Tenet designs ATMs for rural India

CHENNAI: Where an ATM generally costs Rs eight lakh, here is an ATM for just Rs 40,000 developed by the lab of TeNeT (Telecom and Networks) Group, Department of Electrical Engineering of IIT Madras. In association with the ICICI bank, TeNeT has specially designed ATMs for the rural villages.

The prototype testing will happen this month. Currently, only withdrawal of money can be done through these ATMs, though in the coming phase there will be additional features.

Since the ATM is being exclusively targeted towards the rural community, where transactions don't happen in thousands, according to sources in TeNeT, this ATM will have withdrawal at lower denomination notes only. The ATM comes with sensors, which can detect if there is any note stuck, if so it aborts it and restarts the transaction.

Since the villagers would find it difficult to remember the PIN, the ATM comes with a web camera and thumb impression device, which will authenticate the person. These ATMs will be installed at the already existing Internet kiosks, operated by n-Logue Communication, an incubation company of TeNeT.

Still in the pipeline, is to give credit card to the Internet kiosk operator in every village so that he can do online booking of railway tickets for the villagers.

(CyberMedia News Service)