Our Solutions

Customized Solution

Akara builds customised solutions in areas of Urban Governance − Water, Sanitation, Solid waste management, Transportation, etc. The solutions are build for the ULBs along with partners including Big four consultants, Multilateral agencies & Government corporations

  • Instrumental Design
  • Field Work
  • Digital Tools
  • GIS
  • Research & Analysis
  • Dashboard & Impact
Instrumental Design
Experienced set of professionals that help design the questionnaire taking into cognisance the trade-off between the respondent and the objectives of the study. The trade -off is finely balanced with an appropriate statistical methodology for data collection.
  • Understanding the study objectives
  • Design Questionnaire
  • Cognisance of the Respondent
  • Sampling Design & Methodology
Field Work
Network of enumerators and supervisors across the country. Technology driven surveys with centralised quality control processes and on field supervision. The enumerators are equipped with detailed documentation and on field training ---- the instrument & the tech tools deployed for execution
  • Pan India field survey
  • FGDs
  • Intensive Training
  • Mock Sessions & Pre-testing
Digital Tool
Expertise and the experience to build and deploy state-of-art tech. tools for conducting field surveys - CAPI based surveys
  • CAPI / Web /Mobile Apps for real-time data collection & upload
  • Geo referenced data
  • Geo referenced Pictures & videos
  • Real time data integration from IoT devices
GIS
GIS development and geo-visual analytics is a part of Akara's projects. Our GIS expertise provides end-to-end solutions for our clients across different sectors that provide deeper insights into the sector ultimately enabling the decisionmakers to target the right intervention at the right location. Our GIS expertise extends across the value chain of GIS space:
  • Obtaining georeferenced information from the ground
  • Creating shapefiles with experienced cartographers
  • GIS programming and analytics backed by robust methodologies
  • Geo-visual dissemination of processed data on web and non-Web platforms.
Research & Analysis
Akara has established research capacity across different sectors including macroeconomy, state and district level purchasing power in India, public policy, water and sanitation, urban and rural development, industrial growth, infrastructure and governance. Akara's research team uses accurate data from authentic sources, robust and acknowledged methodology and a transparent process of research. Akara's outputs in terms of georeferenced MIS, monitoring, Evaluation, and learning (MEL) studies are products of its research endeavours. Akara's research commences with a strong understanding of the sector and complete analysis of data availability. We build the systems to bring in data that bridges any gaps. Our systems are then designed to achieve convergence of external and internal data that has impact on the study and those that can have an impact on the outcomes. Robust research methods are used systematically to analyse data, identify trends and outliers, and build insightful reports.
Dashboard & Analysis
Akara's capacities in ICT, GIS, real-time data and research analytics culminate in the impact-driving and action-prompting dashboards. Across different domains − from a simple complaints and grievance redressing for a urban local body, realtime data driven brand audit or a complex smart city system with multiple projects across multiple sectors, Akara's dashboards are equipped to showcase emergent issues, prompting decision makers to act and send information to relevant stakeholders for interventions.

Water

Demand Assessment for Industrial Water at Dahej
Demand Assessment of 24x7 Drinking water at Peri Urban areas of Jamshedpur
Akara's data science driven systems help policy makers and administrators across the water value chain from sourcing, quality assessment, equitable and inclusive distribution (across distance and communities), demand assessment and supply gaps across cities and industrial hubs. Akara's dashboards backed by real-time information enables the administration to plan and deliver water infrastructure across the city/industrial hub without gaps.
  • Demand Assessment for 24x7 Drinking Water Supply
    • To understand the household distribution on the territory, essential for hydraulic modelling calibration
    • Creation of a Geospatial Database for Water Supply and Consumer Data Management
    • To classify the consumer based on the activities (Residential, Commercial etc)
    • Database creation for estimating the revenues related to the tariff structure to be adopted for the different categories of users: residential, commercial, industrial and institutional users.
    • Consumer satisfaction level and expectations for an improved service
    • Development of GIS and IoT enabled Spatial Decision Support System
  • Industrial water Assessment/ Water Security Audit
  • Non - Revenue Water

