Having grown up in a middle class family in India, this came as a shock to me – 88% of women in India do not have access to sanitary napkins. They resort to using rags, ashes, newspaper, dried leaves and husk according to a study by AC Nielsen. According to an article in Fastcoexist, girls who attain puberty in rural areas miss school or drop out because of their periods. As a result of unhygienic practices, more than 70% of the women suffer from reproductive tract infections, increasing the risk of contracting associated cancers according to Guardian.

Arunachalam Muruganantham, a workshop helper who lived below poverty line in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu had other plans for sanitary towels. He has created a low cost machine for making sanitary napkins. He wanted to make a low cost napkin for his wife who couldn’t afford to buy any. Creating this machine has been an arduous process for Arunachalam. He tried to get feedback from his wife and sisters who refused to discuss his creations. He approached female medical students who weren’t responsive as well. Discussing your menstrual cycle with a stranger wasn’t something any woman that Arunachalam approached was ready to do. He was experimenting with cotton at the time. At his wits end, he did some usability testing by wearing it himself and using a bladder and tube contraption to release goats blood onto his creation.

He tested different materials over the course of two years and figured that the napkins were made from cellulose from the bark of a tree. After getting some samples of the raw material from various companies, he figured out how to make the napkins. He realized that creating cellulose from pine wood fibre was no simple task. The machine needed to do that was close to half a million dollars hence the dominance of big companies in the sanitary napkin market. It took Arunachalam 4 years to create a cheaper machine to do the same task. The machine could make 1000 napkins a day. The machine was awarded the best innovation for the betterment of society by the Institute of Technology in Chennai.  The napkins cost $0.25 (13 rupees) for a package of eight.

Women using Arunachalam's creation to make low cost sanitary pads.

Arunachalam doesn’t sell his product commercially. He provides sustainable livelihood to many rural women. His company helps rural women buy one of the $2500 machines through a loan. Around 600 machines are installed across 23 states. The idea is to create small industries all over India run by women creating a product that helps women. Arunachalam created a revolution around a topic that is considered a taboo. This system driven model will hopefully create a change in the way Indian women view hygiene and health.

References

Sarvajal is a franchise that provides clean drinking water to India’s rural community. It is run by Piramal Water Private and was started back in 2008. Sarvajal is not only serving a social cause, it is a great example of systems thinking, brand development, franchise business development, data collection and sustainable design and technology.

Sarvajal distributes clean water using local franchises/entrepreneurs. These franchises pay for the filtration unit and operate these units in their villages. The filtration unit cleans the water using reverse osmosis and ultraviolet rays and is equipped with a monitoring device or ‘Soochak’.

The ‘Soochak’ Controller tracks or monitors all the water produced by the franchises by sending SMS’s about the quality of the water to a central Sarvajal location. All the water dispensers or water ATM’s as they are being called are connected using the phone network. Customers get access to clean water by using pre – paid cards and can charge their cards using their mobile phones. This also allows Sarvajal to collect data about water consumption by customers. Some of the smaller ATM’s are solar charged.

The enterprise management system used by Sarvajal is a platform for real time analyses of data received using the ‘Soochak’ and the RFID water ATM system. The data thus collected can be shared widely to get a clear picture of how to reach the rural and urban water consumers as well as understanding clean water consumption and health.

There are close to 127 facilities in India now serving 70,000 people and the service is gradually increasing. The presence of their logo – a blue drop is supposedly synchronous with clean drinking water. The novel business idea sells to individual rural household and uses them as a connection to the rest of the community. Innovative technology forms the back bone of this system – embedded sensors, user friendly interface and RFID prepaid cards are some of the highlights that have helped distribute water, connect people and collect data as a part of the service. As innovative technologies and business models start taking hold of the rural Indian market, leapfrogging into the future seems all the more a reality and less of a dream.

Related links
Stories from Sarvajal Turf
Inhabitat article on Sarvajal
Beyond Profile Article on Sarvajal
Fastcompany article on Sarvajal

There are close to 850 million mobile subscribers in India. Mobile penetration in India is increasing every day but that does not come as a surprise. In the past we have looked into successes like Just Dial geared towards the urban Indian and innovations like MKrishi geared towards India’s rural population. We have also covered the use of mobile as a way to disperse the news in ‘Gaon ki Awaz’ and other initiatives like Movirtu that provide mobile services to people without a mobile phone.

