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Innovative Mobile Services in Developing Countries: Challenges in Scaling Up

Rekha Jain

Executive Chair, IIMA-Idea Telecom Centre of Excellence

Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, India

[email protected]

Mobile services in most countries have taken off very rapidly. Falling costs of technology and

enabling regulation in most countries has resulted in this rapid proliferation. Developments in

technological features of mobiles such as text and video delivery increase in the computing

power and storage capacity has led to development of a variety of innovations and value added

services (VAS). Development of innovative services is usually done in the context of start ups

or as pilot projects in large organizations. Both these kinds of organizational forms have

challenges when they move to the next stage of growth.

VAS, do not only have the potential for providing high returns to private enterprises that launch

them, but are also an effective mechanism for provision of development oriented services. Given

the high penetration rates of mobiles in developing countries, governments and public service

agencies have recognized the value of mobiles in delivery of such services and incorporated

them in their development agendas. While in many developed countries, mobile service augment

existing service platforms/channels, in developing countries mobile platform may be the only

one through which services may be available. For example, mobile banking may be the only

available channel for banking for people living in far flung areas, since physical bank

branches/ATMs may not be available. Similarly, poor quality roads and transport services make

it difficult to provide agricultural advisory services that could now be made available using

mobiles. Disbursements of government employment guarantee schemes through M-banking,

highly customized agricultural advisory services, tele medicine are some examples of highly

contextualized services that have evolved in India in response to the existing poor level of

services.

However, design of such services and development of commercially viable business models,

especially in the context of public service delivery has several challenges. Organizations that

seek to provide such services need to take into account the higher cost to serve, lower propensity

to pay of potential customers, possibly larger numbers of smaller value transactions, dispersed

population clusters, poor infrastructure, lower levels of literacy in general and digital literacy in

particular. These attributes require innovations focusing on dramatically lower cost of

production, distribution and new payment methods for service delivery. This makes the scaling

up issues referred to earlier more complex, as poor commercial viability leads to concerns

regarding future sustainability.

This paper examines two case studies in the context of delivery of a) government employment

scheme related benefits and b) tele medicine. Preliminary analysis suggests that a combination of

an appropriate policy and regulatory environment, business or an operating model and or

redesign of roles within the organization are critical for scaling up. Also, it is important that such

services are widely adopted.

Context of the Present Study

Although it is recognized that there is great value of the innovative services using mobiles, there

are very few that have scaled up successfully. M-PESA the pioneering “payment service for the

unbanked” (M_PESA: Mobile Money for the “Unbanked” Turning Cellphone into 24-Hour

Tellers in Kenya,Hughes and Lonie) that has proliferated successfully is an exception. The

opportunity to move money amongst various entities in the context of a poorly developed

banking or financial services infrastructure had given rise to the SMS based service involving

various actors in the money supply chain such as vendors, retail outlets, customers or any two

persons wishing to transfer money. Though most studies of M-PESA, have focused on the

mechanism of service provision rather than on the organizational challenges, paper by (Hughes

and Lonie) provides a first hand account of the organizational issues as a new service was

conceived. Despite the fact that M-PESA was launched by Safaricom (a part of the Vodafone

group), it faced severe challenges in initial deployment and its subsequent spread. The present

paper focuses on the organizational challenges in service provision in two different areas as

identified above.

Methodology

We chose to adopt a case study method, as it provides a rich method of documentation of the

context. As there has been little work (to our knowledge) in the area of scaling up of innovative

services using mobile services, we thought this would be the most appropriate mode to build

empirical evidence. We used business processes as the unit of analysis, as it helped us to

establish linkages of the mobile application with the business performance.

For the selected case studies, in depth interviews (semi structured) were undertaken with the key

designers, proponents, and users of the service. This helped us to analyze the drivers and

constraints in the successful implementation of such models. Policy and regulatory issues related

to the provision of such business models were also identified. The document case studies were

sent back to the organizations for validation. The changes suggested by them were incorporated.

Selection of Case Studies

In order to select the case studies, we explored those organizations where mobiles have been

used to introduce new business models, especially where the target customer referred to those

living in rural areas, and those that did not have access to services of commensurate level

available to those living in urban areas. Further, by developing and analyzing the case studies,

we not only identified the Critical Success Factors but also the constraints and challenges to

scaling up.

Since new ventures play a very important role in innovation, especially in the telecom sector*,

we wanted to pick up at least one case study of one such firms A Little World (ALW)

(www.alw.com). We also selected one study from an existing organization – Narayana

NetralayaNarayana Netralaya (NN), an established eye hospital. The variations in the case

studies would bring out the implications of introduction of innovative mobile services.

