For community mobilisers, cluster coordinators and M&E officers
Bharat Survey is a data collection app for NGO teams that run baselines, household visits, beneficiary follow-ups and monitoring rounds in places with weak network. Field staff use an offline Android app in Hindi or English. Programme and M&E leads see progress during shifts, check where each record was collected, review doubtful ones and export clean data for donor and CSR reports.
Hello, I am Ram Kumar. This survey is run by Sample Organisation. Purpose: to learn about amenities in your area. It is voluntary, and you can say no at any time.
The same forms, areas and people carry through the year, so each round builds on the last.
Mobilisers visit every sampled household with a roster form. Records sync each evening and are checked against the assigned village.
Short monthly forms for groups, sessions or facilities. Supervisors see which villages have not reported this month.
A supervisor calls or revisits a sample of households to confirm answers, and the QA queue records the outcome.
The baseline instrument returns as a new version with only the changes you approved, so comparisons stay clean.
Programmes need to know whether the same woman, child or farmer was visited again, not only how many forms came in.
Beneficiary and case tracking, where a record is linked to the same person across visits, is part of the NGO module design. It is being built after the core survey release, so confirm timing with us for your project start date.
Until then, teams use a stable household or beneficiary ID as a question in each round and join rounds in the export, which works well for most monitoring designs.
Each interview begins with a consent screen, and a refusal is recorded as an outcome rather than a blank. Answers are stored encrypted on the phone and access on the web panel is by role, so a field coordinator does not see another district's data.
Hello, I am Ram Kumar. This survey is run by Sample Organisation. Purpose: to learn about amenities in your area. It is voluntary, and you can say no at any time.
A category-level comparison, not a vendor scorecard. Check each vendor's own pages before deciding, and pick on your constraints rather than a feature count.
| Need | Bharat Survey | Open-source ODK/Kobo stack | General online form tools |
|---|---|---|---|
| Offline Android collection | Yes | Yes | Limited or none |
| Location checked against assigned village | Yes, five states | Location captured, checks are manual | No |
| Seat-based licence | Yes, on quotation | Free or hosted plans | Per-user or response plans |
| Indian geography (LGD) loaded | Yes | You upload lists | No |
| Supervisor QA queue | Yes | Via review tools or add-ons | No |
| Self-completion web links | Not in v1 | Yes | Yes |
| Free plan | No | Yes | Often |
If you are comparing on price, for example after reading about a zoho survey ngo discount, check the vendor's own current pricing page; programmes differ by country and change often.
If you run one short survey a year, with a small trained team and good network, a free open-source tool or a free online form is often enough. Bharat Survey is a paid, seat-based service with pricing on quotation, and we will say so on the first call.
Free tools cost staff time instead: setting up servers or accounts, uploading village lists, checking locations by hand and cleaning duplicate records.
An MIS usually tracks finances, staff, activities and targets across the organisation. We are a field data collection and verification layer. Many NGOs pair a free or low-cost MIS for activities with a survey tool like ours for household-level evidence, and move data between them through Excel or Google Sheets.
Three designs that sound similar and need different setups.
Software and field services for NGOs.
Learn moreDashboards and donor reporting.
Learn moreWhen you want us to run the M&E work.
Learn moreThird-party evaluation studies.
Learn moreDesigning rounds that can be compared.
Learn moreStraight answers to the questions people ask most about this topic.
A data collection tool records answers to forms during visits and hands clean data to analysis. A case management tool follows one person over time with status, due dates and referrals. Bharat Survey is the first; linked beneficiary revisits are planned, but it is not a full case management system.
Yes. The app is built for entry-level Android phones, with Hindi-first screens, large buttons and autosave. It works offline, so staff only need network occasionally to sync. There is no iPhone app.
Pricing is on quotation and seat-based, and we discuss programme size and duration when quoting. We do not publish a standing NGO discount, and there is no free plan.
Yes, through exports. Approved records export as CSV, Excel or PDF, or copy one way into Google Sheets. A read-only viewer login can also be created for a funder if your agreement allows it.
Yes. Bharat Survey also provides survey and evaluation services with field teams. The software can be used by your own staff, by our teams, or both.
Sources: ODK documentation · KoboToolbox pricing · Zoho Survey pricing
We will set it up offline, in Hindi and English, and show your M&E lead what a day's records look like in the panel.
