Inside Nachiket Mor’s Healthcare Laboratory
Nurses instead of doctors, software solutions instead of human judgement. This is the ex-banker’s radical premise to reconfigure primary healthcare in rural areas. M Rajshekhar checks out a pilot in a Tamil Nadu village.
Source: Economic Times, Kolkata Edition, March 18, 2011.
Nachiket Mor has been a banker half his life. He’s crafted new models to deliver financial services to villages. Yet, he is as comfortable talking about lipid-profile tests as liquid funds. Lately, though, he’s been listening a lot, to doctor-patient conversations at Karambayam, a village of about 3,000 people in Tamil Nadu’s Thanjavur district.
Karambayam is the site for one of the two healthcare clinics set up by Mor and his 30-member team to reconfigure primary-healthcare delivery in rural areas. It’s far removed from his life four years ago, when he was tipped to succeed KV Kamath at ICICI Bank. On leaving the bank in 2007, he moved to the ICICI Foundation to work on rural development. Last September, he left the foundation to take charge of ‘SughaVazhvu’ (happy life in Tamil).
SughaVazhvu is testing a radical idea: can technology replace doctors with nurses, human judgement with software solutions? “It is difficult to expect doctors to stay in villages,” explains Mor. “So, we are asking if a combination of technology and a reasonable amount of training (to local nurses), under the supervision of a doctor, can deliver superior outcomes.”
SughaVazhvu bears the imprimatur of Mor in its conception and design. By the end of his ICICI Bank stint, says a former colleague, Mor was seen as an “idea factory” without the ability to execute. “He once wanted to open 15,000 vocational training centres. We opened none,” says the ex-colleague.
“He over-promises, maybe because he is in a hurry to do something great.” As such, studying SughaVazhvu — the ailments it has diagnosed in rural healthcare and the cures it has been testing since November 2009 — is also a good way to reappraise Mor.
The clinic in Karambayam is a two roomsand-a-porch affair. On the porch lie three benches and some potted plants. The first of the two cream-coloured rooms inside is rimmed with paraphernalia for diagnostic tests. The second room is where the nurse and doctor meet patients.
As primary health centres (PHCs) go, it’s well-stocked. Most government PHCs remain dysfunctional, crippled by an absence of doctors, medicines, equipment and medical records. “Doctors make their diagnosis more on the basis of judgement than data,” says Zeena Johar, president of ICICI Knowledge Park’s Centre for Technologies in Public Health (ICTPH).
Then, while chronic diseases like diabetes are widespread, the equipment for spotting and treating them is missing at the PHCs. As are essentials like eye-care and dental. Mor, who is a member on the Planning Commission’s National Commission for Universal Healthcare, says 95% of healthcare needs can be met at PHCs.
“The PHC should deliver ‘managed healthcare’ — tracking an individual’s health indicators over her life — and direct her to secondary, tertiary and home care as needed.” He thinks technology, arranged and harnessed intelligently, can be the answer.
So, SughaVazhvu monitors the health of the people of Karambayam and Alakkudi — the other village where it has a centre. At the outset, it asks villagers extensively about their medical history, through a standard questionnaire. The objective is two-fold: one, when a patient makes a repeat visit, their symptoms can be seen in conjunction with their medical history. Two, a person’s health can be tracked continuously.
SughaVazhvu is also testing if technology can help address the shortage of doctors. It is testing a nurse-managed, doctor-supervised model, pumped by technology and protocols. “Medicine is driven by rules,” says Johar, a PhD in molecular diagnostics and biochemistry. SughaVazhvu relies on three sets of protocols. The first captures a patient’s medical information. The second codifies how the tests are to be conducted. The third helps with diagnosis of 20 common ailments, including upper respiratory infections, gastro-intestinal problems, diabetes and hypertension.
When a patient comes to SughaVazhvu, the nurse feeds the person’s symptoms into the computer. The software views the symptoms in conjunction with the patient’s medical history, and recommends diagnostic tests. If the diagnosis is confirmed, the treatment recommended is validated by a doctor and administered. If not, the nurse refers the patient to a doctor. This model, claims Mor, reduces the need for a doctor. The Medical Council of India mandates one doctor for every PHC. SughaVazhvu has asked the council to allow one doctor to supervise 5-20 centres. “80% of diseases can be dealt through protocols,” says Johar. Dr T Sundararaman, who runs the National State Health Resource Centre, which advises the Central and state governments on the National Rural Health Mission, is unsure. “At a couple of levels, this (SughaVazhvu) is very simplistic,” he says. “Diagnosis involves pattern recognition. I’m not sure you can replace judgement with a database.” He doesn’t think technology will make the difference. “Trained nurses will.”
Sundararaman also warns about the power and politics in healthcare. “When you are doing pilots, everything is fine. The opposition starts when you try to scale up,” he says. “Political boundaries have to be scaled.”
These are still early days for SughaVazhvu. It doesn’t have concrete answers on the model or its funding. Each centre entails a capital cost of 5.5 lakh and a running cost of 70,000 per month. ICTPH is funding the entire amount. When it was free, the Alakkudi centre was seeing 120 patients a day. When it started charging 50 per visit, hardly anyone came. It has since reduced the fee to 15, and now sees about 10 patients a day. What makes finding answers tougher is the state chosen for the pilots — Tamil Nadu.
Mor says Tamil Nadu was chosen because its healthcare set-up is good enough to experiment with next-generation questions. But it also means SughaVazhvu is competing with a good, and free public health system. Further, villagers have not grasped SughaVazhvu’s USP: healthcare management.