An important factor that was taken in to account in the selection of case studies was that there

should have been a significant spread of services. For example, in the case of the new venture,

there should have been at least 5000 points of implementation and in the case of NN, a

significant number of patients should have been screened.

In order to understand the impediments to scaling up, we analyzed the service delivery chain,

business processes, drivers and constraints of selected organizations in adoption of new services.

Case Study 1: A Little World (ALW) (www.alw.com)1

ALW was the developer of ZERO and mZERO, payment system with specific focus on

reaching out to masses claiming that it had the lowest cost available communication

infrastructure (www.alw.com). The ZERO and mZERO platforms enabled timely

disbursements of cash benefits under various government schemes such as housing

assistance, employee guarantee disbursements, pensions, scholarships etc. in villages to

the underprivileged. We examine the case study of ALW’s provision of m-banking

facilities, either as a stored value card or as an extension of a physical bank.

Introducing Mobiles for Banking

ALW set up Zero Microfinance and Savings Support Foundation (ZMF) to act as a

Business Correspondent2 for its banking operations and provided field operations for the

ZERO platform. ZMF managed the field force, account creation, appointment of

representatives for Customer Service Points (CSPs), management of cash and other

logistics at the last mile (village locations). ZMF in turn collaborated with strongly placed

local organizations, district and state administrations to ensure smooth deployment and

operations. Its last mile operations network in villages worked under pre-defined service

* New ventures not only play an important role in the economy by creating new jobs, they distribute wealth and

innovate much more than the established firms. New ventures in the telecom sector face significantly higher

challenges than those in other sectors as they must not only contend with high levels of knowledge intensity in their

sectors and regulatory challenges but also face other factors common to other new ventures such as lack of

knowledge on their business environments, shortage of and hindered access to qualified personnel, access to

finances, limited internal know-how to manage the innovation process effectively and efficiently, and restrictive

laws and regulations (Andrews, 2006; Tiwari and Buse, (2007) quoting Ylinenpää (1998), Friedrich Ebert Stiftung

(2004), Acs and Audretsch (1990), Baldwin and Gellatly (2004), Rammer et al. (2006), Mohnen and Rosa (1999)).

1 This case study is excerpted from another paper by the author. 2 Since bank branches are usually far from rural locations, the Central Bank in India; Reserve Bank of India had identified the concept of “Business Correspondents” (BC) as bank agents. It identified NGOs, post offices, e-kiosks,

ex armed forces personnel to act as BC.

agreements with banks and front-ended the delivery of full-featured transactional services

on behalf of banks. One of the governments’ developmental schemes that promised 100

days of paid employment for rural National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme

(NREGS) required that all beneficiaries needed to be paid through banks. Since most

beneficiaries had no bank accounts (either due to non-availability of banks in the rural

areas, or had not opened bank accounts due to the high cost of service relative to the

deposits, or were not used to banking services), it would have been difficult to get those

entitlements. ALW had a mobile banking product that was a modified mobile augmented

through biometric authentication, mobile camera and the associated software. ALW felt

it could deploy this solution to enable the beneficiaries to open bank accounts and do

transactions while at the same time, helping the banks reach their financial inclusion

targets (that had been recently imposed by the government) in a cost effective way.

Figure 1 provides a schematic data flows for a specific implementation of ALW solution

with the State Bank of India (This should not be taken as representative across all banks

and across the country). It is evident that this is a long complex process and could be re-

engineered for simplicity. However, the banks, and the government had not actively

shown keenness to do so. Therefore, ALW adopted the process flow as it was, while at

the same time, superimposing its mobile based solution. In the absence of a simple flow,

there would be some additional operational costs borne by ALW that could possibly be

avoided if the service delivery chain was re-engineered.

Integrating Physical Delivery Channel with the Product/Service

ZMF trained the representative at CSP to

• Use the modified mobile phone (that had a digital fingerprint capture device and camera for the enrollment process).

• Carry out enrolment and transactions (augmented through voice prompts) and provide a printout of each transaction to the villager.

The combination of the hardware and software, both for enrollment (including biometric

authentication) and disbursements specially designed to handle the requirements of

NREGS and Reserve Bank of India (the Central Bank) guidelines (in terms of meeting

KYC and security requirements) etc made this initiative unique. Figure 2 and Figure 3

shows the enrollment process involving capture of facial photograph and finger print. The

CSP’s mobile was updated whenever there was a transaction at the bank. For withdrawal,

the CSP verified the identity through capture of the finger prints and matched it with

those of the stored facial photograph at the sever end with the person.

