This blog is written by Aditi Upadhyay
Slow Brew: Reflections from the Tech4Dev Cohort Convening
On 18 and 19 September 2026, I was back at QLO in Bangalore for the second convening of the Tech4Dev cohort.
Anyone who has made filter kaapi knows you can’t hurry it. The decoction comes through drop by drop, and the patience is part of the process. I have come to think of ecosystem building the same way. I have been working on this assignment for several months now, and this convening was the first time I felt the brew had really started to come through.
The anchoring question we keep coming back to is a simple one: what does supporting an ecosystem actually mean, and how does it play out on the ground? Here is what I saw.
A cohort that is becoming an ecosystem
Fundamentally, what we are trying to do is strengthen civil society infrastructure in India: the shared tools, services and know-how that help frontline organisations do their work better. No single organisation can be that infrastructure on its own. It is made up of parts that need each other
It was heartening to see the cohort reflect this more and more. Samanvay Foundation, Dhwani RIS, Gram Vaani, Pacta Legal, Tamuku, Tattle and others in the cohort each play their own role. Together they cover field data platforms, community communication tools, legal support and work on online harms. Since the first convening, the thinking has become sharper and the selection more diverse. The inclusion of experienced, growth-driven organisations such as Dhwani RIS shifted the energy of the room. It sparked conversations about how others could approach their own work differently.
Tech4Dev has also proposed smaller pairings within the cohort, such as Pacta Legal with Tamuku. When two organisations join hands like this, they bring their strengths together and have something unique to offer the wider group. For me, this is what breaking silos actually looks like: organisations with a real reason to work together, rather than another conversation about collaboration.
What makes these pairings work is trust, and trust takes longer to build than any tool. Organisations across the sector keep asking for shared services, but uptake on the ground is slow. A lot of that comes down to whether they trust each other enough to depend on one another. Convenings are where that trust gets built, and I could see it growing across the two convenings.
Leaders talking about real problems
What stayed with me most was how candid the room was. Founders and senior leaders, many of them veterans of the sector, got out of their comfort zones and spoke about the problems they all share, not just the work they are proud of. Three came up again and again:
- Positioning: being able to say clearly what makes them distinct.
- Finances: planning and budgets that hold up to scrutiny.
- Collaboration: something everyone wants, and everyone finds hard.
The session by Dhwani RIS on building a second cadre of leadership, meaning people who can carry an organisation beyond its founder, was one of the key moments. It got founders across the board reflecting on their own organisations.
None of this is a failure of intent. It is what happens when small teams try to build ambitious things on funding that rarely covers the hard, unglamorous parts. Naming these problems in one room is the first step towards solving them together, rather than each organisation figuring it out alone.
There is an honest lesson here for those of us on the funding side as well. Organisations’ readiness is often lower than we assume when we design support. That is not a criticism of them. It simply means support has to start where organisations actually are, and not where a proposal imagines them to be.
Story, money and learning
My session at the end of the convening built on the earlier sessions on positioning, business development and financial planning. The central idea was simple: a funder reads your narrative and your budget as one claim, and when the two don’t match, the funder usually ends up trusting neither. As we discussed in the room, the two drift apart for structural reasons. Different people write them, funder templates vary, and core costs often go unfunded.
Since the convening, I have been thinking about what comes after the grant. Reporting doesn’t have to be about proving numbers. At its best, it serves the organisation first, as a way to learn what is working and what isn’t. Seen that way, flagging a risk early is a way of asking for help, not an admission of failure. On our side, we are trying to practise this: learning over evaluation, and stories alongside numbers.
What’s next
The cohort has now met twice, and more focused working sessions will follow early next year. I closed my session with an idea I would love to see the cohort take forward: tracking progress together, not alone. As accountability partners checking in between funder cycles, organisations can keep each other honest and unstuck.
At the next convening, we will be looking to see whether the pairings have produced something concrete, and whether the problems named in Bangalore come back as shared work rather than shared complaints.
The brew is slow, but it is coming through, and it is already stronger than it was.
