Babajob.com is a Bangalore-based start-up that uses the web and mobile technology to connect employers and bottom-of-the-pyramid (BOP) informal sector workers (i.e. maids, cooks, drivers, etc.) with the goal of creating a scalable, replicable and profitable solution to combat poverty. Babajob aims to do this by creating greater market efficiency in the informal sector through voice and web features such as SMS, USSD, automated voice systems, and operator manned call centers, enabling employers and job seekers to find each other. The simple premises, upon which it built itself and continues to grow on, are –

• Everyone deserves to get a better job, no matter what their income or skill level, and
• Technology can enhance our ability to both hire more efficiently, and better communicate with those we care about.

While at Microsoft Research India in 2005, CEO Sean Blagsvedt co-ran the Advanced Development and Prototyping Team and worked very closely with the Technology for Emerging Markets research group, whose aim was to study and invent new ways that technology could be used to positively impact the social and economic development of the world’s poorest 4 billion people. Sean’s first thought was “Great – all they need is the village version of LinkedIn.com!” In reality however, in order to make such a system work, one has to overcome the problem that most low-income workers of the world may not be literate, nor own a mobile phone and rarely own or have ready access to an Internet-connected PC. Most people in India find jobs through people they know – namely their extended social network – and most employers – particularly when hiring employees that work in the home – would like to hire a person who someone they trust can vouch for. Another important factor with the increase of travel time (owing to the increase in the number of vehicles on the roads) and often-unreliable public transport has resulted in people looking for jobs closer to home, in their neighborhoods. More often than not, it’s the simply not-knowing that causes people to miss out on better-suited opportunities. Babajob.com is an attempt to digitize this process and information to efficiently “get the word out” and importantly provide an incentive for the folks in between an employer and employee to connect people together.

By leveraging web and mobile technology, Babajob scales and engages a wider audience creating greater efficiency for employers and further deepens the social impact on job seekers. Employers can conveniently browse job seeker profiles based on salary, location, languages, employment background, skills and references. Babajob offers several fee-based services to help in the matching and hiring of seekers.

With services available for all major cities in the country, Babajob is currently testing out a new voice application that will help communicate the necessary information into various regional languages. With a likely tie up with a mobile handset maker – the goal is to transcend, once again, the language and literacy barrier, to broaden the scope of Babajob’s services.

Babajob serves as a fine example of complex system design for a country that is socially and linguistically diverse; and where literacy is a major point of consideration, while attempting to make information accessible.  With a constantly evolving set of parameters and a strong belief in the transformative power of software on society, Babajob is social entrepreneurship at its best. By tapping into informal social interactions and streams of information, and using a blended value business model that combines a revenue generating business with a social-value-generating component, it provides us with a glimpse of the paradigm shift that is brewing with regards to businesses in emerging economies.

Having spent a long weekend with Archana Prasad –Co Founder Jaaga, National Institute of Design alumnus and Bangalore based artist, in Pondicherry, where she was performing with her group The Manjunauts, (she is also a VJ) at the Freedom Jam; I had the chance to engage in a dialogue with her about Jaaga.

Jaaga’s name has been popping up at a very frequent rate, in the art+ design circle here in Bangalore. Over the last couple of months, it has become a hotspot for performances, exhibitions, workshops and social interventions. To break it down, Jaaga, which means space in Kannada, is an urban community art-architecture experiment, currently situated in Bangalore. It is a modular structure that employs a participatory design process where the community helps build and use it. It includes web enabled workspaces and large multi-level public spaces. The fact that this building is mobile and can be moved to different neighbourhoods, cities and countries; taking with it its culture of pushing the envelope of innovation and pro-activism at a neighbourhood level to greater heights, is an added bonus.

Jaaga was born out of Archana’s insatiable desire for a dedicated space for the city’s artists who are rich in talent albeit not necessarily in funds, to showcase their work.  Together with fellow artists Suresh Kumar G and Shivaprasad S, they founded an artist collective called Samuha. With 23 artists of various disciplines like painting, sculpture, new media and performance arts, Samuha is running for 414 days, having started June 22, 2009. Each artist member owns 17 days at the space and can use it for exhibitions, seminars, workshops and interactions on art practices.

