We closed the Tech4Dev Application Process for the second cohort a few weeks ago. We were a bit busy with fundraising for Tech4Dev and hence the slight delay in analysis of this years application.

We advertised the Tech4Dev application using the same process as previous years. GuideStar India and IDR Online are places where we got significant exposure. This year we were also picked up by two other sites: NGOBOX and Funds for NGOs which gave us some more exposure. We received a total of 137 applications for the second cohort. Our referral data (after some cleanup) shows the following distribution:

The application submission count over time is another interesting metric to look at. There are a couple of bumps at various spots, with a big bump close to the last date. It seems a bit smoother in this cycle compared to our first cohort

The size of the organizations also has a slightly more even distribution this time around. Most of the orgs lie within the 25L – 1 CR range, but there is a solid group of orgs above the 1 CR range

Similar to the first cohort, only 12.5% of the organizations had approached anothe software vendor and received a proposal from them.

This year, we’ve split the application into two stages. The first application is a short application and our goal was to ask approx 25% of the organizations to fill a more detailed second round application. We’ve done some preliminary filtering and broken the organizations into six groups as follows:

• Second Round – Invite the organization for a more detailed second round application
• Reject 1 – Did not give us sufficient information
• Reject 2 – Is not a good fit for Tech4Dev
• Reject 3 – Application was too broad and covered too many areas
• Reject 4 – We had worked with them in a prior cohort. This was our fault, since we did not make it clear that they should not apply
• Reject 5, 6 – This is specific to farmers and MFI. This is a area where we do not have the required skills but do intend building the skill set by recruiting software partners in those areas as soon as we can find them.

So we’ve ended up with 34 organizations for the second round. We’ve categorized those orgs into various sectors from a tech perspective:

This is the state of things today. We’ll definitely go back and tweak a few things before sending out email to the organizations and letting them know. Overall, we do think we have a good set of potential NGOs and platforms to build for the sector