2017 ICT4D Conference

We started Atma two years ago to build resilience in urban poor communities and take a user centered approach to development. We have a team made up of very experienced technology professionals from the non-profit and for-profit sectors who came together because of frustration in the slow pace of non-profit technology development, and the lack of bottom-up, peer to peer solutions.

AtmaGo first launched as a way for people to share water prices, but users told us they wanted to share more information so we completely changed course and launched a new version. Unlike most non-profit technology projects, we take a lean, user-centered approach to product development—constantly getting user feedback and iterating.

By being constantly responsive to user needs, we have created a product that provides our users with tremendous value, is unique in the market, and is positioned to scale. Our goal is to reach the billions of people at the base of the economic pyramid in every region of the world so they can share information that will help them build their resilience and improve their communities from the ground up.

Atma’s award-winning app, AtmaGo, has reached over 156,000 users in Indonesia. More than 30,000 peer-to-peer information exchanges have been made on issues of water, food, jobs, education, shelter, terrorism, flooding, crime, and fires. AtmaGo solves the place-based needs of communities better than other social apps like Facebook, Twitter or WhatsApp because the content is geographically organized and useful.

Our research estimates that AtmaGo, at broad scale, could reduce flood damage by $28 to $85 million per incidence. More details on our impact framework and estimates are online: https://atmaconnect.org/772-2/