Samuha being in place, Archana’s quest for an artistic haven – a creative common place, was still on. A chance meeting between Archana and Freeman Murray, an American technologist in India, lead to the creation of Jaaga, Having successfully worked with pallet racks in the past through various projects in the US, he suggested constructing a modular sturdy structure using this warehouse shelving, usually used for heavy duty industrial purposes. Pallet racking is a material handling storage system designed to store materials on pallets. Although there are many varieties of pallet racks, all types allow for the storage of palletized materials in horizontal rows with multiple levels.

Jaaga is a massive structure made up of red and blue pallet racks put together and looks like a movie set. With the assistance of volunteers, Jaaga was built up in all of 15 hours. The flooring is made up of plywood and metal wires and the walls are made of billboards. Being fully mobile, it can be dismantled and reassembled within hours. Jaaga is currently redesigning itself into being more spacious and modular. The entire structure will be a dichotomy between a natural earthy airy area and cyber industrial space.  Jaaga’s USP is that it brings together art, technology and social change activists to share their practices with the world and with the neighbourhood. It also re-looks the concept and conception of space; and that real estate can be moved, folded and floating.  Archana wanted the whole structure to look like a Lego building. When they got the space, a 300 sq. ft plot, they had to clean it up, as there was a lot of garbage and weeds that had grown around it. Volunteers came in and helped remove the garbage and weeded the place out.

The first event at Jaaga was the Robert Bosch Art Grant ceremony. Since its inception, Jaaga has hosted various events, including a performance by the Attakkalari Center for Movement Arts, which had eight dancers performing in eight modular spaces. As a space, it is available free of cost and artists or anyone interested are invited to submit proposals with ideas on how they would like to use the space. The vision of Jaaga is that it becomes a future University that harnesses the power of modern technology to herald a new breed of creative thinkers and doers; also to be a virtual repository of avant-garde thinking stemming in India and rooted in the world.

To quote Archana – “We live the reality of a world whose path, starting from mass production – industrialisation, has created the tensions that the West worries about. We already live it. Being an artist in that landscape can only be interesting. As artists we are super sensitive to these cracks and tears in the fabric of society. Our works are reactions, imaginations, renditions, and explorations of the chaos that surround us. How can anything honest that comes out of such stark, harsh, cruel yet beautiful reality be anything short of exciting. India is a hotbed of superbness now.”

For more information visit – http://jaaga.wikidot.com/

VNL | Meet the next billion mobile users from VNL on Vimeo.

Vihaan Networks Ltd., an Indian telecommunications company known as VNL, won the Bronze award for a solar-powered base station to bring cellphone access to remote rural villages. The inexpensive base station can be quickly assembled and set up by unskilled villagers, and can run entirely on the built-in solar panels and batteries. The technology, which now is being called the ‘WorldGSM’ has a philosophy of providing mobile services that are low in cost, maintenance, can be self deployed and are solar powered.

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“We must take justice – fast justice – to people,” vowed Mr Singh. “When a verdict takes 10 or 20 years, it destroys their faith in the legal system.”

According to the government, Indian courts are bedeviled with a staggering backlog of 15.6 million cases. It is not uncommon for minor cases to drag on for decades. The new “court-on-wheels” program aims to fill this critical gap in the delivery of justice and could one day be expanded across the country. Sandeep Singh, the first judge to preside over the court, has handled about 60 cases each day since the mobile court opened for business. Most have involved theft, village fights and disputes over dowries or the slaughter of cows.

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MeraNokia is an information phone service from Nokia providing localised information in Agriculture, Education. The Enertainment section caters to Astrology and Ringtones. Depending on the service, you either subscribe to it, or download content when needed. If you subscribe to a service, the service sends you content messages to your MeraNokia inbox. At present, customers of select operators and in Select regions/districts of Maharashtra can avail this service. The services would be available in any one of your preferred languages – English, Hindi or Marathi.

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Actor Aamir Khan’s voter awareness campaign for the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and National Election Watch. The campaign comprises three ad films, print ads, internet and mobile communication. The ad campaign is being aired in Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali, Assamese and Oriya so that it can reach out to the masses.

MobilGlyph: Making Data Tangible from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.
Adaptive Path, a product experience and strategy design company recently went to rural India to investigate the impact of mobile technology and developed concepts for new mobile devices for this market. Mobiglyph is one such concept that allows illiterate users to save contacts by using QR codes to make data tangible and phone cameras as an input medium.

Read more details on this project on the Adaptive Path Blog