2.1. The Problem Statement

India's financial aid landscape is characterized by fragmentation and inefficiency. Multiple reports indicate that a significant portion of allocated budgets for social welfare remains unutilized. The central government's scholarship budgets, for instance, have seen reductions due to underutilization, with allocations for minority schemes falling by 38% and for post-matric schemes by 58%. This issue stems from a broken, manual, and siloed system that creates systemic barriers for beneficiaries and a high administrative burden for providers.

The existing process is plagued by:

Manual Redundancy: Beneficiaries must repeatedly submit the same documents (e.g., Aadhaar cards, income certificates) for different schemes, a process that is slow and inefficient.

Information Asymmetry: Information about available benefits is difficult to find, often scattered across different government and NGO websites, making it challenging for eligible individuals to discover and apply for schemes.

High Operational Cost: Providers incur significant costs in manual data entry, physical document handling, and verifying the authenticity of submitted information.