At the Alakkudi centre, Dr Chitra Ramaswamy says the below-poverty-line (BPL) households first go to the government PHC, but come to SughaVazhvu if they are not cured. The rich come to SughaVazhvu first, but go to Thanjavur if dissatisfied.
SughaVazhvu resembles the rural banking pilots of Kshetriya Gramin Financial Services (KGFS), another pilot mentored by Mor. Both seek to replace, to some extent, tacit knowledge with protocols.
Says an industry peer who has seen Mor from close: “Nachiket has managed to create a team that complements him better. That was not the case in ICICI.” Also, he says, Mor is spending more time in the field — that too in a limited geography thinking about a limited set of issues. “I see a lot more grounded ideas.”
Unlike KGFS, Mor doesn’t see SughaVazhvu being scaled up. “We just want to try different permutations and combinations,” he says. The plan is to set up five clinics, all funded by ICTPH, and leave it at that, but discover, perhaps, answers that help reconfigure how primary healthcare is delivered to rural India.
It is difficult to expect doctors to stay in villages. So, we are asking if a combination of technology and a reasonable amount of training (to local nurses), under the supervision of a doctor, can deliver superior outcomes
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
video case on bottom of the pyramid made by IIMC students
Shabad Pratihast and David Rousseau, PGP-2 students at IIM Calcutta have made this wonderful video case on bottom of pyramid titled, " View from the bottom" which depicts the challenges in the life of a poor contract worker.Here are the links to the videos:
1st part:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bo0fuWPXnA4
2nd part :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZdTwizScd0
1st part:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bo0fuWPXnA4
2nd part :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZdTwizScd0
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Young innovators give low-cost healthcare solutions
Source: http://www.dnaindia.com/bangalore/report_young-innovators-give-low-cost-healthcare-solutions_1480146
The challenge was to find noble, affordable and accessible healthcare solutions to millions of rural Indians and a group of young innovatorsproved that intelligent combination of science and technology can solve looming healthcare crises.
Ten teams from top engineering institutes came together on Friday to showcase innovative ideas pertaining to rural healthcare solutions at the campus of GE John F Welch Technology Centre at the Edison Challenge 2010.
Team Deja-BHU from Institute of Technology under Benaras Hindu Universitywon the first prize for creating a concept with the help of which paucity of doctors in rural areas could be solved. The team devised an adaptive, case-based screening technique ‘virtual doctor’ to reduce load on medical staff.
Teams IWANJAU from Sri Jayachamrajendra College of Engineering, Mysore, and New Age Innovators from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur, won the second and third prizes, respectively. The Employees’ Choice award was given to team Thinkers, again from IIT-Kharagpur.
While IWANJAU came up with an ‘infant warmer’, New Age Innovators created an ‘incubator’, both low-cost which could help in reducing the infant mortality rate.
Thinkers created a low-cost solution to diagnose tuberculosis with the help of a stethoscope to detect whether a person has tuberculosis by measuring the rate of his right lung.
All the innovations were given prizes worth Rs5,000.
Hundred teams across the country submitted their proposals for the Edison Challenge 2010. Ten teams made it to the finals. The finalists included five teams from IIT-Kharagpur, IIT-Mumbai, Institute of Technology under BHU, two teams from Sastra University, Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu, and Sri Jayachamrajendra College of Engineering from Mysore.
The theme of the third edition of science and engineering competition was ‘Enabling rural healthcare’. The teams were asked to provide noble technological solutions which are noble, affordable and accessible to be made available at public health centres in villages.
The winning team of the Edison Challenge 2010 received a cash prize of Rs5 lakh. Three major healthcare challenges — tuberculosis diagnosis, infant care solution and early screening for cardiovascular disease — faced by rural India were the subjects on which young technocrats tried to provide solution.
Among the criteria on which the teams were judged were innovation and novelty, feasibility of idea and customer value/commercialisation.
“I am highly impressed by the innovative solutions brought by the students here. All the participants are highly motivated,” said Dr AS Rao, director-innovations, Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A), who was one of the judges at the event.
“The area of affordable and accessible rural healthcare solutions is something bothering everyone. I am happy that young students have identified the problem areas and tried to bring some innovative solutions.”
The three other judges were Dr Uday Patil, consultant radiologist, Manipal Hospital, Bangalore, Dr Mano Manoharan, general manager, GE Global Research, and Karan Verma, manager, Maternal and Infant Care, GE Healthcare.
“The Edison Challenge this year is to design an innovative technological solution to address healthcare challenges faced in rural areas. We are also looking for innovative ideas,” said Manoharan.
“We are also giving a platform for youth to look at some of the real time issues of the country and provide solution through the help of science and technology.”
Rural healthcare is a serious issue the country is facing today. Most of the rural inhabitants of the country do not have accessible and affordable healthcare solutions.
At a time when 70% of the Indian population is staying in rural areas, only 20% of medicos are working in the country’s hinterland.
The challenge was to find noble, affordable and accessible healthcare solutions to millions of rural Indians and a group of young innovatorsproved that intelligent combination of science and technology can solve looming healthcare crises.
Ten teams from top engineering institutes came together on Friday to showcase innovative ideas pertaining to rural healthcare solutions at the campus of GE John F Welch Technology Centre at the Edison Challenge 2010.
