Founded in 1976 as one of India’s original IT garage start-ups, HCL is a pioneer of modern computing with many firsts to its credit, including the introduction of the 8-bit microprocessor-based computer in 1978 well before its global peers. Today, the HCL enterprise has a presence across varied sectors that include technology, healthcare and talent management solutions and comprises three companies – HCL Infosystems, HCL Technologies, and HCL Healthcare. The Enterprise generates annual revenues of over US $8 billion with more than 120,000 employees operating across 39 countries, including over 500 points of presence in India.
HCL Foundation was established in 2011 as the corporate social responsibility arm of HCL, a diversified global enterprise active across varied sectors including technology, healthcare and talent management.
The foundation aims to alleviate poverty and achieve inclusive community growth and development. Active community engagement ensures optimal long-term investments in education, health, livelihoods and environment, as well as providing disaster response and rehabilitation support.
HCL Samuday, a flagship program of HCL Foundation, is an outcome of HCL’s commitment to uplift rural India.
Established in 2015, Samuday intends to develop a sustainable, scalable, and replicable model – a source code for economic and social development of rural areas in partnership with central and State Governments, local communities, NGOs, knowledge institutions and allied partners. We do this through optimal interventions across Agriculture, Education, Health, Infrastructure, Livelihood, and WASH (Water, Sanitation & Hygiene) in selected villages.
The program is designed to help the local people identify their problems, co-create solutions, and then implement the same on their own with professional support from team Samuday, thereby, lending the dimension of sustainability and ownership to the vision of development.
Currently implemented in three blocks – Kachhauna, Behender and Kothawan – in Uttar Pradesh, HCL Samuday is operational in 765 villages from 164 Gram Panchayats, comprising of 90,000 households and impacting around 600,000 people.
Agriculture is a dynamic sector that deals with specialized knowledge which is ever changing. HCL Samuday regularly makes associated farmers aware of latest developments through Training and Extension intervention. The farmers are empowered to address existing issues and mitigate and adapt for future challenges.
With the objective of bringing agriculture technologies at farmers’ doorstep by establishing a ‘Center of Excellence’ in Uttar Pradesh, HCL Samuday is setting up Center for Agriculture Technology Transfer (CATT) in Hardoi district. It shall act as a ‘single window’ / ‘one stop support system’ aligning various interventions of state department of Agriculture with HCL Foundation as an intermediary and farmers as end users in a learning, decision making and problem-solving exercise.
Nutrition Garden is a low cost, scientific model of home garden organically producing a variety of nutritious vegetables and fruits throughout the year. The primary objective of promoting nutrition gardens is to make ½ kg of fresh vegetables available for daily consumption to rural households. Secondary objectives include reduction in daily expenditure of HHs and increase in the consumption of green vegetables for improved nutrition.
2,714 households have benefitted by adopting a Nutrition Garden.
Interventions aimed at mobilizing community and facilitating institution creation lend long-term sustainability to the efforts for agriculture development.
Farmer Clubs are formed with the objective of propagating the idea of collective, uniting farmers in groups which work for the benefit of their community. 199 such clubs established so far under this intervention are providing a platform for knowledge dissemination and better market linkages.
HCL Foundation is the promoting agency of Hardoi Kisan Producer Company Limited (HKPCL), a Farmer Producer Organization constituted in 2017 to address challenges faced by farming community in the project area. Comprising of 2,350 shareholders and governed by an 11-member board of directors, HKPCL registered a turnover of ₹ 6.85 crores in last financial year (2019-20).
Ensuring market is a crucial part of vegetable supply chain. To facilitate better linkages with market, 7 vegetable aggregation points have been set up across 3 blocks and regular communication is made to enable farmers to choose and opt for most suitable option. Realising better prices for produce, 917 Tonnes of vegetables, worth ₹ 1.30 crores, got aggregated at these centres in 2019-20.
Through Farm Mechanization, focus is on increasing income of farmers by improving affordability and accessibility of machines for precision agriculture. It is aimed at reducing farmers’ cost of cultivation and easing farm operations. Carried out in an entrepreneurial model, thus far 3,249 farms have been supported with advanced agricultural machinery and development of 45 entrepreneurs has been facilitated.
After successful response of vegetable cultivation, various add-ons in Crop Diversification have been introduced so that farmers having disparate needs may opt for most suitable cropping pattern. These include –
Traditional Crop Promotion intervention focuses on training and demonstration of traditional crop farmers (Maize, Paddy, Wheat, Urad etc.) and bringing them under Package of Practices (PoP) based production system to increase productivity and adopt better crop management practices.
HCL Samuday has worked to enhance productivity by adopting soil and nutrient management, land development and institutional building for effective market linkages. 26,000+ farmers are currently engaged through this intervention and have adopted better practices on their farm.