Technology twists for rural India

Your company has been noted for exemplary innovation around technology’s application in rural India. Can you share some highlights, lessons and challenges?

Being in rural financiang, one important factor for us is taking care of transparency, trust etc which is tough in these settings. We use technology to  create that bridge and be closer to the customer. Being available to the customer is very important, and so is technology’s positioning for them.

Do you add some creativity from your side to already available solutions?

We have a mobile device for collections but ours is a multi-lingual one with astro-applications. This is what we identified, would make our customers click. Now people are requesting for more Astro-related stuff. In a rural setting, the mindset is different and so the connect should take care of their unique needs, which are often inclined towards emotional side rather than a rational/practical one. Biometrics for thumb impressions, signature verification, document scanning, voice recognition etc are good. But ‘digitised’ is still a far away thing for our villages. There are many things that are alien and therefore suspicious or intimidating to rural folks. You have to smartly convince them, sensitise them.

So technology has to be tweaked at times?

It’s all about applying technology smartly with an emotional Indian touch. Like the time that they get SMS can’t be the same as for urban folks. Rural India rises early, sleeps early and works differently. I had to manage a discipline with my ISP partners and servers to send SMSs to this segment accordingly. They also have questions like – Would I be charged for the SMS I receive? When rural women want mobiles, they want to talk to only their relatives or to only receive calls.

Do you believe push-tactics work for rural India?

Technology, honestly still has to go a along way when it comes to connecting in rural India. Because we don’t have products uniquely designed for them. Just because we have or are used to laptops, doesn’t mean we try to push that to a rural village layman. The infrastructure, to add, is very standard.

What’s your agenda next then?

Now we are trying to take technology beyond the customer. So that we are able to connect and cover customer’s family.