Team Deja-BHU from Institute of Technology under Benaras Hindu Universitywon the first prize for creating a concept with the help of which paucity of doctors in rural areas could be solved. The team devised an adaptive, case-based screening technique ‘virtual doctor’ to reduce load on medical staff.
Teams IWANJAU from Sri Jayachamrajendra College of Engineering, Mysore, and New Age Innovators from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur, won the second and third prizes, respectively. The Employees’ Choice award was given to team Thinkers, again from IIT-Kharagpur.
While IWANJAU came up with an ‘infant warmer’, New Age Innovators created an ‘incubator’, both low-cost which could help in reducing the infant mortality rate.
Thinkers created a low-cost solution to diagnose tuberculosis with the help of a stethoscope to detect whether a person has tuberculosis by measuring the rate of his right lung.
All the innovations were given prizes worth Rs5,000.
Hundred teams across the country submitted their proposals for the Edison Challenge 2010. Ten teams made it to the finals. The finalists included five teams from IIT-Kharagpur, IIT-Mumbai, Institute of Technology under BHU, two teams from Sastra University, Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu, and Sri Jayachamrajendra College of Engineering from Mysore.
The theme of the third edition of science and engineering competition was ‘Enabling rural healthcare’. The teams were asked to provide noble technological solutions which are noble, affordable and accessible to be made available at public health centres in villages.
The winning team of the Edison Challenge 2010 received a cash prize of Rs5 lakh. Three major healthcare challenges — tuberculosis diagnosis, infant care solution and early screening for cardiovascular disease — faced by rural India were the subjects on which young technocrats tried to provide solution.
Among the criteria on which the teams were judged were innovation and novelty, feasibility of idea and customer value/commercialisation.
“I am highly impressed by the innovative solutions brought by the students here. All the participants are highly motivated,” said Dr AS Rao, director-innovations, Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A), who was one of the judges at the event.
“The area of affordable and accessible rural healthcare solutions is something bothering everyone. I am happy that young students have identified the problem areas and tried to bring some innovative solutions.”
The three other judges were Dr Uday Patil, consultant radiologist, Manipal Hospital, Bangalore, Dr Mano Manoharan, general manager, GE Global Research, and Karan Verma, manager, Maternal and Infant Care, GE Healthcare.
“The Edison Challenge this year is to design an innovative technological solution to address healthcare challenges faced in rural areas. We are also looking for innovative ideas,” said Manoharan.
“We are also giving a platform for youth to look at some of the real time issues of the country and provide solution through the help of science and technology.”
Rural healthcare is a serious issue the country is facing today. Most of the rural inhabitants of the country do not have accessible and affordable healthcare solutions.
At a time when 70% of the Indian population is staying in rural areas, only 20% of medicos are working in the country’s hinterland.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Mobile-Phone Farming from TCS
Source: http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052748703846604575447420497483404-lMyQjAxMTAwMDIwNzEyNDcyWj.html
Which pesticide will protect my crops?
It's a question most farmers in insect-ridden rural India ask themselves or their neighbors. But it's also a question to which very few have the correct answer.
What's the best fertilizer? How do you get rid of bugs? India's farmers long had only their neighbors to turn to. A mobile platform by Tata Consultancy Services is changing that, providing personalized advice through low-end handsets.
That was the inspiration behind mKRISHI, a platform developed by Tata Consultancy Services to provide personalized advice to Indian farmers on low-end mobile phones. TCS, an Asian Innovation Awards finalist, spent two years studying farming patterns in rural India and developing methods to connect farmers to agricultural experts, with the belief that technology could jump-start some of India's seemingly ancient agricultural practices.
"It appears that there is a last-mile gap between farmers and agricultural experts," said Arun Pande, the head of TCS Innovation Labs and the leader behind mKRISHI. "In the absence of correct information and advice which is specific to him, the farmer relies on what other farmers do—or on his traditional wisdom."
In 2007, Mr. Pande traveled through different parts of rural India to meet farmers and understand their business. After listening to their concerns—Will it rain enough in my village this season? Will my crop catch my neighbor's crop disease? Where can I take out a loan?—he saw the opportunity to grow that business by providing personalized responses to such questions.
"If one analyzes the questions, one finds them to be quite specific to a farmer's immediate environment and context," Mr. Pande said. "Hence, the information or advice given should be personalized to his need."
MKRISHI, whose name combines "m" for "mobile" and "krishi," which refers to agriculture in many Indian languages, costs a farmer between $1 and $2 a month. TCS partners with wireless operators to allow farmers to download the platform on high-end phones, and TCS has set up "mini-mobile sites" that farmers can visit to have the platform installed on low-end phones.
The platform's technology not only allows farmers to submit questions to experts, but also provides environment-specific details that give the experts a kind of agricultural map of the issue at hand. For example, when a farmer enters his location on mKRISHI, agricultural sensors connect to geo-location services like GPS and Google Earth to deliver local weather, soil conditions, common pests and food-grain prices to the expert on the other end. Farmers can also attach photos if they have mobile cameras.
"The mobile phone overcomes the lack of power and wire-line communication infrastructure in rural areas, enabling farmers to get advice one-on-one from experts," Mr. Pande said.
The experts, who have at least two years of agricultural study or experience, access mKRISHI on the Web, where each query is automatically assigned an identification number and an "Open" status. Six experts—two in Punjab and four in Uttar Pradesh—currently work on mKRISHI, but Mr. Pande said only 5% to 10% of questions are complex enough to merit consultation with an expert.
