Redefining Childcare in India

For over five decades, Mobile Creches, winner of Nexus of Good Award, 2025, has been quietly transforming how India views childcare—not as a private family concern, but as a shared societal and developmental responsibility. Founded in 1969 amid the growing urbanisation of Delhi, the organisation began its journey by setting up makeshift creches on construction sites, ensuring that children of migrant labourers were safe, fed, and engaged in early learning while their parents worked long hours. From those humble beginnings, Mobile Creches has evolved into a national movement that is shaping India’s early childcare landscape.

Construction Sites to a National Model

The story of Mobile Creches began with a simple yet profound question: What happens to the children of construction workers while their parents build the cities we live in? The answer—nothing good—prompted a group of concerned citizens to act. They started setting up small, safe spaces near construction sites where children could play, rest, eat nutritious meals, and learn. Over the years, this concept of ‘childcare at worksites’ became the cornerstone of a larger mission: ensuring every child, especially those from marginalised backgrounds, has access to care, protection, health, and early education.

A Systems-based Approach

What sets Mobile Creches apart is its systems-based approach. The organisation works on three interconnected fronts: direct service delivery, capacity building of partners, and policy advocacy. Through direct operations, it runs creches in urban slums, rural and tribal areas, and construction sites, delivering integrated childcare services. Through partnerships with community-based organisations (CSOs), it trains and handholds local groups to replicate its model, building a wider ecosystem of quality childcare providers. Finally, through technical collaborations with governments, it helps strengthen and scale public childcare systems such as Anganwadis under the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS). This multi-pronged model ensures that impact is both deep and wide, reaching the most vulnerable children while influencing systemic change.

Impact That Resonates

As of 2025, Mobile Creches’ footprint extends across 19 states, with a legacy of operating over 5,000 creches and transforming the childcare landscape for working families. Over the decades, it has reached more than one million children, touched the lives of five million community members, and trained over 20,000 childcare workers to deliver quality early learning and care. Its model has improved outcomes in nutrition, health, safety, and school readiness, while enabling thousands of women to participate in the workforce with confidence and dignity. Through strategic partnerships with the Governments of Karnataka, Haryana, Telangana, and Odisha, Mobile Creches has expanded its systems-strengthening initiatives—enhancing the quality of public childcare services and building institutional capacity for sustainable impact.

In tribal regions like Sukma, Chhattisgarh, the organisation is helping the Department of Women and Child Development strengthen 150 Anganwadi Centres through baseline and endline assessments focused on early learning and caregiver capacity. In the tea gardens of Jalpaiguri, West Bengal, Mobile Creches has partnered with SPAN to open childcare centres for children under three years, providing much-needed support to tea garden workers—particularly women who face long working hours and limited access to essential services. Each initiative demonstrates the organisation’s adaptability, collaboration, and commitment to inclusive, high-quality childcare—whether in the heart of a city or in the remotest corners of rural and tribal India.

Policy and Advocacy Lens

Beyond service delivery, Mobile Creches plays a crucial role in shaping the national childcare narrative. It has been a consistent advocate for integrating childcare into India’s policy agenda—linking it with women’s employment, early learning, and economic growth. Its policy dialogues with NITI Aayog, the Ministry of Women and Child Development, and state governments have helped position childcare as a central pillar of inclusive development. Through campaigns, partnerships, and evidence-building, Mobile Creches continues to remind policymakers that childcare is not charity—it is smart economics. When women can work and children can learn, communities prosper.

The Human Impact

Behind every statistic lies a story. Like Rekha, a young mother working at a construction site in Delhi, who once had to leave her two-year-old under a tin sheet while she worked. Today, her daughter spends her day at a Mobile Creches centre—fed, cared for, and learning to count and sing. Or like Aarti, a creche worker from rural Odisha, who says, “We are not just caretakers—we are building the future.” These stories underline the heart of Mobile Creches’ mission: dignity for women, security for children, and progress for communities.

Partnerships and Innovation

Mobile Creches’ collaborative ethos is one of its strongest assets. It works closely with corporate partners through CSR initiatives, government departments, and grassroots NGOs to design contextual childcare solutions. For example, its Model Creche initiative demonstrates what a high-quality childcare centre should look like—safe infrastructure, joyful learning spaces, hygiene, kitchen gardens for nutrition, and high attendance rates. These models then inspire replication and scale across public and private systems. Technology and data are also beginning to shape its next phase. With improved monitoring tools and digital record-keeping, Mobile Creches is making its impact more measurable and transparent—crucial for influencing policy and scaling effectively.

Childcare as Nation-Building

Childcare is not a standalone issue—it sits at the intersection of education, gender, and economy. By investing in early childhood care, India invests in its human capital. Mobile Creches embodies this philosophy by linking its grassroots interventions to the larger Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 4 (Quality Education), SDG 5 (Gender Equality), and SDG 8 (Decent Work). Its work offers lessons for policymakers, corporations, and civil society alike: childcare is not merely a support service—it is an economic and moral imperative. Empowering women through reliable childcare increases household income, boosts national productivity, and nurtures a generation of healthier, smarter children.

Looking Ahead

As India aspires to become a USD 5-trillion economy, organisations like Mobile Creches play a pivotal role in ensuring that growth is inclusive and human-centred. The next phase of its journey is focused on strengthening partnerships with state governments, expanding model creches, and advocating for childcare to be recognised as a public good. Its message remains simple yet transformative: when we care for our children, we invest in our future. And when we support working mothers, we strengthen families, communities, and the nation itself. Mobile Creches represents what social innovation in India truly means—starting small, learning from the ground, and scaling with purpose. It has redefined what “care” means in a rapidly changing economy—turning compassion into structure, and structure into sustainable systems.

As we reflect on India’s development priorities, Mobile Creches reminds us that the foundation of progress is not concrete or steel—but care, compassion, and opportunity for every child.

Views expressed are personal. The writer is an author and a former civil servant