About
To make the arts, cultures and heritage of India freely and reliably accessible to all through open, collaborative digital documentation.
Sahapedia is an open online resource on the arts, cultures and heritage of India and South Asia, founded as a not-for-profit in 2011 (platform launched 2016). Built collaboratively by scholars and contributors under an open licence, it documents ten domains of culture - from knowledge traditions and performing arts to practices, histories and the natural environment - and runs programmes including the Sahapedia-UNESCO Fellowships, the India Heritage Walk Festival and the Frames Photography Grant.
Sahapedia grew from Dr. Sudha Gopalakrishnan's frustration, as a researcher, at how hard it was to access India's cultural archives - and her conviction that this knowledge should be free and public. Built collaboratively and released under an open licence, it became India's first major online cultural encyclopedia, spanning ten domains and thousands of multimedia articles.
Beyond the encyclopedia, it trains a new generation of documentarians through the Sahapedia-UNESCO Fellowships, brings heritage to the public through its award-winning India Heritage Walk Festival, and supports cultural photography through the Frames grant - making it both an archive and an active producer of cultural knowledge.
Founding & Leadership
Sahapedia was registered as a not-for-profit society in 2011 and its public platform launched in 2016. Its founding force is Dr. Sudha Gopalakrishnan - former Founder Director of the National Mission for Manuscripts and a UNESCO-empanelled expert on intangible cultural heritage - who serves as Executive Director. 'Saha' (Sanskrit for 'together with') signals its collaborative method; its President and mentor is S. Ramadorai, former Vice Chairman of TCS.
A non-profit society registered under the Societies Registration Act, 1860, governed by a board, with content created collaboratively by scholars and contributors.
Leadership & Trustees
Initiatives & Portfolio
An open, collaboratively authored online encyclopedia spanning ten domains of Indian arts, culture and heritage.
Fellowships training scholars and students to research and document Indian cultural heritage.
A nationwide festival of heritage walks (PATA Gold Award 2018, Grand Award 2019).
A grant supporting documentary photography of Indian culture and heritage.
Impact & Metrics
Partnerships & Network
Partner institutions
Funders & patrons
Credentials & Compliance
CSR-eligible · Schedule VII(v) - art & culture
A natural CSR partner under Schedule VII(v) for digital cultural documentation and heritage education, with measurable open-access public-good output.
Recognition
India's first major open online cultural encyclopedia; PATA Gold (2018) and Grand (2019) Awards for the India Heritage Walk Festival.
In the Press
Gallery
[Atlas Assessment] Sahapedia is the most ambitious open-knowledge project for Indian culture - an attempt to make the country's vast, scattered and often inaccessible cultural heritage freely available and reliably documented. By pairing a collaborative encyclopedia with fellowships, heritage walks and photography grants, it both preserves knowledge and builds the people who create it.
Sahapedia is the closest public-knowledge peer to a cultural atlas, and a useful reference point: where Sahapedia is an open, scholarly encyclopedia, an intelligence-oriented atlas is differentiated by analysis, benchmarking and fundability rather than open documentation - making Sahapedia more a complementary resource and potential collaborator than a competitor. It scores high on innovation and solidly elsewhere; its caveats are the familiar non-profit ones of sustained funding and the depth-versus-breadth trade-off inherent in crowd-and-scholar documentation.