"We plan to provide expert system tools to agriculture workers to improve quality of their advice, and we provide FAQ and best practices on the farmer's mobile phone," Mr. Pande said. "This reduces the number of routine queries coming to the expert for response.
"Once the number of farmers and number of queries increase, we plan to involve agricultural workers with three to five years of field experience," he added.
Kamaldeep Singh, an expert since July 2009 and a research fellow at Punjab Agricultural University, works on mKRISHI on a daily basis. He calls the platform a "constant collaboration" between farmers and experts, rather than a one-time or one-way service.
"Whenever a question arrives, I answer it within six hours," Mr. Singh said. "Every day, I receive voice messages from farmers through the Internet."
TCS launched mKRISHI in 2009 in the agricultural states of Punjab and Uttar Pradesh, where it now serves about 500 farmers. But TCS believes at least 1,000 farmers benefit via the farmers' social networks.
"It is very much helpful if they use this practice collaboratively," said Mr. Singh. "If they have knowledge, they will go to pesticide sellers and tell them, 'That chemical we require; that one we do not require.'"
Still, it's still only the beginning for mKRISHI—a "limited commercial launch," Mr. Pande says. Eventually, TCS hopes to partner with other major IT companies "and generate thousands of micro enterprises in villages" serving 50,000 farmers. Besides improving the platform with new tools, TCS sees its responsibility as playing "the leadership role in creating a consortium of partners and facilitating village entrepreneurship," Mr. Pande said.
To that end, the 58-year-old entrepreneur hopes soon to take mKRISHI abroad. So far, TCS has been invited to the Philippines and Ghana to demonstrate the platform in local languages.
"Farmers should feel secure knowing that they can get in touch with an expert anytime, anywhere," Mr. Pande said.
Which pesticide will protect my crops?
It's a question most farmers in insect-ridden rural India ask themselves or their neighbors. But it's also a question to which very few have the correct answer.
What's the best fertilizer? How do you get rid of bugs? India's farmers long had only their neighbors to turn to. A mobile platform by Tata Consultancy Services is changing that, providing personalized advice through low-end handsets.
That was the inspiration behind mKRISHI, a platform developed by Tata Consultancy Services to provide personalized advice to Indian farmers on low-end mobile phones. TCS, an Asian Innovation Awards finalist, spent two years studying farming patterns in rural India and developing methods to connect farmers to agricultural experts, with the belief that technology could jump-start some of India's seemingly ancient agricultural practices.
"It appears that there is a last-mile gap between farmers and agricultural experts," said Arun Pande, the head of TCS Innovation Labs and the leader behind mKRISHI. "In the absence of correct information and advice which is specific to him, the farmer relies on what other farmers do—or on his traditional wisdom."
In 2007, Mr. Pande traveled through different parts of rural India to meet farmers and understand their business. After listening to their concerns—Will it rain enough in my village this season? Will my crop catch my neighbor's crop disease? Where can I take out a loan?—he saw the opportunity to grow that business by providing personalized responses to such questions.
"If one analyzes the questions, one finds them to be quite specific to a farmer's immediate environment and context," Mr. Pande said. "Hence, the information or advice given should be personalized to his need."
MKRISHI, whose name combines "m" for "mobile" and "krishi," which refers to agriculture in many Indian languages, costs a farmer between $1 and $2 a month. TCS partners with wireless operators to allow farmers to download the platform on high-end phones, and TCS has set up "mini-mobile sites" that farmers can visit to have the platform installed on low-end phones.
The platform's technology not only allows farmers to submit questions to experts, but also provides environment-specific details that give the experts a kind of agricultural map of the issue at hand. For example, when a farmer enters his location on mKRISHI, agricultural sensors connect to geo-location services like GPS and Google Earth to deliver local weather, soil conditions, common pests and food-grain prices to the expert on the other end. Farmers can also attach photos if they have mobile cameras.
"The mobile phone overcomes the lack of power and wire-line communication infrastructure in rural areas, enabling farmers to get advice one-on-one from experts," Mr. Pande said.
The experts, who have at least two years of agricultural study or experience, access mKRISHI on the Web, where each query is automatically assigned an identification number and an "Open" status. Six experts—two in Punjab and four in Uttar Pradesh—currently work on mKRISHI, but Mr. Pande said only 5% to 10% of questions are complex enough to merit consultation with an expert.
"We plan to provide expert system tools to agriculture workers to improve quality of their advice, and we provide FAQ and best practices on the farmer's mobile phone," Mr. Pande said. "This reduces the number of routine queries coming to the expert for response.
"Once the number of farmers and number of queries increase, we plan to involve agricultural workers with three to five years of field experience," he added.
Kamaldeep Singh, an expert since July 2009 and a research fellow at Punjab Agricultural University, works on mKRISHI on a daily basis. He calls the platform a "constant collaboration" between farmers and experts, rather than a one-time or one-way service.
"Whenever a question arrives, I answer it within six hours," Mr. Singh said. "Every day, I receive voice messages from farmers through the Internet."
TCS launched mKRISHI in 2009 in the agricultural states of Punjab and Uttar Pradesh, where it now serves about 500 farmers. But TCS believes at least 1,000 farmers benefit via the farmers' social networks.
"It is very much helpful if they use this practice collaboratively," said Mr. Singh. "If they have knowledge, they will go to pesticide sellers and tell them, 'That chemical we require; that one we do not require.'"
