Public trust has become a measurable governance issue. In the OECD’s 2024 Trust Survey, 39% of people across surveyed countries reported high or moderately high trust in national government, while 44% reported low or no trust.

India is also undergoing a large urban transition. By 2036, India’s towns and cities are expected to house 600 million people, about 40% of the population, and urban areas are expected to contribute almost 70% of GDP.

This makes civic trust, local governance and citizen participation, locally nationally and globally, central to sustainable development.

We work on this practical gap: how citizens understand systems, how institutions hear concerns, and how public issues move from confusion to structured engagement.

We are building Cooperation17 with the ambition of becoming a nonprofit unicorn.

For us, a nonprofit unicorn does not mean private valuation. It means scale of public impact: measurable civic work, repeatable systems, institutional credibility and the ability to touch at least one million lives with depth over time.

Our standard is practical. A serious nonprofit should reduce the cost of solving the next problem, keep records, build partnerships, train people, report impact and remain accountable to evidence.

• ✓ We create public-interest guidance for citizens and communities.
• ✓ We convene public meetings and stakeholder dialogues.
• ✓ We build institutional records of civic issues, learning and impact.

Our public work currently covers themes such as apartment owners’ associations, RWA governance, farmer issues, land rights, revenue matters, cooperative housing, education infrastructure, local authorities, Noida Authority, YEIDA and citizen facilitation.

In Noida, Dadri, Jewar, Sikandrabad and Khurja, Cities Initiative civic issue support is fully pro bono for matters accepted within our civic scope.

We are developing our physical space as Civic House: a public-facing civic space for meetings, dialogue, guidance, learning and institutional memory.