Mobile innovation is not new to India and the developing world, and it is taking a life of its own now.  Mobile technology is personal, ubiquitous and ever-present. It can host radio shows, be used for education, control equipment remotely, move money from one place to another and start revolutions. Redefinition of these capabilities have to led to mobile and telecom sector giants like Nokia, Samsung and Mahendra to organize mobile contests in the country to get the youth thinking about mobile innovation and design.

Bhasha 2011 is a collaborative project between Nokia Research Center and four design colleges in India and is aimed to help the young Indians get more exposure to their native languages. With increasing number of young urban Indians choosing English over their vernacular tongue, this initiative is addressing a problem that needs a solution. Getting students to design such solutions is a great way of getting them solve a problem that they are aware of and identify with. This is also a great segway for the young designers to design for technology early on.

There are a couple of interesting ideas seem to come out in the process. One of them being ‘Pitara’ by Bangalore based students from Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology. The application is a continuously growing repository of stories in vernacular languages with a bilingual dictionary functionality to decipher the stories. The idea is to learn languages through stories and contribute your own.

‘Kaccha Limbu’ by another group of students from Shristi, allows migrant students to learn languages of the state they are going to be moving to, to complete their studies. They are guided by three virtual assistants that guide, correct and quiz the students as they move towards learning the language.

‘Vijeta’ is a location based social network game. The player arrives in a new territory and visits different location and people to learn new words and find his way around.

Vijeta

50 teams belonging to top design schools like Shristi School of Art, Design and Technology, National Institute to Design, Indian Institute of Technology and Symbiosis Institute of Design took part in this initiative.

Nokia had also organized the ‘Calling all Innovator Contest’ a couple of years back.   Couple of other interesting ideas that came out of that contest were the Nano Ganesh – an application that enables farmers to check availability of power to their irrigation systems. Similar to Nano Ganesh, Bangalore based Vinifet Technologies developed Kisan Raja a GSM based controller that allows farmers to control irrigation pumps using mobile phones or handsets. An IVRS (Interactive Voice Response System) in local languages helps in making selections for switching the motors on or off. Farmers also receive voice alerts for faulty power supplies, motors that do not start, lack of water in the well/bore, and attempts at device/motor theft. This project won the first runners up for the Samsung Innovation Quotient, which is a national talent hunt to recognize innovators from all parts of India.

Another concept that won the National Telecom Award for ‘Excellence in innovation with Rural Telecom Focus’ was Saral Rozgar. Saral Rozgar links job seekers and job providers through a common database that can be easily accessed through mobile phones. All the features for the application are voice activated in various languages which allows the workers in the informal sector of India access to the service. This the first time that industrial, part time and daily/weekly wage workers in the informal sector can access organized information about employment opportunities.

Another initiative by the veterans of Salesforce and Apple that caught my eye was mpowering. Mpowering works like foursquare where is low incoming communities are given mobile phones. If their children check into places like a ‘school’ by scanning a barcode, the family gets points which can later be exchanged for household goods, clothes and food. The organization partners with non profits in poor communities and tries to pull people out of poverty by using a rewards system. The idea is to get the poor to think about long term goals and not just short term necessities. The project is already doing good work in Orissa in partnership with Citta foundation.

As mobile penetration in India increases, more and more services are being developed for mobile distribution. The time is ripe for using mobile platforms to deliver a variety of services that include education, healthcare, agriculture, journalism, way-finding etc. Things that smart phone owners take for granted can create huge shifts in the lives of rural and BOP population in developing nations. The challenge is to develop these services for cheap feature phones and not just smart phones so that a larger user base can avail the services that these devices are capable of delivering and thereby facilitate large scale social change.

Additional Links

Learn local lingo using a mobile application

Green Phone and Nano Ganesh

Annual India report for Mobile innovation 2011

Fastcompany article on Mpowering

Mobile apps in rural India

Nokia’s idea project

Local language learning goes mobile

The new ATM machine that was recently prototyped by NCR truly disrupts the ATM space. The machine which is being called the ‘Pillar’ (since it looks like one) is probably the only ATM machine which can be used by people who are illiterate and cannot read or write.

For starters, the ATM does not have a screen display or a ATM card needed to use it. It showcases a fingerprint biometric sensor, preset cash buttons, a cash dispenser and a receipt printer. Even though receipts cannot be read by the illiterate population, it serves the function of reassuring the user that the transaction is complete.