Sanitation

Demand gaps for planning and delivering public toilet infrastructure
GIS linked MIS of household level sanitation related assets for effective monitoring of FSSM policy implementation for IIHS
Akara's visual analytics solution for sanitation helps a city build its city sanitation plan based on real-time data; evaluate demand drivers in different regions, plan for new infrastructure at a micro-geography level based on demand gaps, evaluate gender gaps in sanitation infrastructure, evaluate the impact of infrastructure and policy implementation.
  • Public Toilet Management System
    • Service level benchmarking
    • Mapping of inventories
    • Distance analytics
    • Complaints management system with dashboards
    • Identification, planning and delivery of infrastructure based on demand gaps at a ward level:
  • Gender gap analysis at an infrastructure delivery level
  • Faecal sludge and sewerage management system
    • Identify and plan different types of FSSM according to size of urban areas
    • In towns with house-to-house septage system, create a GIS − linked MIS of sanitation related assets at the household level
    • Map the city on age of cleaning and other risk parameters

Solid Waste Management

GIS linked MIS for Directorate of Town Panchayat of Ponneri, Government of Tamil Nadu. An 11% increase in property tax revenues upon implementation of the Geo-referenced system
SWM faces considerable challenges - implementation of source segregation policies, Collection of waste, Safe disposal of solid waste, engagement of various stakeholders in the SWM value chain etc. With emerging technologies SWM provides opportunities − Value from waste, alternative power and Livelihoods.
  • Gaps in waste bins locations (number of bins per 100 households)
  • Reachability of bins (streetlights availability − convergence from other data)
  • Citizen engagement: complaints/suggestions on waste disposal
  • Quantum and type of waste from various sources (institutional, households, businesses) for value generation
  • Risk zones of waste generation during natural calamities such as floods
  • Real-time data and routes for waste collection trucks

Transportation

Feasibility study for greenfield railway line between Pune − Nasik
Transportation sector has witnessed tremendous changes in delivery models in the recent years, ever since the advent of user-pay and PPP models. Need for robust data for demand assessment, project monitoring and user-payments necessitated due to larger private sector and banking participation, multiplicity of stakeholders and the thrust imparted by Smart Cities projects on urban mobility. Akara's has conducted various studies
  • Traffic Analysis and mobility studies based on real-time data projections based on simulations for cities with map-based visuals.
  • Origin-Destination assessment studies for road and rail projects, feasibility studies and Speed-Delay surveys to assess the demand potential for transport infrastructure.
  • Transport sector studies are backed by robust estimates of demography and economy in the impact areas.

Urban Governance

GIS linked MIS for Directorate of Town Panchayat of Ponneri, Government of Tamil Nadu. An 11% increase in property tax revenues upon implementation of the Geo-referenced system
Assessment of property tax collections, delivery of public utilities against service level benchmarks Akara has developed Geo-referenced database on properties & utilities benefitting ULBs in increasing their revenue.
  • Streamline the processes of maintaining records of properties and utilities in the towns, and standardize them across all the municipal bodies in the State.
  • Roll-out Standardized database and software solution covering all the ULBs.
  • Digitize records and make them available to all stakeholders online
  • map-view to facilitate understanding of reach and clustering of civic services against properties

FMCG

Locational intelligence is a key parameter to win the FMCG game. Akara's solutions helps the FMCG companies to build robust locational intelligence systems. Geo-visual datasets at the level of the retail outlet with various business parameters captured by the FMCG − Ward level output, dynamic map display based on movement of specific brands, stock etc. Some of the benefits of the solution
  • Targeted brand promotion
  • Insights on success patterns/efficacy of Ad campaigns at different regions in the cit
  • Comparative analytics across brands
  • Competition analysis