The business model for ALW was that even though most individual account deposits in

rural areas were likely to be small, the huge base of such accounts would justify a

business case. First mover advantages were significant. The increasing base of mobile

would ensure volumes. The existing platform could also be used for deployment of micro

insurance and other financial products.

The uniqueness of the service model lay in the provisioning of an end-to-end solution to

leverage the existing mobile infrastructure and the design of business processes that were

compliant with those of its partners (banks, government agencies) and the regulator, RBI.

Its ability to provide secure transactions as per RBI guidelines made it a strong candidate

for further deployments by banks to reach their financial inclusion targets.

Outcomes

As of the date of writing, ZMF operated in 21 states and 83 districts and had been able to

set up partnerships with 22 banks. There were 5800 CSP and 1.96 million customers with

the current rate of enrollment being 20,000 per day. However, given the rural profile of

population and its partners (government department and public sector banks), there were

bound to be implementation delays. In order to design the specific handset that is used by

CSPs, it had successfully partnered with Nokia and NXP.

Challenges

Like other start ups, ZMF faced challenges in getting funding but had been able to

successfully overcome the same. It had been able to get funding for its initial operations

and attract venture funding. In the past, ALW had been able to create commercially

viable innovative technology solutions that had been hived off as separate business

entities after receiving investment from renowned investors. For example, MCHQ (now

mChek), mobile to mobile payment solution developed by ALW was sold off in mid

2006 to an independent SPV. Go-Mumbai, that was a low cost contact-less smart cards

(branded GO-Mumbai) for automatic fare collection used on high-tech validaters in

Mumbai buses and platforms of local suburban railway stations was sold to an

independent SPV formed by Khaleej Financial Investments (KFI, Bahrain – now

Capivest) in May 2006. Such initiatives were a necessary and on going part of its funding

strategy.

In the recent past, there had been some reports of ALW finding it extremely challenging

to get continued funding. Partly it was because of global recession and also because the

government was not willing to pay the total cost of service provision as worked out by

ALW.

Other business concerns were the ability of ALW to maintain partnerships and establish

new ones for future growth. In the past, ALW had successfully managed such

partnerships. Such partnerships provide access to new technologies, customers and

possibly financing. Identifying and developing new business segments, such as insurance

or microfinance for future growth were important areas of growth.

Acceptability of the solution by the villagers was a challenge. Identifying village level

CSPs, integrating the physical supply of chain of transactions with the electronic one,

managing the required regulations with respect to the government and RBI were

demanding management issues

Case Study 2: Narayana Netralaya

Narayana Netralaya is a specialized eye care, including pediatric eye health and ocular

hospital in Bangalore. Although it began as an eye clinic, it had expanded into one of the

largest eye care centers in Bangalore (300 beds, 900-1400 Patients per week). It also

focused on research and teaching. It was probably one of the few eye centers in the state

to have dedicated research facilities. Its focus was on applied research in areas such as

Stem cells, Molecular techniques (Polymerase chain reaction), Genetics, Ocular

Immunology and infectious diseases. Right from its initial stages it focused on switch

over to Electronic Medical Records in a phased manner. A new department of Medical

Informatics had been set up to exploit information technology to improve patient care and

create knowledge form data. Adopting Electronic Medical Records also required

compliance with specifications of various international regulatory bodies.

NN started a unique project of using mobiles for managing Retinotherapy of Prematurity

(ROP), a biological condition associated with prematurely born babies. ROP can cause

blindness, if not detected and treated in its early stages. If detected early, it can be treated.

Since a lot of the premature births happen amongst the lower socio-economic group of

people, especially those in rural areas, awareness about the condition is extremely

limited. In almost all such locations, there are no systematic screening processes in place

and there is a shortage of ophthalmic surgeons. All these factors make the detection and

treatment very limited. However tele-opthamology can provide solutions to some of these

problems, as a large part of the diagnosis (>90%) depends on images unlike several other

fields such as dermatology where nearly 70% of the diagnosis is based on touch and feel3.