The Pillar

The ATM machine is inspired by the shape of post boxes in India. It is a system that people have grown to rely upon. The ATM is ideally designed for the rural population in India and China. The shape lends itself to a few security features. The cylindrical shape minimizes tampering with a crowbar and the cash box collapses in on itself if the ATM is compromised.

There is potential for reverse innovation here where this ATM is being tested in the US by a few select financial companies. The idea here is to use a mobile phone as a dislocated interface to carry on transactions at more advanced level. According to an article in Scientific American – ‘future designs could enable bank customers to conduct transactions via mobile phones with near field communication capabilities’.

One main hurdle for the ATM would be fingerprinting new customers. For now, NCR is looking at the regional bank branches to initiate the process. However this could be considered too intrusive a process for the Westerners. All these hurdles are considered small in the face of loan sharks who charge phenomenal interests for money borrowed or saved through them. An easy to use ATM and a basic introduction to financial services will make sure that the poor can be financially educated and self reliant.

This ATM machine also brings up the idea to simplify and standardize ATM’s world over to unify global financial networks. The machine design was created after extensive research was carried out in low income communities of Mumbai. The population there have very little understanding of traditional banking systems which makes the design even more disruptive and maybe even a bit innovative. For now one has to wait and watch how the ‘Pillar’ performs not only in rural India but also in the international markets.

Additional Links

Article in Fastcompany

Article in Scientific American

This is probably one of the first articles in Designwala that encompasses design thinking outside of India. It is tough to talk about design thinking in India without looking at what services and products Africa and China are creating. Design for the developing world cannot happen in isolation and as reverse innovation takes a hold in the present day market, we hope to surface more innovations from all around the world.

Today, I attended a brain storming session to give suggestions on market strategy for an extremely interesting product which is getting ready to be launched in African markets sometime later in the year. The product happens to be a low cost utility vehicle called Mobius. The price point of the vehicle is $6000 for now and the target demographic is middle income buyers within East Africa.

Mobius is interesting because the name itself is a representation of the mindset of the people it caters to. Local names were not chosen for this vehicle since locals have little regard for home brewed products and prefer western technology. The vehicle is a stripped down SUV meant for rural terrains. It has no air conditioning, power steering, or glass windows. The focus has shifted to other off the shelf systems such as engines, brakes and steering that is build around a tubular steel frame  Vehicle parts will be manufactured in India and China but will be made available locally. The dominant car company in Africa and particularly Kenya where Mobius will launch first, is Toyota. The Japanese parts are unavailable in Kenya making vehicles with faulty parts, unusable. Expensive SUV’s and the cheaper, smaller locally made vehicles both are no good at traversing the rugged African terrains which makes this rugged but low price SUV a very good investment to make.

Mobius is the brainchild of Joel Jackson, who I met with today at our brainstorm. He is also an echoing green fellow. He came upon the idea to create a vehicle for African hinterlands since he felt there was a need for it. He figured that the minivans and motorcycle rickshaws were totally unreliable and a sustainable, cheap solution would not only make these roads easily traversable but increase connectivity and empower entrepreneurs. The idea is also to build a service model to support the car which includes giving business advice and financing to local entrepreneurs. The ideas that floated around at the brainstorming session included creating more visibility for the vehicle by engaging viral social media tools as well as mass media communication. There was excitement around the forthcoming road trip that Joel is planning before the second model of the vehicle launches. There was also talk of reaching out to the local network of mechanics, create a kit of parts approach and have the mechanics demonstrate how this vehicle can be easily maintained.

I am excited to see where this ambitious project goes from here. Even though Mobius serves a totally different demographic, it is easy to draw a parallel with the affordable Tata Nano in India. The Nano opened to mixed reviews in India since it was an additional vehicle that the failing road infrastructure in India was being made to support. Mobius might be opening a different can of worms but for now, it seems like a very well thought out idea to me.

