Products and Platforms

The Products and Platforms team translates the knowledge produced by other WELL Labs initiatives into tools or templates that the stakeholders they work with can use. We also work with civil society organisations, philanthropies and governments to effectively diagnose problems and implement solutions by developing digital products, easy-to-use guides and reports.

Our Approach

Publications

Team

Our Approach

Collective Impact Framework

Digital Tools

In our conversations with grassroot communities about their water management challenges, lack of water data and hydrological expertise to use the data emerged as critical gaps. Coming up with demand-side interventions as part of water security planning requires solving a highly technical problem in every gram panchayat with very limited funds and access to technical capacity. We recognised that digital tools could make data easily accessible and address this expertise bottleneck.

Collective Impact Framework

The socio-environmental change that we envision is complex and evolving in real-time. This change cannot be brought about by a single organisation or sector or skillset. We need multi-disciplinary research, multi-institutional partnerships and cross-sectoral collaboration to make this happen. We need to drive diverse stakeholders and their interests towards a common goal. We work on creating such frameworks for collective action and impact.

Publications

Team

Vidhyashree Katral

Vidhyashree Katral

GIS Associate
Products and Platforms
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Sarayu Neelakantan

Sarayu Neelakantan

Design Consultant
Community and Outreach
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Mukta is a hydrogeologist with the Products and Platforms team at WELL Labs. She is working on rural water security.

She graduated in MSc Hydrogeology from University of Birmingham in December 2020. She is an alumna of Fergusson College and a former Fellow at Bhoomi College and the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS) where she studied geology, sustainability, and urban studies.

Ishita Jalan

Ishita Jalan

Hydrologist
Products and Platforms
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Ishita works as a Hydrologist with the Products and Platforms team at WELL Labs.

Her interests revolve around the use of spatial and quantitative data to support improved understanding of hydrology. She is also curious to address issues on water resource sustainability under extreme climate events.

She concluded her Master’s degree in Environmental Engineering at the Technical University of Munich (2022), with her thesis focusing on the hydrological evaluation of temperature reanalysis data in Benin. In addition to her training in water resource management, she was working with Allianz Re, Munich to support functionalities in the Geospatial Solutions and Analytics division in Catastrophe Risk Management.

Ishita has prior experience as a public policy researcher while working with the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW).

Craig Dsouza

Craig Dsouza

Data and Tech Lead
Products and Platforms
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Craig began his journey with a Master's in Energy and Environmental Policy (2013), though these days he primarily looks at water through the technology and data lens. As an independent developer, in the GIS/RS space, since 2017, he has worked with several non-profit and research organisations in the water sector, and with several technologies across the geospatial stack, including QGIS, Google Earth Engine, GeoServer, and PostGRES/PostGIS. You can find him at craigdsouza.in

Namrata Narendra

Namrata Narendra

Research Associate
Urban Water
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Srushti is an Ecologist and Qualitative Researcher with the Products and Platforms team at WELL Labs.

She has done a fellowship in Sustainable Living from Bhoomi College and her MSc in Biodiversity Conservation and Management from the University of Oxford's School of Geography and the Environment. Her past work has focused on human-wildlife conflict studies and mitigation, as well as species-habitat interactions.

She is interested in research questions about food/farming systems, and developing better relationships at the human-nature interface. She also enjoys all kinds of books, most kinds of music and wildlife-watching on long hikes outdoors.

Ganesh Shinde

Ganesh Shinde

Research Associate
Products and Platforms
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Ganesh is a PhD student at ATREE and a Senior GIS Associate at WELL Labs.

Ganesh has completed M.Sc. in Geoinformatics from Institute of Environment Education and Research, Bharati Vidyapeeth University, Pune. His earlier interests in forestry led him to a summer internship with the Forest department situated in Aurangabad district, Maharashtra.

During his Master's internship at ATREE, he worked on the 'UPSCAPE' project, focussing on different sources of irrigation for agriculture purposes in Cauvery basin using Census of India data. Since this project he has been working to understand dynamics of decadal land-use and land-cover changes in Cauvery basin using Google Earth Engine.

At WELL Labs, he focuses on typologies and LULC input for the Jaltol project, groundwater quality and quantity indices at the district level for India using secondary datasets for the REAL Water project, and GIS support for the Pacific Institute project. Apart from this, he works on degraded agricultural landscapes for his PhD.

Anjali Neelakantan

Anjali Neelakantan

Managing Partner
Products and Platforms
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Anjali leads the Products and Platforms team at WELL Labs.

As a generalist, she has predominantly designed institutional solutions for complex socio-economic and environmental challenges. Some of the projects she has worked on include preparing the operations and maintenance manual for drinking water supply for the Government of Telangana, developing an export diversification strategy for the Government of Bangladesh, developing strategies for MSMEs to cope with natural disasters, assessing the costs and benefits of adopting sustainable construction practices in Nepal, analysing the ecosystem for social entrepreneurship in SAARC countries, and assessing the impact of ‘slum rehabilitation or relocation’ programmes.

She holds a Master of Science degree in Environmental Economics from the University of East Anglia, Norwich. She is a maker, and used to run a Montessori-inspired materials company called The Monti Co.

Balakumar Ramachandran

Balakumar R

Lead Developer
Products and Platforms
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Balakumaran is a Senior GIS Associate and Programmer with the Products and Platforms team at WELL Labs.

He has worked for over four years in the field of remote sensing and GIS at the Institute of Remote Sensing, Anna University, Chennai. He monitored and evaluated IWMP watersheds for Tamil Nadu and in the Village Information System, developing a spatial data model for local-level planning.

He completed his BE in Civil Engineering from Velammal Engineering College, Anna University, Chennai, and ME in Irrigation Water Management from College of Engineering (Guindy Campus), Anna University, Chennai.