
Democratic tools
Resident Sabha, Ideas on new initiatives and collective decision; Election; Common interest group; Grievances related to services
Help each other
Child in need of care and protection; whole community is needy; old age, suffering from disease, no family or no relation-friends, met accident, financial challenges, gender issue, migration, social backwardness, handicap, pandemic
Citizen rights
Budget analysis, right to information, raise demand to local bodies or govt., social audit, moderation of open discussions, complaint cell, citizen charter
Interaction
Celebration, Blood Donation Camp; Morning walkers Yoga club; Charity together
Mutual support
Support residents in need (car problem, gas cylinder, minor accident, med. support); Available skills, resale etc.
Social amenities
Children's park, Club house, Gym, library, open space, common parking, play zone, cricket ground…
Visitor modules
Guest, home delivery security, household help visits
Administration modules
Fee collection, asset, scheduling, announcements, penalties, annual event calendar, management
Vendor management
Vendor or service person empanelment, electrician, plumber, maid, service grading, APNE — helping good vendors
Dashboard & Website
Community-level dashboard and public website for better transparency and information sharing
Background & Technology
Background Note
Sunai has been developing multiple processes for residents that facilitate them to take collective initiatives. These processes provide social organisations as well as residents, the tools that help them to make collective initiatives easy and effective. Details of the tools can be found on the website Niwasi.in.
Note: Sunai has standardised those tools that have been developed during the consultancy services provided to its distinguished clients. One of such tools is Niwasi App and its various extensions — Partner, Help, Info, Student, and Panchayat-webpage.
Software Technology
- The software is being developed on Next.js (App Router) and Express.js with TypeScript. Other key IT components are MySQL for database, Prisma ORM, Tailwind CSS.
- The Application prototype is first built on Adobe Xd / PowerPoint / MS Word. This helps all team members to give comments before actual coding.
- Process team draft interacts with real community, and bullet the requirements with all practical details.
- This is converted into prototype on Xd, which gets converted into web version of the software.
- Once it is settled, application for iOS and Android is developed.
About the Team
Concept team
Pranav Kr. Chaudhary
Civil engineering (B.Tech) from IIT Mumbai. 20 years of experience working on projects with direct or indirect community intervention.
Vikas Kr. Chaudhary
Engineering in Electronics and Communication with 12 years of development work (Triline).
Mitesh Thakkar
MBA from INSEAD. Gives consultancy to various development organisations like UN bodies, the World Bank, Pratham and others.
Need assessment and grassroot test team
Nirbhay Kumar
Masters in social science with 5 years of experience of grassroot implementation, process drafting.
Pradeep Rai
Long experience of field execution and implemented Resident Sabha concept on ground for a long period.
Development team
Vidyaram Tyagi
Information Technology graduate with about 6 years of experience in software development.
Mohtasim
Prime responsibility is testing and has long experience with educational background in MCA.
Team of Developers
A team of 5 developers is working on the project.
Organisation
Niwasi Application is jointly developed by: Sunai Consultancy and Triline Infotech (IT Partner).
About Sunai Consultancy Pvt. Ltd.
Sunai Consultancy is registered as a private limited company in Patna, Bihar (India). Sunai was founded in 2005 with the mission to provide monitoring, evaluation, and capacity building support in the development sector. One founding member of Sunai is an IITian and has been an active volunteer for communities. The founding members have worked at Pratham Education Initiative in the past.
About Triline Infotech (IT Partner)
Triline Infotech provided much needed software development facilities and ecosystem, which includes identifying and training of code writers, providing software development ecosystem, office space and the technology know-how.