Additional Articles

Mobius in fastcompany

I recently stumbled on an initiative called the ‘Design Clinic Scheme’ while doing research on the internet for an entirely different project. The government of India is spending close to Rs 73.58 crores to create design intervention and bring design awareness to the enterprises in the country that need it the most. The initiative that was put in motion by the Ministry of MSME (micro, small and medium scale enterprises) in 2008 was inaugurated last year in Delhi. The micro, small and medium scale industries are one of the largest employers in the country. However, because of lack of innovation and investment, they are not adding any real value to the nations economy like the other high end sectors (technology for instance). This initiative was put into place to address that issue. The official memorandum for the scheme states in its introduction section -

” The Government has decided to implement the Design Clinic Scheme for Design Expertise to Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) sector as part of National Manufacturing Competitiveness Program (NMCP) during the 11th Plan Period. The object of the Design Clinic is to enhance industry understanding and application of design and innovation and to promote design as a value adding activity and integrate it into mainstream business and industrial processes of MSME’s.”

Design in India has for long been the privilege of the rich and corporate. This  scheme facilitates design for the small enterprises that accounts for 40 percent of the nations GDP. It also gives an opportunity to the designers to work towards creating change that can mobilize an entire industry. That said, there is still cynicism regarding how the partnership between the government, MSME’s and the designers will pan out financially and operationally.

As per the press release on the NID website – The scheme targets to reach out to about 200 MSME clusters over the next two and half years. This will be achieved through organization of about 200 design sensitization seminars, 200 Design Clinic Workshops and 400 design projects including 100 student design projects (final year thesis projects).

NID (National Institute of Design), Ahmedabad is assisting the Ministry of MSME with the implementation of the scheme. Regional centers are being set up all of the country for maximum outreach. The Design Clinic Scheme is divided into three parts.

1. Design Sensitization Seminars – These seminars will create awareness about design methods with respect to MSME’s

2. Design Awareness programs – These programs include design research to gain a better understanding of the MSME’s by the designers. Followed by participatory workshop activities involving designers and MSME’s to gain deeper insights by creating an interactive problem solving environment. The insights will provide an initial segway into the first level of design solutions/projects.

3. Design Projects – On gaining an overview of impact of design on their business, the MSME’s submit project proposals to the Design Clinic Zonal office for final approval. They may apply with a design consultant, or design firms and independent consultants will be made available as service providers for design inputs at various levels.

As per an article in DNA India – ‘The DCS, supported by the ministry of MSME, conducted 129 design awareness seminars and several orientation programs and design workshops. A total of 336 design consultants, 131 design firms, 18 design institutes, 95 students, 136 MSME associations, 371 MSME units and 14 government organizations registered under the project’.

There is a huge opportunity in this sector for designers however there are concerns ranging from how the financial aspect of the program will work to the implementation of the designs created by the designers. There has also be discussion around articulating the framework of design deliverables since design intervention has a learning curve and the returns on revenue might not be that instant. There is a requirement to set expectations in that regard.

That said, designers are creative thinkers. They have an excellent understanding of the problem from a user perspective.  They understand manufacturing constraints,  provide holistic solutions and are aesthetically minded, all of which are much needed requirements for any successful small business.

I have been guilty of undermining the Indian government more than once for their total lack of innovative thinking especially when it comes to design and small scale industries in India.  I, for one have been utterly silenced and pleasantly surprised by this turn of events. Recently a bunch of successful designs from the scheme were showcased through an exhibition held by the MSME’s. I hope this trend continues and there are many more such design exhibitions to write and discuss about.

Additional Links

About the Design Clinic Scheme – NID

Design Clinic Orientation Program in Delhi

Design Clinic Guidelines

Design Clinic Scheme Website

India’s poverty line is sometimes called the ‘starvation line’ since this income based poverty line considers the bare minimum income to provide food and does not account for education and healthcare. An income of less than a dollar per person per day is defined as extreme poverty internationally. By that estimate, 40% of the Indians are considered below the poverty line.

Below Poverty Line is an economic benchmark and poverty threshold used by the government of India to indicate economic disadvantage and to identify individuals and households in need of government assistance and aid. [via wikipedia]. Based on the parameters set by the Central government, the BPL card defines the poorest of the poor in the country, identifies them and makes them eligible for the the benefits  announced by the Central and State agencies.

This BPL Census 2011 for rural areas will start this month in some states. The government had come under criticism for the actual design of the census after the 2002 census. The 2002 questionnaire included questions on the number of meals one ate each day and the number of saris owned: you got into the BPL category only if you ate a meal once a day, or owned one sari. These questions have now been removed.