Still, it's still only the beginning for mKRISHI—a "limited commercial launch," Mr. Pande says. Eventually, TCS hopes to partner with other major IT companies "and generate thousands of micro enterprises in villages" serving 50,000 farmers. Besides improving the platform with new tools, TCS sees its responsibility as playing "the leadership role in creating a consortium of partners and facilitating village entrepreneurship," Mr. Pande said.
To that end, the 58-year-old entrepreneur hopes soon to take mKRISHI abroad. So far, TCS has been invited to the Philippines and Ghana to demonstrate the platform in local languages.
"Farmers should feel secure knowing that they can get in touch with an expert anytime, anywhere," Mr. Pande said.
Monday, October 4, 2010
Mobile Service Targets Cambodia's 'Unbanked'
Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703597204575484101756117656.html?mod=WSJ_article_related
How do you roll out a banking service in a place where most people don't have bank accounts?
Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. tackled that question in developing WING, a banking and payment system it launched in Cambodia early last year.
In Phnom Penh, said Peter Dalton, ANZ's general manager for innovation, it's not uncommon for workers to send money to relatives in rural areas via a taxi-bound courier, which is risky as well as expensive. The Melbourne, Australia, bank estimates that only about 500,000 of the country's 14 million population have bank accounts, but "there is a need for saving and sending money," he said.
In addition to "unbanked" consumers, there are the "underbanked"—those who have bank accounts but don't have ready access to them because branches and automated teller machines are rare in many parts of the country, Mr. Dalton said.
A large number of Cambodians do have cellphones, though. WING works on four of the country's major mobile networks—hello, qb, Mfone and Smart Mobile—via a simple interface. Customers enter their account numbers and personal identification numbers, then see a menu of options that includes checking their balances, paying bills and sending money.
To send money, they enter the recipient's WING account number, or if the funds are going to someone who doesn't have a WING account, the person's mobile-phone number. (Funds are tied to the WING account, not the phone, so a customer won't lose his money even if his phone is lost or stolen.)
Recipients are notified by a text message when the transfer is complete. ANZ charges about 50 cents to send the equivalent of $20, a notable savings when compared with the $1 to $2 that Cambodian couriers typically cost.
There are now some 150,000 WING accounts, and Mr. Dalton said he wouldn't be surprised to see the service reach 200,000 customers by early next year. ANZ hasn't set a target number, however, he said. "We love the growth rates that we have now."
WING customers can access their accounts and send money through their phones.
In addition to the technological challenges of creating a mobile-payment service, ANZ had to figure out a cost-effective way to introduce it "to people who have never seen this before," he said. To do that, the company enlisted a fleet of 1,800 "pilots," part-time workers who sign up new customers and teach them how WING works. They receive a commission for each new sign-up and help spread the word about the program, often at markets and other high-traffic areas.
"There comes a time when you need cash," Mr. Dalton acknowledged, and that's where WING's Cash X-Press comes in. About 500 outlets are located throughout Cambodia's 24 provinces, and there WING customers can deposit and receive money through the service.
The Cash X-Press outlets, like the WING pilots, are another way of marketing the service, but they also help keep its costs down because they serve many of the same functions as ATMs, which are more expensive to build and maintain.
ANZ, which is working with its ANZ Royal subsidiary in Cambodia, plans to extend WING to support more types of billing, such as electricity and water, for its customers, and it hopes to offer the ability to transfer funds in other currencies, such as dollars.
It is also interested in getting local employers signed up to use the service. Cambodia's garment industry, for example, still largely pays workers in cash, which results in long lines on paydays, Mr. Dalton said. Using WING would allow an employer to pay its work force much faster and with fewer opportunities for error.
In addition to tapping a growing mobile-payment market, Mr. Dalton said WING promotes business development and a stronger understanding of how money works among its user base, particularly when it comes to saving. It also gives customers in poor areas an alternative to informal couriers and loans, which often carry high fees and theft risks.
"We think this is a service that encourages both economic and social development," he said. "You can actually generate more healthy economies."
How do you roll out a banking service in a place where most people don't have bank accounts?
Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. tackled that question in developing WING, a banking and payment system it launched in Cambodia early last year.
In Phnom Penh, said Peter Dalton, ANZ's general manager for innovation, it's not uncommon for workers to send money to relatives in rural areas via a taxi-bound courier, which is risky as well as expensive. The Melbourne, Australia, bank estimates that only about 500,000 of the country's 14 million population have bank accounts, but "there is a need for saving and sending money," he said.
In addition to "unbanked" consumers, there are the "underbanked"—those who have bank accounts but don't have ready access to them because branches and automated teller machines are rare in many parts of the country, Mr. Dalton said.
A large number of Cambodians do have cellphones, though. WING works on four of the country's major mobile networks—hello, qb, Mfone and Smart Mobile—via a simple interface. Customers enter their account numbers and personal identification numbers, then see a menu of options that includes checking their balances, paying bills and sending money.
To send money, they enter the recipient's WING account number, or if the funds are going to someone who doesn't have a WING account, the person's mobile-phone number. (Funds are tied to the WING account, not the phone, so a customer won't lose his money even if his phone is lost or stolen.)
Recipients are notified by a text message when the transfer is complete. ANZ charges about 50 cents to send the equivalent of $20, a notable savings when compared with the $1 to $2 that Cambodian couriers typically cost.
There are now some 150,000 WING accounts, and Mr. Dalton said he wouldn't be surprised to see the service reach 200,000 customers by early next year. ANZ hasn't set a target number, however, he said. "We love the growth rates that we have now."
WING customers can access their accounts and send money through their phones.
