Vorbi

A smart city tool for local governments, small businesses, and individuals to improve living conditions and policymaking through crowdsourced public feedback.

Vorbi is provided as a mobile app and a dashboard for the authorities, which enables people to connect with their local authorities, where they can provide them with relevant data about their localities & share their opinions about policy making. The purpose is to provide transparent data; answering polls, surveys, and rating parameters such as health, security etc, to ensure better resource allocation. Using the dashboard, local bodies can monitor the progress of areas, improving the quality of life.

The challenge is to deal with the disparities that exist in the lifestyle quality of the ordinary citizens across the city, be it related to water supply, sanitation, infrastructure or health facilities. We realised that there was a need to delve into the problem at a grassroot level and to implement a solution that can collect data that could serve as key performance indicators for the responsible authorities and local government bodies, and helps them reevaluate, manage and reallocate resources, while also ensuring a transparency for the citizens to be able to keep track of the activities and steps being taken by their representatives.

There is a clear correlation that can be made out between the Democracy Index and the E Participation Index published by the UN, more than half of the countries are common, pointing towards the positive impact e participation through platforms such as Vorbi can have on governance and a healthier democracy.

Our solution caters to the local governments and authorities that wish to streamline the process of governance, which in turn shall help improve citizens' access to information and public services as well as promote participation in public decision-making which impacts the well-being of society, in general, and the individual, in particular.

The solution will eventually help ensure accountability at a granular level as well as transparency in local government systems and help address the development divide that still exists in various parts of the world.

Having participated in various events in the past, we've had the opportunity to interact with people from the governance sector, as well as other organizations and associations whom we wish to target, to better understand their need. 

During the past few months, we've had the opportunity to take into consideration the needs of Resident Welfare Associations and how we could utilize our solution to help improve grievance redressal at the very lowest level of governing organizations.

The World Bank recently came out with the GovTech Maturity Index Report, which states that there is room to improve interconnectivity, data exchange, and interoperability in most countries and that GovTech initiatives should also focus more on citizen participation platforms to “deepen the citizen government relationship, improve accountability, and build public trust in government."

There is currently an unmet need for a platform that can help address the development divide that still exists even in urban cities, as well as a platform that helps streamline the process of governance in newer democracies, allowing the representatives to keep track of people's opinions on policy making.
Vorbi bridges this gap and helps build a smart city ecosystem that takes into account the needs of the citizens.

We are currently at a prototyping stage, and are in talks with several state governments such as the Rajasthan Government, for conducting pilot programs.

Our solution is essentially based upon a mobile application paired with a web dashboard, the tech stack is as follows:

People we plan to serve next year: 250k

1. Ensuring an easy-to-use and accessible mode of public redressal, that helps improve the quality of sanitation and health infrastructure in localities.

2. Ensuring a better feedback system for policy making. 

3. Collaborating with atleast 3 state governments by the end of 2022 to pilot our application.

Key Performance Indicators

1. Number of users on our application

2. Number of state governments collaborating with us

3. Number of active users

4. Partnered local bodies and government organizations

Since we have been working with limited resources, we are greatly limited in our efforts due to financial needs that can help us overcome difficulties.

Our team consists of people from diverse educational backgrounds, including engineering as well as law. We are creative thinkers with a solution oriented approach, and our collective experiences throughout the pandemic have led us here, working together on Vorbi. Each of our experiences helps us bring a new outlook to the table, and helps us brainstorm ideas to overcome problems that we may come across. Our team dynamics enable us to deal with problems effectively and efficiently, thus, helping us in implementing our solution to the best of its potential.

1. Piltover Technologies - A social impact technology startup developing hi-tech solutions in the assisted technology market for the differently-abled and the elderly at the bottom of the pyramid.

Our current partnership with PiltoverTech helps us align our vision for having a more accessible friendly and egalitarian future through shared resources and network. They've been working closely with various state governments for their technology aided products, which has enabled us to gain a deeper insight into the industry.

Being a developing country, India still has certain societal issues that need to be addressed, and having a one stop platform such as Vorbi will enable us to empower as well as assist various marginalized and the disadvantaged sections of the society. We envision Vorbi to help create an egalitarian society which enables people to make their voices heard.