Nidhi Bhasin of Digital Green India on using technology to bridge India’s rural knowledge gap

As CEO of Digital Green India, Nidhi Bhasin brings over two decades of experience at the intersection of social development, technology, and community-led change.

Bhasin is now leading the organisation’s next phase of innovation, where AI and conversational technologies are being layered onto grassroots systems.

An example of this is FarmerChat, the organisation’s AI-powered, multilingual advisory platform designed to give smallholder farmers real-time, localised guidance on agriculture, climate practices, and livelihoods.

Digital Green India has worked with the State Rural Livelihood Missions and Departments of Agriculture and Horticulture across 9+ states, reaching over 5.5 million smallholder farmers, nearly 50% of whom are women.

Before joining Digital Green India, Bhasin served as the CEO of NASSCOM Foundation, where she expanded the organisation’s work in technology for social good. Prior to that, she spent nearly 20 years at Concern India Foundation, leading programmes in education, health, disaster response, and community development, with a strong focus on women.

Bhasin is an alumna of India’s prestigious Delhi School of Social Work, Delhi University and a fellow of the Japan-India Transformative Technology Network (JITTN) by Salzburg Global.

In a conversation with SocialStory, Nidhi Bhasin speaks about reimagining agricultural extension through technology and why the future of farming must lie at the intersection of climate resilience, gender inclusion, and grassroots innovation.

Edited excerpts from the interview:

SocialStory (SS): India has seen rapid growth in agritech platforms, yet smallholder adoption remains uneven. Where exactly does Digital Green India see the biggest bottleneck today?

Nidhi Bhasin (NB): In practice, it is rarely one single bottleneck. Adoption is shaped by a combination of access, trust, literacy, and timing.

Access has improved significantly in India, driven by rising smartphone usage and internet penetration. However, gaps remain. Many farmers still rely on shared devices, and only about 35% of women own smartphones, which means access to digital services is not always direct.

Trust is equally critical. Smallholder farmers operate under high risk. If advisory proves unreliable even once, it can affect an entire season’s income. Farmers, therefore, engage with digital platforms only when the information is consistently accurate and useful.

Timeliness also matters. Information may exist through government systems, but it does not always reach farmers when decisions need to be made.

SS: If you had to name one structural barrier that still keeps women farmers invisible in the system, what would it be?

NB: Women have always played a central role in agriculture, across cultivation, livestock, and post-harvest work. Yet for generations, they have largely been recognised as labour rather than decision-makers. As a result, their access to information, tools, and formal advisory systems has often been limited.

This is becoming more important as migration patterns change. In many regions, men are moving to cities for work, while women are increasingly making day-to-day farming decisions.

What we see is that when women gain direct access to reliable information and advisory, their confidence in decision-making grows. The ability to independently ask questions, access guidance, and plan farm activities strengthens their agency.

SS: Land ownership is still the biggest determinant of who gets credit, subsidies, and recognition as a farmer. How do digital platforms work around that structural gap for women?

NB: Land ownership is an important and complex issue in agriculture. It plays a central role in how credit, subsidies, and farmer recognition are structured, and these systems are evolving through ongoing policy and digital infrastructure efforts.

What we are seeing, however, is growing momentum around building better digital systems that capture agricultural data more systematically. Governments and technology partners are working toward farmer registries and digital records to improve visibility into who is cultivating what land.

As these systems strengthen, they can help create more accurate datasets and enable better-targeted services.

From a technology perspective, the opportunity is to work alongside these evolving public systems. When reliable registries and data infrastructure are in place, digital platforms can deliver more precise and relevant services to farmers.

SS: Many schemes target “farmers,” but registration systems often exclude women. Do you see tech platforms correcting this bias or reproducing it?

NB: Technology has the potential to bridge this gap when it is designed intentionally for women users. In our experience, access alone is not enough. Women often need early confidence-building and some initial support in using digital tools.

When that happens, engagement changes quickly. We have seen this with our own platform, where we are committed to ensuring that at least 45% of users are women. Initially, reaching women farmers was difficult, but once they began using the platform and saw value in the advisory, their participation and engagement increased significantly.

Digital tools can give women a space to ask questions freely and access information without hesitation or judgement. Over time, this builds confidence and decision-making capacity.