In addition to the technological challenges of creating a mobile-payment service, ANZ had to figure out a cost-effective way to introduce it "to people who have never seen this before," he said. To do that, the company enlisted a fleet of 1,800 "pilots," part-time workers who sign up new customers and teach them how WING works. They receive a commission for each new sign-up and help spread the word about the program, often at markets and other high-traffic areas.
"There comes a time when you need cash," Mr. Dalton acknowledged, and that's where WING's Cash X-Press comes in. About 500 outlets are located throughout Cambodia's 24 provinces, and there WING customers can deposit and receive money through the service.
The Cash X-Press outlets, like the WING pilots, are another way of marketing the service, but they also help keep its costs down because they serve many of the same functions as ATMs, which are more expensive to build and maintain.
ANZ, which is working with its ANZ Royal subsidiary in Cambodia, plans to extend WING to support more types of billing, such as electricity and water, for its customers, and it hopes to offer the ability to transfer funds in other currencies, such as dollars.
It is also interested in getting local employers signed up to use the service. Cambodia's garment industry, for example, still largely pays workers in cash, which results in long lines on paydays, Mr. Dalton said. Using WING would allow an employer to pay its work force much faster and with fewer opportunities for error.
In addition to tapping a growing mobile-payment market, Mr. Dalton said WING promotes business development and a stronger understanding of how money works among its user base, particularly when it comes to saving. It also gives customers in poor areas an alternative to informal couriers and loans, which often carry high fees and theft risks.
"We think this is a service that encourages both economic and social development," he said. "You can actually generate more healthy economies."
Tata creates inexpensive water purifier
Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704293604575343340396637802.html
MUMBAI—Thomas Edison, widely known as the father of the electrical age, would probably not have imagined that a product inspired by his most famous invention—the electric light bulb—would be one that wouldn't use electricity.
Tata's Swach (the Hindi word for clean) is a water filter that uses natural materials and nanotechnology to purify water, doesn't need electricity, meets U.S. Environmental Protection Agency norms for bacteria and costs less than $22. It was inspired by Edison's electric bulb, but, unlike that invention, it was developed for consumers in rural India who don't always have access to electricity.
The Swach, which means "clean" in Hindi, purifies water with the aid of rice husk ash, a byproduct of making polished rice.
"Right from the beginning, we were very clear that this product had to be developed keeping in mind households that didn't have electricity," said Sabaleel Nandy, head of the water-purifier business at Tata Chemicals Ltd. "It was always meant to be a poor man's device."
When Tata Chemicals and Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. first began work in 2006 on the idea of a water-purification system made up of natural materials, the brief given to the innovation team by R. Gopalakrishnan, vice chairman of Tata Chemicals, was: Do for drinking water what Edison did for lighting through his electric bulb.
Mr. Gopalakrishnan was inspired by the concept of an earlier water filter conceived and developed by Tata Research Development & Design Centre, the Pune-based R&D division of TCS. That filter used rice-husk ash, which is derived after burning rice husk or chaff, a byproduct of polished rice, as the main filtering component. The water filter, called Sujal, used a matrix of materials—such as rice-husk ash, pebbles, Portland cement, nylon mesh and sand—and screened out contaminants and sediments. But, with its purification capability being 85%, it didn't guarantee freedom from waterborne diseases.
Ratan Tata, chairman of Tata Sons, wasn't satisfied. He wanted the company to develop a water purifier that was 100% safe. Enter Mr. Gopalakrishnan. He challenged his team to create a bulb-like water purifier that consumers could fix on any existing water-storage unit. Something that was high on functionality, low on cost and 100% safe.
The result: After four years of toil, Tata unveiled the Swach last December. In a country like India, this water-purification system may just prove to be a boon. In the year through March, electricity demand exceeded supply by 10.1%, according to the Central Electric Authority of India.
Mr. Nandy calls the the Swach "the world's lowest-cost water purifier," providing safe water at about 0.22 cents a liter, at a cost of just 999 rupees ($21.36) for the entire unit and 299 rupees for a refill cartridge.
The Swach's cartridge, a key component of the system, resembles Edison's electric bulb and is made up of a composite of rice-husk ash (a highly porous material derived out of paddy husk) and fine particles of nano-silver, which inhibits bacteria growth.
Just like an electric bulb, the cartridge also has a fuse. In this case, the fuse prevents water from passing through once its purifying capacity of 3,000 liters of water is exhausted.
According to a 2006 Unicef report, more than 125 million children under age 5, most from developing countries, live in households without access to a clean drinking-water source. Swach hopes to bridge this gap between technology and the basic human need of clean drinking water.
"There is no awareness about the need for filtration among most Indians, with a mere 6% of urban households and 1% of rural households using water purifiers," said Ashvini Hiran, chief operating officer at Tata Chemicals. "Hence, the potential of the Swach is immense."
The company commercially launched the Swach in January in the states of Maharashtra and Karnataka and hopes to expand across India by the end of the year, reaching sales of a million units.
"With our product, we are hoping to target nonusers and those who couldn't afford water purifiers due to affordability reasons and lack of awareness," said Mr. Hiran. "And we hope to achieve that through our awareness programs."
MUMBAI—Thomas Edison, widely known as the father of the electrical age, would probably not have imagined that a product inspired by his most famous invention—the electric light bulb—would be one that wouldn't use electricity.
Tata's Swach (the Hindi word for clean) is a water filter that uses natural materials and nanotechnology to purify water, doesn't need electricity, meets U.S. Environmental Protection Agency norms for bacteria and costs less than $22. It was inspired by Edison's electric bulb, but, unlike that invention, it was developed for consumers in rural India who don't always have access to electricity.