A complete analysis done by the National Family Health Survey of 2005/2006 had showed that BPL cards were issued to large sections of people who were actually not that poor. The cards were distributed by a company called Comet Technologies which was outsourced the task of BPL distribution in 2006. By 2011, the financial burden on the government increased by Rs 80 crores to Rs 100 crore a month since 44 percent of the total 60 million BPL cards are with households that did not need them.

The 2002 BPL questionnaire had 13 questions, each with a score of 0-4. The total score ranged from 0 to 52 with 0 denoting the most poor. The 2011 questionnaire has only seven questions. It has a 0-7 score, with seven denoting the most poor. This years questionnaire also includes an automatic inclusion and exclusion category along with the ranking criteria.

Excerpts from the article in ‘The Hindu’ by Brinda Karat that explains the uselessness of the exclusion and inclusion criteria to ascertain poverty in order to be eligible for a BPL card.

Exclusion criteria

“The list “automatically excludes peasants with 2.5 acres of irrigated land who own a tubewell.” With hugely fluctuating incomes, large debt burdens on poor peasant households, vagaries of the weather, droughts or floods, such automatic exclusion would amount to meting out grave injustice to a large section of rural India “ [ Increasing number of farmer suicides in India are a stark depiction of this fact]

“Another questionable exclusion is that of a household with “a non-agricultural enterprise registered with the government.” Even micro-enterprises run by women’s self-help groups, for example, are registered with the government. So are many others, and why should they be automatically excluded?”

Inclusion criteria

“Destitute people have been defined as those living on alms: they will be in the automatic inclusion list. But if, for example, a family of two senior citizens who are forced to work, say, four or five days a month just to survive, they will not be included as destitute as they do not “beg.”

“Others include “households without shelter, manual scavengers, primitive tribal groups, legally released bonded labourers.” Presumably, if the worker has run away from bondage he or she is not legally released and therefore does not deserve automatic inclusion.”

“Social categories such as Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, the disabled, widows, and casual manual workers are not automatically included.

Ranking

With such a narrow set of automatic inclusion criteria being applied, the large mass of the rural poor will be marked poor or non-poor through a ranking system. The questions are odd and have little connection with actual conditions. Suppose you are a tribal family of five members — Mina Usendi, aged 35, her mother aged 58, a 17-year-old boy and two polio-affected girls; owning half a bigha of agricultural land but doing manual work to survive. How would you be marked in the seven-point questionnaire that would make you eligible or ineligible for a BPL card?

Question 1: “Houses with one room with kutcha walls and roof.” Since within the small plot of land that you own, you have erected a kutcha house with a kutcha roof with two small rooms (not one), on the first question you will score zero.

Question 2: “Household with no adult member between age 16 to 59.” Since you are 35 years old and therefore an adult, on the second question also you score zero.

Question 3: “Female headed family with no adult male member between age 16 to 59.” Although you are a woman, and you head your family, since your eldest child is a 17-year-old boy, you will get a zero rank.

Question 4: “Household with any disabled member and no able bodied member.” You have two children who are disabled, affected by polio. But since you are able-bodied you get zero on this question.

Question 5: “SC/ST households.” Since you are a tribal, you will get the score one on this marker.

Question 6: “Households with no literate adult above 25 years.” Since you are 35 years old and have studied up to Class 4, you are literate and therefore will again get a zero.

Question 7: “Landless households deriving the major part of their income from manual casual labour.” Since you own half a bigha of land, even if it is dry and unproductive, even though you work from morning to night as a casual manual worker, you will still get a zero.

Therefore, someone like Mina Usendi, a tribal woman heading a family, who depends on casual manual labour to survive, will get just one point on a score of seven.

This is just one example of how the method of ranking and also the questionnaire are bound to ensure that only a small percentage of the poor can score the highest or near-highest marks. It is like trying to distinguish between the ‘poor,’ ‘very poor,’ ‘very very poor,’ ‘extremely poor,’ and so on. This is the classic manner in which neoliberal policymakers make poverty “disappear.” You are no longer poor, because you are not as poor as the poorest of the poor!

This a two fold mess to clean. One revolves around making sure that eligible people get the card and bribery is curbed, and the other one deals with making sure that the criteria to define eligibility is well designed and deserving people are not excluded because of a erroneous census methodology. This will surely be the UPA governments ticket into next years Lok Sabha election and one can only hope they do better this time.

