In India, adolescence is not experienced equally. While boys often gain freedom as they grow older, girls frequently encounter shrinking worlds—restricted mobility, heightened surveillance, and deeply entrenched expectations around obedience, silence, and sacrifice. These constraints don’t just shape daily life; they define futures.
MukkaMaar was born to challenge this reality.
Rooted in empowerment self-defense, MukkaMaar works to restore agency of body, voice, and mind among adolescent girls—agency to decide, to speak, to resist, and to dream. What began as a deeply immersive, school-based intervention has now evolved into a hybrid model that blends rigorous offline practice with scalable digital engagement, without losing the personal touch that makes transformation possible.
At the heart of this shift is Mukki—a WhatsApp chatbot, a mascot, and for thousands of girls, a trusted friend.
Learning From the Ground First
Shraddha’s journey with MukkaMaar mirrors the organisation’s philosophy of learning from lived realities.
“I started my journey as a fellow,” she shares. “I’ve been there on the ground. I’ve seen how girls change—day by day. Offline work lets you see that confidence slowly building.”
MukkaMaar’s flagship offline program follows a three-year fellowship model. Fellows—recruited from martial arts and sports backgrounds—are trained extensively and placed in government partner schools. Through bi-weekly sessions, girls in grades 6 to 8 learn not just physical techniques, but also verbal self-defense, emotional regulation, negotiation, and gender awareness.
The results are visible and measurable. In 2023–24 alone, MukkaMaar reached 3,096 girls across 54 schools, delivering 1,686 hours of training through 53 batches.
Impact assessments show that 95% of girls believe what they learn will be useful throughout life, and 1 in 2 girls report using these skills to defend themselves.
Yet scale remained a challenge.
The Limits of Scale—and the Turn to Digital
India has millions of adolescent girls, many in remote or resource-constrained settings. “It’s not possible,” Shraddha explains, “to recruit so many fellows, train them, place them in remote areas, and reach each and every adolescent girl.”
The answer was not to replace offline work—but to extend its philosophy through technology.
MukkaMaar chose WhatsApp deliberately. Unlike apps that require downloads, storage space, or high data usage, WhatsApp was already embedded in daily life. “If we had made an app, it would have been very difficult,” Shraddha says. “But WhatsApp was already familiar.”
Thus was born MukkaMaar with Mukki—a chat-based learning program built on WhatsApp’s Business API, designed to be low-tech, child-centric, and deeply interactive.
Glific: A Low-Tech Platform Built for Real-World Constraints
MukkaMaar chose Glific because it aligned with the realities of the communities they serve:
- No app download
- Minimal data usage
- Works on basic smartphones
- Accessible anytime, anywhere
“I am not a techie. I have zero idea about tech,” Shraddha says candidly. “If you had met me five years ago, I would never have imagined doing this.”
Glific changed that.
“Coding is not needed. You can easily draw a flow and reach people.”
Using Glific’s visual flow builder, MukkaMaar designed Mukki as a two-way conversational learning experience—not a one-directional content dump. Every interaction uses interactive buttons, not free-text typing, making it usable even for first-time digital learners.
The platform supports:
- Gamified flows
- Automated nudges using WhatsApp templates
- APIs and webhooks to calculate points and manage rewards
- Leaderboards, redemptions, and mobile data packs
This low-tech approach ensures inclusion—especially for girls who share devices, have limited data, or are new to digital learning.
Meet Mukki: A Mascot, A Mentor, A Mirror
Mukki is not just a bot. She is carefully designed to reflect the confidence, assertiveness, and curiosity that MukkaMaar hopes every girl will develop.
“Mukki is the face of our online community,” Shraddha explains. “She talks to girls, gives them daily activities, and teaches them something new—every day.”
The learning experience is intentionally bite-sized. Girls spend 5–15 minutes a day chatting with Mukki, moving through 20 gamified modules over one to three months. Each level has two parts:
- Burn (physical) rounds to build strength and body confidence
- Learn (non-physical) rounds focused on rights, negotiation, boundaries, and mental resilience
Behind the scenes, Mukki uses interactive buttons, nudges, and reminders, ensuring that learning feels like a game rather than a lesson. Points are tracked through automated systems, and girls can redeem rewards such as mobile data packs—without ever leaving WhatsApp.
By 2023–24, MukkaMaar with Mukki had already exchanged 2.4 million messages with 3,000 girls across 113 schools, achieving a 66.5% correct response rate in quizzes—a strong indicator of comprehension and engagement.
Confidence That Travels Beyond the Screen
The clearest proof of Mukki’s impact comes from the girls themselves. One girl shared that Mukki taught her how to punch—and when faced with harassment, she acted.
MukkaMaar’s impact shows that empowerment self-defence is about recognising violence, breaking silence, and responding with confidence. Over time, girls shift from fear to assertiveness, with teachers and parents noticing greater confidence, participation, and agency.
Technology Without Losing the Human Touch
One of Shraddha’s biggest fears was losing the personal connection.
“My biggest hesitation was that the personal touch would be lost,” she admits. “But today, every girl knows Mukki. She feels Mukki is her best friend. Some girls even think I am Mukki.”
Digital, in this case, has not diluted intimacy—it has recreated it at scale.
The MukkaMaar team continues to learn from offline classrooms, disclosures, and lived experiences, feeding these insights back into Mukki’s conversational design. This feedback loop between ground and screen is what keeps the intervention relevant, sensitive, and effective.
The Glific Team as Partners, Not Just a Platform
For MukkaMaar, Glific was more than a platform—it was a support system. With a small, non-technical team, the Glific team became trusted collaborators.
“They were our go-to people,” Shraddha shares. “It doesn’t feel like I’m working alone. It feels like a team.”
For grassroots organisations, this kind of partnership can make the difference between innovation stalling—or scaling.
Towards the Next Milestone
MukkaMaar’s vision continues to evolve—grounded in learning, evidence, and ambition.
For 2026–27, MukkaMaar with Mukki aims to reach 2 lakh adolescent girls and build 10 new partnerships across different states, expanding online empowerment self-defence programs beyond current geographies.
“I don’t know if it will be possible or not,” Shraddha says honestly. “But I want to reach every adolescent girl in India.”
With digital adoption at an all-time high and WhatsApp already part of everyday life, MukkaMaar believes this is the moment to act. Technology, when designed with empathy and evidence, can accelerate change—without replacing the deep, relational work that empowerment requires.
As Shraddha puts it, “It doesn’t feel like I’m working alone. It feels like a team.”
A team of girls.
A team of fellows.
And now, a digital companion named Mukki—helping girls across India stand taller, speak louder, and claim agency over their own lives.
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