In this context NN devised a novel project in Karnataka, one of the southern states in

India (Karnataka State Internet Assisted Diagnosis of ROP (KIDROP)). This project

applies “tele-ophthalmology concept to diagnose ROP using a high-end portable pediatric

digital imaging camera (RETCAM, Clarity MSI, CA, USA) to examine the retinas of

these babies in outreach areas of Karnataka state. Over the past one year the project has

screened over 500 babies and offered free consultation and treatment to the babies who

could not afford the treatment in the outreach centres. Peripheral ophthalmologists and

pediatricians are also being simultaneously trained to manage ROP in the centres that the

project team visits.

On a weekly basis the project personnel cover over a 250 km radius of neonatal care

centres and travel over 1200 kms to accomplish this. The project is committed to spread

the sphere of screening and treatment to the other underserved areas of Karnataka state”

(www.narayananethralaya.org)

The project uses a specially designed ophthalmic camera which may be mounted on a

vehicle to reach remote areas. This camera can take ophthalmic images of infants and

3 This write up is based on a talk “Delivering Subspecialty Health Care to Rural India using the Mobile Phone”

by Dr Anand Vinekar at National Broadband Initiative and Research Agenda Workshop , New Delhi, 16th April

2010

babies. These images are then uploaded to a specially designed server. From here, the

images may be remotely viewed either on a PC or an iphone by ophthalmic surgeons

(Figure 4). Diagnosis and reporting tools on the iphone help to manage the entire project

(Figures 5a, b, and c)

Since there is a scarcity of ophthalmic surgeons who can take these images for diagnosis,

the KIDROP project trained technicians to take these images, process and store them.

Further, with a growing database of such images, technicians were trained to triage the

screened infants. This training has taken over 18 months and had used more than 50, 000

stored images. Although there could be concerns regarding replacing a doctor with a

trained technician for this aspect of the job, the accuracy with which technicians could

predict the different stages of ROP is extremely high. Partly this could be due to the large

amounts of images that are used for training.

iphone was selected as platform and i2i Solutions, a start up, provided the software

solutions for the KIDROP project. iphone enabled standards compliant (DICOM and HL

7 standards related to medical images and information) image compression and

transmission. Further, iphone’s large screen, easy to use pinch and drag capabilities, high

resolution, graphics capability, good picture quality and security were other factors that

contributed to the choice. Further, features on all iphones are similar, leading to lower

efforts in developing code, in contrast to other phones, where handset features vary

across different models ( iPhone App for the eyes- Deccan Chronicle- November 20,

2009, you light up my eyes).

I2i had to work closely with ophthalmologist with KIDROP at NN to understand the

clinical requirements for viewing, diagnosing and reporting. The Apple development kit

available on a Mac platform was used to interface it with patient images and data

available on servers, and compression algorithms were used to wirelessly send data on

the available low bandwidth channels.

NN has funded this pilot project so far, both in terms of the equipments required, cost of

logistics, and professional time, as a part of its corporate social responsibility.

Outcomes: the KIDROP project has covered 18 centres within a 350 km radius in the 14

months it has been in existence, screening nearly 2000 babies within this time frame.

Given its success rate, it has very recently become a part of the National Rural Health

Mission, a national level integrated program aimed at increasing the health indicators of

the rural population.

Learning from the Case Studies

In order to exploit the business opportunities provided by the rapid spread of

mobiles and new technological innovations in services, both the enterprises

modeled their business process in unique ways. Both organizations had

“innovation capacity” - the capacity to respond to changes in the external

environment, and to influence and shape it (Burgleman 1991- Child 1997).

(http://www.brunel.ac.uk/2146/brese/docs/lam_wp1.pdf).

The innovation lay in uniquely identifying very specific technological advances (for

example, finger print testing using mobiles in ALW and digital compression techniques

in NN) and developing appropriate management processes around them. For example,

ALW created ZMF so as to become a banking correspondent and created space for using

its mobile banking solution. NN created the KIDROP project with a project coordinator

and trained technicians to effectively capture, screen and diagnose ROP images. Without

these kinds of interventions, both organizations would have found it difficult to deliver

services.

Innovations in the Core Processes: Both ALW and KIDROP have been successfully

innovated on the core process. ALW provided a banking solution to the “unbanked” and

where there was no physical bank or ATM available using mobile services. KIDROP

provided diagnostic services for ROP using mobile services in areas where there were no

ophthalmic surgeons to do so.

Development of a Supportive “Innovation Ecosystem”: Besides innovation in the core

processes, both ALW and KIDROP developed strong innovation ecosystem comprising

the supporting business processes and IT for the core processes. As an example, ALW

was able to integrate the various processes related to the government departments, bank

and its selected technology to offer a working solution. KIDROP was able to tie up

linkages with neonatal centres around Bangalore, develop a schedule where the special

camera could be mounted on a vehicle and transported, and worked with i2i to develop

the relevant applications.

