iMerit Technology Services is a social enterprise based in Kolkata, India that empowers underprivileged and underserved youth through IT training and employing them in the formal IT sector. iMerit specializes in dataset creation for machine learning projects for global IT companies. They empower youth to aid in the development of human­powered computing tasks.

As iMerit prepares to expand and scale its operations, it wanted to investigate the relative costs and benefits of investing in the development of a customized software solution that could facilitate their everyday business operations. It is difficult to assess the value such a software without knowing what it would do or look like. To address this challenge, we worked closely with iMerit’s employees to gather requirements for potential software solution.

We observed iMerit’s workflow for nearly three weeks to understand the company and its needs.

Additionally, we conducted two rounds of semi­structured interviews with eight employees consisting of 17 questions each. These employees were also asked to fill out self­efficacy surveys so we could further understand their confidence level in their field of work. This data was gathered in three of iMerit’s centers: Salt Lake, Metiabruz, and Baruipur through observation of employee workflow.