Based on an interview with Aditya Jain, Assistant Manager – Water & Agriculture, A.T.E. Chandra Foundation  |  Interviewed by Deepak Nanda, Project Tech4Dev

1,500+ Field Workers on Chatbot

90%+ Training Completion Rate

4 lakh+ Messages Exchanged

13 Video Training Modules

About A.T.E. Chandra Foundation

The A.T.E. Chandra Foundation (ATECF) was founded in 2013 by Archana Chandra, Amit Chandra, and Anuj Bhagwati, long-time friends united by shared values and a deep commitment to service, with a vision to channel their philanthropy into meaningful, lasting change at scale.

Guided by philosophies such as Guru Nanak’s “Kirat Karo, Vand Chhako” (work with honesty, share generously) and Chuck Feeney’s principle of “Giving While Living,” the foundation is dedicated to transforming lives through sustainable, equitable, and scalable solutions.

ATECF works in partnership with communities, governments, and the broader ecosystem to address some of India’s most pressing challenges. Its core areas of focus include:

Water and Agriculture: Building on considerable national impact, ATECF aims over the coming decade to accelerate support to governments for the rejuvenation of water bodies across India’s water-stressed districts—ultimately improving water security for more than 200 million rural Indians. In agriculture, ATECF is focused on anchoring efforts to significantly enhance the incomes of 25 million small and marginal farmers.

Capacity Building: Strengthening the social sector by investing in leaders, platforms, and the advancement of knowledge.

Additional Focus Areas: Select investments in urban research, governance and housing, conservation, and cultural preservation—reflecting a holistic vision for India’s urban, ecological, and cultural development.

Rejuvenation of Waterbodies project 

Through collaborative efforts with state governments and stakeholders including NITI Aayog and the Government of Maharashtra, ATECF has rejuvenated over 5,000 water bodies, impacting 10 million people across 7,000 villages in nine states: Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Odisha, and Karnataka.

At the heart of this work is the Rejuvenation of Waterbodies project — a tech-enabled, cost-effective, and community-led initiative that removes silt from water bodies using earthmoving machinery, making fertile silt freely available to farmers for use on their land.

The Field Operations Challenge

Monitoring the rejuvenation of thousands of water bodies across eleven states requires a large, distributed workforce. ATECF deploys on-ground implementation partners who in turn place a Community Resource Person (CRP) at each active water body. These CRPs are responsible for daily data collection — recording silt excavation volumes, farmer registrations, machine hours, and compliance documentation — all on a mobile application called Avni Gramin.

With up to 1,500 CRPs active across the country, training and supporting this workforce at scale was a persistent operational challenge. Before deploying Glific, the team faced several pain points:

• A significant share of the program team’s bandwidth was consumed by fielding repetitive queries from field workers in different states.
• Training delivery was inconsistent, with no scalable, verifiable mechanism to onboard new CRPs or confirm their understanding of the Avni Gramin app.
• Data entry compliance was low — workers frequently filled in project data only after work was fully completed, rather than in real time, preventing live monitoring of progress.
• There was no structured engagement mechanism during the non-peak season (post-monsoon months after June), when field activity slows significantly.

Why Glific?

ATECF operates within an integrated technology ecosystem that includes Avni Gramin (field data collection), Dalgo (data ingestion and transformation), Apache Superset (data visualisation), and Vowel LMS (farmer training). The choice of Glific as the WhatsApp chatbot platform was a natural fit within this stack.

As Aditya Jain explained:

“Glific is deeply ingrained into the tech ecosystem. That just makes everything easier. We use all three products from Project Tech4Dev— Dalgo, Avni, and Glific. The synergies between the teams mean we’ve been able to utilize the integrations really well.” — Aditya Jain, Assistant Manager – Water & Agriculture, ATECF

The shared ecosystem means that data flows automatically between Glific and the rest of ATECF’s platforms — eliminating manual handoffs and enabling a unified view of training and operational data.