A video from the Video Volunteers on You Tube exposing the corruption within the BPL system

As the buying power of the Indian consumer grows in the coming years, it is time that they start making educated choices about what they are consuming. The market is flooded with products from all kinds of producers that clumps mass produced industry made products with the ones produced by the fast dwindling race of artisans and craft persons. A lot of the products made by artisans are sold by middlemen who raise the prices of handmade items. So even though we might pick up those handcrafted chai cups thinking that the handsome sum we are putting down is going to  somehow reach the potter who so deftly whipped up the these cups, it will essentially land up in some oily middleman’s pocket.

Here is where we look for the items with fair trade certification. Fair trade is a social movement that promotes paying fair prices to the artisans and farmers or simply the maker of the goods and reinforces good and safe working environment and sustainable trading practices. It also kicks out the oily middlemen. The International Resources for Fairer Trade (IRFT) is a non profit organization that was founded in India in 1995. IRFT gives farmers and artisans direct access to the mainstream market. They set up an Not for Profit company called Shop for Change in collaboration with Traidcraft Exchange from the UK. Shop for Change has four main functions – certification, business services, producer services and awareness raising. The Shop for Change Mark means that when you buy a product with that certified mark, the product is ethically and environmentally sourced and the farmer or the artisan is receiving a fairer deal for the product.

Fair Trade is a concept that is well known to the western consumers but is picking up slowly but surely in India. Recently the entire cast and crew of a Bollywood movie called “Turning 30” pledged their support to fair trade and have been seen in the recent weeks wearing ‘Turning 30′ T-Shirts made from Shop for Change Fair Trade certified cotton. Globally consumers spent $4.1 billion on Fair Trade products in 2008. Fair trade has a ready market in India with its huge unorganized sector where even small retailers can make use of this system and get just returns. Corporation in India are looking at Fair trade and the possibilities that it creates. IRFT already has brand partners like Levis Strauss, Nike, Marks and Spencer, Reebok and Burberry. The most recent campaign by IRFT and Shop for Change, with a NGO in Netherlands called Hivos is the Pro Sustain campaign that shows business houses the profitability of buying Fair Trade both for its internal use as well as retail.

The first fair Shop for Change product was cotton and clothes designed from it by designer Anita Dongre. Then in November 2010, fair trade mango, cashew nuts and amla products were also introduced. The other organization that swears by fair trade are the blind weavers of Grameen Shramik Pratishthan in Latur. They made Rs 1,03,000 in the Kala Ghoda festival in five days versus two months they would ordinarily take to make that amount of money. Design shops like Baaya Design Studio that creates home decor items from folk art and crafts for urban buyers also use the Fair Trade label since it conveys their social agenda and pricing to the consumers without further explanation.

In a country with such a rich legacy of indigenous products and one of the fastest growing economies and buying power, Fair Trade is an inevitable trade practice. Even though there is an active criticism of fair trade as a practice that impedes growth and doesn’t adequately challenge the current trading system, it is a system with its own ideals and principles and we can see atleast the Indians nodding in unison to affirm the fact that we need Indian artisans and farmers to get their share and prosper in national and international markets sooner than later.

Shop for Change Blog

A big percentage of indian village population is illiterate. Traditional mode  of transmitting news like newspapers are not effective for that demographic. Television as a medium to disseminate news are not effective in villages either because of unreliable electricity as well as the cost behind purchasing a TV unit. Transistor radios have been a cheap and accessible way of news dissemination for a long time now. However with mobile technology making its way into the heartlands of rural india, a project like Gaon Ki Awaaz was waiting to happen. Gaon Ki Awaaz is India’s first mobile news service. The service targets rural india.

The reports are transmitted in the local dialect which is Avhadi. The subscribers need to answer their phones in order to hear pre-recorded news messages. The news is related to local events happening around the village or villages close by, making the information relevant to the subscriber. Subject matter for the broadcasts can include other useful information like farming tips, healthcamps and government announcements etc. A news bulletin like this would hold the villagers attention and inform them about the happenings in and around their village.

The news is broadcast twice a day, at noon and 5pm. The village reporters record the bulletins which makes it way to the local editor and is then converted by the founder of the service into .wav files. These files are then sent to Netxcell, a company in Hyderabad for broadcast. The file is then sent out to the numbers of the subscribed villagers in the database.

