Made-in-India digital paper goes global

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS:  Aishwarya Ratan, 30, is an unusual technology innovator. This economist-turned-social researcher, while working for Microsoft Research in India developed an easy-to-use digital paper system that is now helping hundreds of women-run self help micro finance groups to join the global digital networks despite sticking to their handwritten accounting process.

Ratan, one of the member of the elite TR 35 young innovators club in 2011, talked about her efforts to make the traditional account keeping methods of women in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh in tune with the modern trends. She was presenting her work at the 11th EmTech annual conference organized by Technology Review at the new, swank MIT Media Labs facility here.

The women now continue their normal accounting of their group’s financial transaction in a digital paper specially devised for them.

The underlying software converts the records accurately into digital versions compatible with the currently available accounting system. Field trials have indicated 100 percent accuracy of recording keeping from these handwritten notes.

The work impressed the world so much that Ratan has now joined Yale University as the director of its Microsavings and Payments Innovation Initiative few weeks ago. Yale University, through this program, is looking at ways to use all types of technologies that can help in the transformation of poor people around the world in to savvy financial experts and improve their lives.

Ratan is an example of the democratization of the global innovation process. As Prof Andrew McAfee at MIT’s Sloan School Management and a historian of technology, pointed out during this talk at EmTech, the traditional innovation model is undergoing tremendous changes. He said the 20th century model of companies hiring the best minds of universities and locating them under a single roof to create new things for the world is changing.

In the current, interconnected world, technology innovation is happening 24X7 in campuses, institutions and homes around the world. Among the 20 TR 35 presented on the first day of EmTech conference was a fair mingling of innovators of Indian, Italian, African, Chinese origin. “Our TR 35 list this year is a reflection of this changing global reality in the innovation landscape,” said Technology Review Chief Editor Jason Pontin.

In fact, he said policy makers in the US had to take note of this changing reality. He was critical of the US government policy that denied the visa to the lone TR 35 member, Umar Saif, from Pakistan to present his innovative use of mobile texting technology to spread the use of internet. “How can a nation that prides on being the most creative hotspot for technological developments block the entry of one of the most exciting young innovators in the world?” he lamented.

©Technology Review