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Dempo funds digital empowerment study for women

By on March 29, 2018

A research project funded by chairman of Dempo Group Shrinivas Dempo has unveiled surprising results in empowering marginalised communities with digital inclusion.

As an alumnus of Carnegie Mellon University. Dempo has helped introduce information technology that is transforming the lives of young women and their families in eastern India by funding a collaborative project with on-demand digital services company iMerit and his alma mater.

Leading the research is Dr Sunder Kekre. a professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business. who visited iMerit at the invitation of its CEO Radha Basu. Its lower-income group employees are now able to sustain their families while staying in their home town and understanding machine learning and computer vision. Kekre said. "What struck me was the idea of human knowledge powering machine learning. I felt that here was a dimension that we needed to explore. understand and support.”

With help from Roni Rosenfeld. a Carnegie Mellon professor in the Machine Learning Department. the team created algorithms to enhance the staff training process and integrated them with iMerit's existing toolkit.

In January. Kekre returned to India with promising results to test the solutions with 28 new hires. The team now is analysing the data and designing additional experiments. which will explore how automated algorithms can enhance practical training and how humans respond to machines learning from their complex domains. Dempo said. "We have to take the lead in answering these key questions for Indian society. How do we provide digital inclusion for marginalised youth? How do we do well by doing good?” Kekre added. "It gives me a chance to take the best that Carnegie Mellon has to offer and – with the help of our alums such as Shrinivas Dempo and friends like Radha Basu – to make a meaningful synergistic impact to these aspiring youth in India.”