We see this in farmers like Jyothi in Andhra Pradesh. Jyothi began with one acre and modest yields. Using digital advisory to diagnose crop disease and plan diversification, she expanded to six acres and adopted a more resilient cropping model. Stories like hers show how technology can help women farmers participate more actively in agricultural systems.

SS: Have you observed differences in the adoption of digital advisories between male and female farmers?

NB: On FarmerChat, an AI-powered advisory platform developed by Digital Green that delivers hyperlocal, multilingual, and climate-smart guidance, 45% of users are women. Women use the platform two to three times more frequently than men, and 96% report increased confidence in farm decision-making.

This suggests that adoption is shaped less by interest and more by design. Women often navigate shared devices, time constraints, and literacy barriers. When advisory is voice-enabled, simple to access, and relevant to their crops and context, participation strengthens.

What stands out is repeat engagement. Women return when the advice helps them make practical field-level decisions. Adoption patterns, therefore, reflect inclusion by design—when systems meet real-world constraints, usage deepens across genders.

SS: What design mistakes do most agri-tech tools make when they try to serve women users?

NB: Rather than calling them mistakes, I would describe them as design assumptions that don’t always reflect women’s realities.

Many agri-tech tools are built on the assumption of individual smartphone ownership, stable connectivity, and comfort with text-heavy interfaces. In rural contexts, women often use shared devices, manage time constraints, and prefer local-language interaction.

What works better is inclusive design from the outset—multilingual, voice-enabled systems that are simple to navigate and relevant to daily farm decisions.

The opportunity is clear: when platforms are built with women’s usage patterns in mind, participation strengthens. Adoption improves not because women are targeted, but because design aligns with how they actually engage with technology.

SS: What climate risks are women farmers reporting today that were not common five years ago?

NB: Women farmers today are reporting climate risks that were far less common five years ago because weather patterns have become less predictable and more extreme.

Key issues they increasingly raise include:

• Unpredictable rainfall and shifting crop windows make it hard to know when to sow or irrigate.
• New pest and disease pressures are emerging outside traditional seasons, increasing the risk of crop loss.
• Heat stress and moisture extremes affect crop performance and planting choices.
• Water scarcity and variability complicate daily irrigation decisions.

These patterns are clear in advisory demand and in a high volume of queries on pests, seeds, fertilisers, and water, reflecting how central weather and risk uncertainty have become in everyday farming decisions.

SS: What’s the single most practical intervention that has improved climate resilience in communities you work with?

NB: The single most practical intervention we have seen improve climate resilience is hyperlocal, real-time advisory delivered through accessible digital systems.

FarmerChat, our AI-powered platform, provides multilingual, context-specific, climate-informed guidance in the languages farmers speak. It now reaches over 600,000 users in India, of whom 45% are women. 60% of active users report taking action on the advice, and 96% of women users report increased confidence in farm decision-making. These are indicators of strengthened agency, not just access to information.

In Bihar, Jharkhand, and Odisha, this advisory has supported measurable shifts toward regenerative practices. In Odisha, 71% of farmers are aware of regenerative methods; 51% use mixed inputs, 16% have fully shifted, and 11% plan to move further next season.

In Andhra Pradesh, where we have worked closely with farming communities, Jyothi began with one acre and modest yields. Using digital advisory to diagnose crop disease and plan diversification, she expanded to six acres and adopted a more resilient cropping model.

SS: Have you seen evidence that digital inclusion leads to a measurable increase in women’s income or decision-making authority?

NB: Based on independent third-party assessments of our work, we have seen:

On FarmerChat, 45% of users are women, and women use the platform two to three times more frequently than men. Most significantly, 96% of women users report increased confidence in farm decision-making. That confidence translates into informed crop planning, pest management, and input decisions.

Behaviourally, 60% of active users report taking action on the advice, and the Net Promoter Score has increased from 21 to 72, indicating sustained trust and repeat engagement.

We also see livelihood pathways emerging. In Andhra Pradesh, for example, a farmer like Jyothi used advisory services to manage crop diseases, diversify crops under heat stress, and expand from one acre to six acres, building a stronger livelihood.

(The story has been updated to reflect the latest impact numbers.)