India spends ₹6,000 crore every year on access to scientific knowledge — knowledge that should be free but has been colonised by Western academic publishers.
Carl Malamud, the American public resource activist who opened up US law, building codes, and court judgments through public.resource.org, is now building the equivalent in India through his Section 8 nonprofit Servants of Knowledge. With 18 people operating custom-built scanners, processing 12-15 lakh pages per month from libraries across India, and a proven model ready to scale to Mumbai, Kolkata, and beyond, he is at what he calls the “seed stage” — a viable product, proven demand, and capital-constrained growth.
The stakes are framed clearly: knowledge colonisation is real and ongoing. India’s $715 million annual payment to Riedel Elsevier for access to academic journals is a direct tax on Indian scientific progress. Google will never scan 100-language Indian texts organically. This has to be built in India, by Indians. Rahul Dewan anchors the conversation in the Hindu Network Foundation’s goal of raising ₹1,000 crore for civilisational causes — and identifies Servants of Knowledge as exactly the kind of institution that capital should support.
About The Speakers:
Carl Malamud is an American technologist, author, and public domain advocate, best known for founding Public.Resource.Org. He also founded the Internet Multicasting Service, where he developed the first Internet radio station, brought the SEC’s EDGAR database online, and created the 1996 Internet World Exposition. Malamud has authored eight books, including Exploring the Internet and A World’s Fair. He has served as a visiting professor at MIT Media Laboratory, chairman of the Internet Software Consortium, co-founder of Invisible Worlds, fellow at the Centre for American Progress, and board member of the Mozilla Foundation.
Rahul Dewan is a tech entrepreneur, angel investor, blogger, social activist, and Yoga & Meditation practitioner. In 2016, he founded SangamTalks – the largest YouTube channel for documentation of ‘Indian Knowledge Systems’ (IKS) and untold Indian History. Having exited his software services business (600 people) successfully, he now dedicates his full time to Dharmic causes. He is currently on a mission to raise 1000 Crores for Hindu civilizational causes, and to campaign for making Hinduism Missionary again.
