TECH 4 SOCIAL IMPACT
Uzoorba Technologies
Founded by Vincent Toscano and his engineering college friend, Anil D'Szoua in 2016, we are a social-impact, government-recognized startup offering IT and affiliated services for global clients while creating technology-enabled livelihoods in Goan villages. We ourselves are located at the Chorao village-island in Goa (India).
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Uzoorba is a fusion of 2 Konkani (our mother-tongue) words: uzo = fire, and, urba = enthusiasm/positivity. Our work reflects this essence deeply rooted in Goan ethos and value-centric professionalism, and has been fuelled all along by our simple desire to use modern technology to preserve and enhance Goemkarponn (ie. unique Goan identity) through a simple concept of Village IT that Vincent has propounded since 2012.
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vangdda.org (not a NGO) covers the social-impact work of Uzoorba Technologies LLP.
Music in Our Roots
In November 2014 at Pune, Joi Barua’s soulful live rendition of his original, soft rock, soulful Assamese song, Tejimola, sparked Uzoorba to life as the culmination of our founder, Vincent Toscano's decade long quest to return back to Goa! Vincent brought Joi to Goa thrice during Dec'14-Aug'15 and met up with a couple dozen stalwarts and artists from Goan music-scape including Remo Fernandes, Schubert Cotta, Roque Lazarus and others. A pilot Konkani rock song was commissioned which got stuck on the Konkani lyrics not measuring up to Joi's expectations.
Konkanin World Music since 2024 has been Vincent's long-overdue project for tech-enablement of modern Konkani music creation for a global audience. And thanks to AI tools we now produce our own long-awaited music under our label, Urben Utah (Rise with Exuberance).
Enjoy Joi's Tejimola with headphones while surfing this long page:
1. Tech Balcao (Prudent TV)
In his early days back in Goa, Vincent conceptualized, directed, recorded (partly), edited (mostly) and produced a 23-episode series during 2016-17 about Goans using Information Technology (IT) in different fields ranging from education, music, innovation, services etc. to create awareness about its benefits and need for Goa. All this work was done for free by Vincent for a token of Rs.1000 per episode from Prudent TV which hardly covered the travel costs alone. Original episodes (in parts) can be found on Prudent TV/Media's YouTube channel while the complete episodes seen below are from the Goa IT Professionals (GITP) channel.
Tech Balcao
Tech Balcao
TechBalcao#01: Technology for Goa!
TECH BALCAO #2 Project GEIT Reviving IT Education in Goan Schools 25Apr2016
TechBalcao#03: L & A Tech Pvt. Ltd.
TechBalcao#04: Inventrom
Co-founded with Sangeeta Naik by Vincent, it all started off from her elaborate comments on this 24-Jun-2015 Facebook post leading to the Nov'2015 pilot of Raspberry Pi (RPi) for educational purposes for the very first time in 3 Goan schools. In all 5 FREE vacation camps were organized till Nov'17 to provide latest technology exposure and hands-on coding with MIT Scratch (another first in Goa) to over 500 village school kids from North and South Goa. Dozens of volunteers made all this happen while generous individual and corporate donors funded the hardware & logistics.
Press Coverage
Project GEIT received significant coverage in the local press and media due to its pioneering work and unprecedented community involvement. None of this coverage was requested by us nor paid.
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3. Scheme 240
Towards 2015-end, impressed by the initial Project GEIT work, 2 Goa government Directors (Finance, and, Science & Technology) collaborated to create a new scheme for "Promotion of IT and Science Education in Rural Areas in the State of Goa." It provided Rs.55,000/- each for Computer Lab upgrades of 10 aided-schools; 5 in North Goa and 5 in South Goa. While Sangeeta Naik scouted for and identified over 20 deserving village schools across Goa through her extensive network, Vincent prepared the scheme application format for the schools including cost estimates for various Computer Lab hardware they themselves could purchase online and hand-held them through the application process for over a week till final submission to the government by 31-Mar-2016.
10 schools received their funding in the subsequent months!
After winning Goa 2012 elections Manohar Parrikar failed on his pre-election promise to GITP founders about getting IT industry into Goa, leading to their disillusionment and group's dilution till Vincent led its major revival with strong support from GITP President, Gurudev Naik, and others, especially Yash Ganthe. From memos to Goa govt., concept notes, policy drafts, manifesto, press notes, press conferences, YouTube channel, representation on govt. panels etc. Vincent did most of the work for GITP since 2014. Coupled with efforts of other groups, the resulting impact in the form of Goa IT Policy (2015, 2018), Goa Startup Policy (2017) and the overall ICT revival in Goa made all this voluntary work worthwhile.
5. Worth My Vote?
Despite its high Human Development Indices (HDI) among Indian states Goa has been saddled for decades with poorly performing politicians, rampant corruption, artificial vote banks etc. which has been driving young, educated Goans out of Goa in search of livelihoods. Continued failures of consecutive governments on this front, despite modern opportunities like IT Industry, has been the primary motivator for us to try create an objective and neutral political accountability platform since 2016.
We carried out an online market survey in the run up to the 2017 Goa Assembly elections to figure out key aspects of such a platform.
However based on the wise counsel of our advisors and well-wishers the platform plans were shelved fearing its manipulation by political forces for their vested interests in the run up to the election and instead we carried out a voter awareness campaign through our GOANS THINKING? poster series on Facebook.