The program is available to the villages at a nominal subscription cost of Rs 30 for three months. The other costs being MMS equipped phones for the two reporters and the local editor that cost about $100 each and the monthly broadcast fee. The number of users is over 250 subscribers and has spread over 20 villages. The project was launched by Sunil Saxena who is also the dean of International Media Institute of India and Satyendra Pratap, a journalist from Rampur.

The service is trying to bring in some revenue by using advertising which will be played in the beginning of the transmission. The plan is to start local advertising from agricultural companies and services that could actually benefit the user in the long run. According to the Gaon Ki Awaaz blog, the local village barber, tailor, internet cafe operator, coaching center owner and the village astrologer have advertised their services. In the true spirit of present day technologies the future plan is to make this service interactive by allowing the subscribers to not only receive news but also submit news updates. These updates would be then vetted by local editors and then added in to the reports. The idea is to enable the villagers to create an ecosystem of citizen reporting and generate reports relevant to them.

Recently Gaon Ki Awaaz was awarded the Manthan 2010 award in the e-news and media category. The project also won the mBillionth South Asia award in m-News and Journalism category last year. The future plans for the service include creating a self sustaining model and scaling this social venture by raising more capital to gear up for rapid growth to reach millions of villagers.

Also check out how ‘Gaon Ki Awaz’ is produced – Video

The past decade has seen a lot of work being done in the arena of development of mobile applications in the developing nations. A lot of them include mobile banking, inventories for agricultural products, education, healthcare etc. There has been extensive mobile phone penetration in places like India, parts of Africa, China, and a lot of South American nations.  A lot of developers and stakeholders in the mobile industry are creating applications for the base of the pyramid users, taking for granted the affordability of mobile handsets and SIM’s by the BOP users. Statistics show that very few BOP users can afford mobile technology. Since mobile and wireless communication makes it so easy for people to communicate and bank even in places that are secluded and far flung, It doesn’t come as a surprise that an innovative startup has thought of a solution to make mobile communication available to BOP users. The initiative is called Movirtu.

As described on the Movirtu website – Movirtu provides innovative mobile technology and business models to wireless telecommunication service providers servicing rural poor communities in Sub-Sahara Africa and South Asia to help them realize shared access to basic mobile phone services at a much lower cost than has been achieved before. Although we are a for-profit enterprise, the company has an underlying social mission: To expand the use of mobile communication by the rural poor communities in Sub-Sahara Africa and South Asia living on less than $2 a day to improve their sustainable livelihoods and help alleviate poverty.

User flow for movirtu

Movirtu is developing a series of patent pending products that would enable shared access to basic mobile services for people earning less that $2 a day. For one such application called MXShare, Movirtu partnered with frog design to create a virtual mobile phone system to enable people who can’t afford to buy handsets to call, receive calls and text message using other peoples phones or pay phones. This mode of communication was being followed in the past using SIM cards. The call maker would borrow the phone and simply replace the SIM in order to see his/her contact list and make the call. This involved taking the phone apart and caused both the lender and borrower some amount of discomfort. The SIM’s were also easy to lose and only the person who was carrying it was able to use it, not the whole family.

MXShare is based on similar behavior type of borrowing other peoples phones to make calls. In the case of MXShare, all the information is stored virtually in a telecom cloud and can be accessed by the user by logging into his/her account using a code or a password. This doesn’t require any SIM cards. Frog design was responsible for doing user research and experience design for the product. Extensive research was conducted in Kibera in Kenya where people were interviewed to gather observations to know how people lived and used technology. The technology was well received and everyone was very excited about it. The challenge was coming up with the right nomenclature where the designers decided to go with the established universal language.

‘Cloud Phone’  as it is being called now is being compared to cloud based webmail or google voice. Accessing the cloud costs the subscribers 10 to 20 cents a call. Compared to a $25 dollar handset and a $12 SIM card, the Movirtu solution is affordable for users earning $2 a day or less.

Recently Movirtu raised $5.5 million dollars for expansion in a Series A round of financing. The funding will allow Movirtu to expand to newer markets and help its goal of reaching 4 million users by 2013.

Nigel Waller, the Founder and CEO of Movirtu who is also the POPTECH Social Innovation Fellow explains the step by step functioning of MXShare  -

Movirtu Fact Sheet