Our Mission
We want to catalyse socio-economic growth in rural India through a reliable network of digitally empowered women. We aim to achieve this by empowering digitally-enabled women to learn and earn, by facilitating livelihoods and developing entrepreneurial models for them to provide digital services to the community. Our goal is to empower millions of women across rural India to be able to earn a livelihood and lead a life of financial independence and dignity.
Who We Are
FREND is a not-for-profit organisation that aims to enable progress in rural India through a network of digitally-empowered women changemakers. Launched in December 2017, FREND traces its roots to the Internet Saathi Program – a joint initiative by Tata Trusts and Google – which extended internet access and digital literacy to women in rural India. FREND is now enabling income earning opportunities for this network of digitally-empowered women changemakers. We collaborate with not-for-profit organisations, the public sector and private sector companies to create a forward-looking ecosystem that helps budding women entrepreneurs in their journey to financial independence.
Milestones
2015
Google & TATA trusts launched Internet Saathi to impart digital literacy amongst women in 300k villagers in rural India

2017
FREND was formalized to further implementation of digital literacy and other livelihoods for Internet Saathis

2018
2019 (projected)
30M+ women trained
300K villages covered
2022 (projected)
Livelihood opportunities for millions of women across rural India will be created
Impact

9/10 EXPERIENCED AN UPLIFT IN SOCIAL NORMS

53% USE THE INTERNET TO LEARN NEW SKILLS

8/10 GAINED ACCESS TO HEALTHCARE INFO

5/10 HAVE SEEN POSITIVE IMPACT ON EMPLOYABILITY