The Swach, which means "clean" in Hindi, purifies water with the aid of rice husk ash, a byproduct of making polished rice.
"Right from the beginning, we were very clear that this product had to be developed keeping in mind households that didn't have electricity," said Sabaleel Nandy, head of the water-purifier business at Tata Chemicals Ltd. "It was always meant to be a poor man's device."
When Tata Chemicals and Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. first began work in 2006 on the idea of a water-purification system made up of natural materials, the brief given to the innovation team by R. Gopalakrishnan, vice chairman of Tata Chemicals, was: Do for drinking water what Edison did for lighting through his electric bulb.
Mr. Gopalakrishnan was inspired by the concept of an earlier water filter conceived and developed by Tata Research Development & Design Centre, the Pune-based R&D division of TCS. That filter used rice-husk ash, which is derived after burning rice husk or chaff, a byproduct of polished rice, as the main filtering component. The water filter, called Sujal, used a matrix of materials—such as rice-husk ash, pebbles, Portland cement, nylon mesh and sand—and screened out contaminants and sediments. But, with its purification capability being 85%, it didn't guarantee freedom from waterborne diseases.
Ratan Tata, chairman of Tata Sons, wasn't satisfied. He wanted the company to develop a water purifier that was 100% safe. Enter Mr. Gopalakrishnan. He challenged his team to create a bulb-like water purifier that consumers could fix on any existing water-storage unit. Something that was high on functionality, low on cost and 100% safe.
The result: After four years of toil, Tata unveiled the Swach last December. In a country like India, this water-purification system may just prove to be a boon. In the year through March, electricity demand exceeded supply by 10.1%, according to the Central Electric Authority of India.
Mr. Nandy calls the the Swach "the world's lowest-cost water purifier," providing safe water at about 0.22 cents a liter, at a cost of just 999 rupees ($21.36) for the entire unit and 299 rupees for a refill cartridge.
The Swach's cartridge, a key component of the system, resembles Edison's electric bulb and is made up of a composite of rice-husk ash (a highly porous material derived out of paddy husk) and fine particles of nano-silver, which inhibits bacteria growth.
Just like an electric bulb, the cartridge also has a fuse. In this case, the fuse prevents water from passing through once its purifying capacity of 3,000 liters of water is exhausted.
According to a 2006 Unicef report, more than 125 million children under age 5, most from developing countries, live in households without access to a clean drinking-water source. Swach hopes to bridge this gap between technology and the basic human need of clean drinking water.
"There is no awareness about the need for filtration among most Indians, with a mere 6% of urban households and 1% of rural households using water purifiers," said Ashvini Hiran, chief operating officer at Tata Chemicals. "Hence, the potential of the Swach is immense."
The company commercially launched the Swach in January in the states of Maharashtra and Karnataka and hopes to expand across India by the end of the year, reaching sales of a million units.
"With our product, we are hoping to target nonusers and those who couldn't afford water purifiers due to affordability reasons and lack of awareness," said Mr. Hiran. "And we hope to achieve that through our awareness programs."
Expanding Banking in India through new automated teller machines
Source: http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052748703700904575391460677186520-lMyQjAxMTAwMDIwNjEyNDYyWj.html
A new automated teller machine aims to expand personal banking in rural India, where high temperatures, power outages and identity theft make for particularly challenging terrain.
Vortex Engineering is giving rural Indians the gift of banking. The southern India-based company has designed the "Gramateller" automated teller machine, which can run on solar power and dispense heavily used bills. WSJ's Linda Blake reports.
Vortex Engineering Ltd., an Asian Innovation Awards finalist, designed its Gramateller ATM with a backup battery system, solar power panels, a 50-degree-centigrade operating range and a fingerprint identification system—all factors that make it a viable ATM in developing areas, said Vortex founder Lakshminarayan Kannan.
Mr. Kannan, 42 years old, has spent the last two decades working with companies and NGOs on rural-development technologies, such as a special suspension system to transport fragile medical equipment for mobile health care in Karnataka. He founded Vortex in 2001 and set the company to work on various projects, including one designed to more efficiently convert cotton into yarn.
In 2004, he was approached by a group of researchers from the Indian Institutes of Technology who were looking for ways to improve financial access in rural India. The team's aim, Mr. Kannan said, directly overlapped with his own.
"Whatever we were to produce had to be a person-independent, technology-driven channel," he said. "To be dependent on infrastructure would be too expensive."
An ATM fit the bill. Fewer than 25% of India's 45,000 ATMs are located in rural and semi-urban areas, where 70% of the country's 1.1 billion people reside, according to Vortex research. As many as 65% of Indians don't have bank accounts, severely hindering their chances of saving, according to the Confederation of Indian Industry, an association of Indian business leaders.
A team of Vortex engineers worked with the IIT researchers to design an ATM that not only would operate in rural India, but also would inspire trust in the machines among local villagers who may have never even seen a computer before. This meant including a biometric method of identification—instead of entering a PIN, the user presses his or her thumb on a glass fingerprint reader—as well as the ability to immediately switch to a four-hour backup battery during voltage fluctuations and power failures.
Even assuring villagers the money is authentic was a concern. Vortex, based in Chennai, designed its machine to process soiled notes that "feel real" to rural dwellers who aren't accustomed to—and often are suspicious of—the clean, crisp bills that come out of other ATMs.