How ATECF Uses Glific

1. Structured Video Training for CRPs

Thirteen video training modules are hosted directly on the Glific chatbot. CRPs receive the training entirely through WhatsApp: they watch each video module, answer comprehension questions after each one, and progress through the full curriculum at their own pace and location — no in-person attendance required.

This approach has proven highly effective. In the first year of deployment, more than 90% of the ~1,500 CRPs completed the full training programme — a remarkable achievement for a workforce dispersed across thousands of villages.

2. Digital Certification

Upon completing the training, CRPs receive a digital certificate through the chatbot. This was an important design decision. As Aditya noted, for a gram panchayat worker or a farmer working in a rural setting, receiving a certificate on water body rejuvenation carries genuine professional value — something they can reference on their profile and take pride in. The certificate has driven engagement and motivation to complete the training.

3. Automated Credential Issuance via API

One of the most impactful integrations is the automated link between Glific and Avni Gramin. When a CRP completes their training on the chatbot, Glific automatically triggers the issuance of their username and password for the Avni Gramin app. This removes an entire layer of manual administration from the onboarding process and ensures that CRPs can start collecting data immediately upon completing training — with no delays or manual follow-up from the ATECF team.

4. On-Demand App Support

Once deployed in the field, CRPs can use the Glific chatbot to ask questions about any feature of the Avni Gramin app at any time. This self-service support layer has significantly reduced the volume of inbound queries reaching the program team and Program Management Units (PMUs) embedded with state government departments. Only genuinely complex or technical issues now require human intervention.

5. Unified Training Dashboard via Dalgo and Superset

All Glific interaction data — training completion rates, frequently asked questions, flow engagement — is ingested into Dalgo and visualised on an Apache Superset dashboard. ATECF’s team can view the most commonly asked questions, identify which training flows requir the most human intervention, and track training progress across all states from a single interface. This has enabled the team to continuously improve the chatbot’s content and reduce friction points in the CRP journey.

Results

The following outcomes were achieved in the first year of Glific deployment:

Outcome	Detail
Training completion	More than 90% of ~1,500 CRPs completed all 13 training modules
Chatbot engagement	Over 4 lakh messages exchanged in 6–8 months of deployment
Query volume reduction	Significant drop in team bandwidth spent on repetitive field queries
Onboarding automation	Avni Gramin credentials issued automatically on training completion, removing manual steps
Certificates issued	All qualifying CRPs received digital certificates; widely appreciated as a professional credential
User satisfaction	Zero complaints recorded about the chatbot experience from the field worker community
Dashboard visibility	Glific data visualised alongside Avni data on a unified Superset dashboard via Dalgo

What’s Next

ATECF has identified two strategic priorities for the next phase of Glific use:

• Off-season engagement: Using the chatbot to maintain meaningful connection with CRPs during the non-peak months after the monsoon season ends in June, keeping the workforce informed and engaged year-round.
• Real-time data compliance: Deploying targeted nudges through the chatbot to encourage CRPs to complete their Avni Gramin data entries while work is actively happening — rather than retrospectively — enabling genuine live monitoring of water body rejuvenation progress.

“I think we’re going to reach a point before next season where the Glific chatbot will be a primary tool for us to increase our data compliance.” — Aditya Jain, Assistant Manager – Water & Agriculture, ATECF

Advice for Other NGOs

When asked what he would recommend to NGOs considering a chatbot implementation, Aditya’s message was clear: don’t self-limit based on assumptions about where a chatbot can or cannot help.

“I’ve seen such varied use cases at this point. Even in use cases where you might not think a chatbot can be helpful — the technology is available, and I think it can be a great enabler. Definitely, NGOs should try Glific. Talking to other people, ideating, can help them find a use case for their particular context, because it has really been a game changer for us.”

The community response from ATECF’s own field workers reinforces this. Despite operating in rural and semi-urban areas with varying digital literacy, the gram panchayat workers and farmers who used the chatbot responded positively — with no complaints and strong completion rates — demonstrating that a well-designed WhatsApp-based solution can meet communities where they already are.