The ATMs use customer fingerprints as an authentication measure. Vortex says it hopes to put the low-cost machines in every village in India.
"New currency is loaded, and in rural areas, used, old currency is also loaded," Mr. Kannan said. "Often bills have small nicks, cuts and holes, which our ATM is tolerant to."
An unexpected benefit of the ATMs is that they encourage customers to save more money, something that didn't become clear until pilot tests near Chennai.
"If people have in their close vicinity a source of money whenever they need, and they know it's assured, then they actually tend to take less money than they are entitled to, and they save the rest," Mr. Kannan said.
Vortex has invested $6 million in its Gramateller ATM since 2004, producing nearly 200 machines to date. Mr. Kannan said 25 to 30 banks in rural areas currently operate between one and five ATMs each. Among them is State Bank of India, the largest state-owned financial services company in India.
The bank is deploying 1,000 ATMs in rural areas, 545 of which will be supplied by Vortex Engineering, said Amiya Deka, deputy general manager of SBI's ATM division.
He cited the Gramateller's low cost, low power consumption, wide temperature range of operation, solar power generation, biometric authentication and "simple design" as factors in its selection.
Vortex's end goal is to have one ATM in each village in India. That's 650,000 ATMs, Mr. Kannan said, and even that won't be enough to put India on par with other countries.
"The U.S. and Europe have one ATM per 1,000 people. By the same yardstick, India needs one million ATMs," he said.
But for now, Vortex has set its sights on the sector of India where it believes financial access can have the most impact.
"Since we are a start-up and we have limited resources, we want to focus on rural India," Mr. Kannan said. "We thought: Let us be creative. Let us be pioneers."
A new automated teller machine aims to expand personal banking in rural India, where high temperatures, power outages and identity theft make for particularly challenging terrain.
Vortex Engineering is giving rural Indians the gift of banking. The southern India-based company has designed the "Gramateller" automated teller machine, which can run on solar power and dispense heavily used bills. WSJ's Linda Blake reports.
Vortex Engineering Ltd., an Asian Innovation Awards finalist, designed its Gramateller ATM with a backup battery system, solar power panels, a 50-degree-centigrade operating range and a fingerprint identification system—all factors that make it a viable ATM in developing areas, said Vortex founder Lakshminarayan Kannan.
Mr. Kannan, 42 years old, has spent the last two decades working with companies and NGOs on rural-development technologies, such as a special suspension system to transport fragile medical equipment for mobile health care in Karnataka. He founded Vortex in 2001 and set the company to work on various projects, including one designed to more efficiently convert cotton into yarn.
In 2004, he was approached by a group of researchers from the Indian Institutes of Technology who were looking for ways to improve financial access in rural India. The team's aim, Mr. Kannan said, directly overlapped with his own.
"Whatever we were to produce had to be a person-independent, technology-driven channel," he said. "To be dependent on infrastructure would be too expensive."
An ATM fit the bill. Fewer than 25% of India's 45,000 ATMs are located in rural and semi-urban areas, where 70% of the country's 1.1 billion people reside, according to Vortex research. As many as 65% of Indians don't have bank accounts, severely hindering their chances of saving, according to the Confederation of Indian Industry, an association of Indian business leaders.
A team of Vortex engineers worked with the IIT researchers to design an ATM that not only would operate in rural India, but also would inspire trust in the machines among local villagers who may have never even seen a computer before. This meant including a biometric method of identification—instead of entering a PIN, the user presses his or her thumb on a glass fingerprint reader—as well as the ability to immediately switch to a four-hour backup battery during voltage fluctuations and power failures.
Even assuring villagers the money is authentic was a concern. Vortex, based in Chennai, designed its machine to process soiled notes that "feel real" to rural dwellers who aren't accustomed to—and often are suspicious of—the clean, crisp bills that come out of other ATMs.
The ATMs use customer fingerprints as an authentication measure. Vortex says it hopes to put the low-cost machines in every village in India.
"New currency is loaded, and in rural areas, used, old currency is also loaded," Mr. Kannan said. "Often bills have small nicks, cuts and holes, which our ATM is tolerant to."
An unexpected benefit of the ATMs is that they encourage customers to save more money, something that didn't become clear until pilot tests near Chennai.
"If people have in their close vicinity a source of money whenever they need, and they know it's assured, then they actually tend to take less money than they are entitled to, and they save the rest," Mr. Kannan said.
Vortex has invested $6 million in its Gramateller ATM since 2004, producing nearly 200 machines to date. Mr. Kannan said 25 to 30 banks in rural areas currently operate between one and five ATMs each. Among them is State Bank of India, the largest state-owned financial services company in India.
The bank is deploying 1,000 ATMs in rural areas, 545 of which will be supplied by Vortex Engineering, said Amiya Deka, deputy general manager of SBI's ATM division.
He cited the Gramateller's low cost, low power consumption, wide temperature range of operation, solar power generation, biometric authentication and "simple design" as factors in its selection.
Vortex's end goal is to have one ATM in each village in India. That's 650,000 ATMs, Mr. Kannan said, and even that won't be enough to put India on par with other countries.
"The U.S. and Europe have one ATM per 1,000 people. By the same yardstick, India needs one million ATMs," he said.
But for now, Vortex has set its sights on the sector of India where it believes financial access can have the most impact.
"Since we are a start-up and we have limited resources, we want to focus on rural India," Mr. Kannan said. "We thought: Let us be creative. Let us be pioneers."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)