Capability to work with the IT solutions provider was an important contributing factor to

the ability to deliver innovative services, both for ALW and KIDROP. The partnerships

with variety of other stakeholders was also important (such as government departments

for ALW and neonatal centres for KIDROP). This includes understanding, appreciating

and formalizing the role, relationships and deliverables appropriately (Paavilainen, 2002;

Rulke et al., 2003).

Design and Management of Linkages with Rural/Government Institutions:

Designing businesses processes for a rural context is a challenge, as rural organizations

may not have formal processes. Further, since many villagers may not be exposed to

mobile/IT based systems, they find it difficult to adopt the more rigid approach embedded

in such innovations. For the success of these relationships, while some formalism is

necessary, at the same time, some degree of flexibility in roles, relationships and

deliverables may be necessary. This is so as in the rural context the services available

through a mobile/IT enabled context may be the first time villagers may be experiencing

the service at all and to facilitate their acceptance, it may require changes to the service

template. For example, in ALW, the first experience of banking would be through a

mobile based handset for several rural people and in the case of KIDROP, the experience

of tele medicine may be the first encounter with a formal medical system.

Changed Role of Intermediaries: Both ALW and KIDROP recognized the importance

of intermediaries – village level entrepreneurs for ALW and technicians in the case of

KIDROP.

For ALW, the uniqueness of this service model lay in the provisioning of an end-to-end

solution to leverage the existing mobile infrastructure and design of business processes

that were compliant with those of its partners (banks, government agencies) and the

regulator RBI. Its ability to provide secure transactions as per RBI guidelines made it a

strong candidate for further deployments by banks to reach their financial inclusion

targets.

The business model adopted by ALW integrated the needs of the rural population it

intended to provide banking services by developing the CSPs, using voice enabled

responses (for illiterate or digitally not-so-literate population) and developing

applications on a device that has an almost universal proliferation potential.

KIDROP’s ability to envisage the role of mobiles in telemedicine in the rural

health delivery chain was dependent upon trained technicians. There have been

very few initiatives that have been able to exploit the ever increasingly pervasive

technology for more inclusive growth. Leveraging technology for villagers

required considerable evangelization effort and time in designing appropriate

interfaces.

Key Challenges in Scaling Up

Given the potential of mobiles to offer a variety of mobile services, a large number of

innovative services have sprung up. Few cater to the specific needs of disadvantaged

populations in developing countries. From amongst these, some successfully demonstrate

end to end solution provision. Despite the potential to significantly influence the

development programs of the government, and innovative pilot projects, not many

services have proliferated extensively. There are obvious problems in scaling up.

Although the two contexts –ALW and KIDROP are different – in that the first is a start

up and the second is a small program in a large corporate setting. Despite these

differences, in our assessment, both organizations face similar challenges. As brought out

in the case study on M-PESA (Leoni and Hughes), at the strategic level, early

involvement of all stakeholders is important. A formal relationship between a variety of

institutes, each bringing its own complementary resources is crucial in a one of its kind

innovation. These stakeholders should be open to experimentation and trying out options.

For example, as the service to be rolled out is new, the requirement specification may not

be known apriori and may evolve over time. At the operational level, decisions about

build or buy, user interface design, identifying target customer are important

Technological Challenges

Proprietary Platforms and Interoperability: Both ALW and KIDROP have chosen

proprietary platforms for implementation. At the given point in time, these platforms

possibly provided unique functionality critical for operations. But as they scale up, there

could be concerns regarding interoperability with other systems as well. For example, if

KIDROP wants to build synergies with existing similar programs, then, unless both

systems work on similar technological platforms, there could be problems.

While both ALW and KIDROP systems have been designed to run on any

GSM/CDMA network, the handset for CSP software is based on proprietary

systems in ALW as is the i2i solution running on Apple iphone. However, as

both systems run on any telecom service network, customers/doctors could

switch their service providers and yet continue to use services as before. For

ALW, the issue of interoperability with respect to banks does not arise (for the

specific application that has been documented), as various banks have worked

out mutual agreements about operating in usually non-overlapping territories.

However, if the concerned government agency wanted to change its bank, then it

would have to work with the selected bank and ALW, as ALW incorporates

some bank specific processes. If the bank wanted to change from ALW, there

would be costs to the bank for redesigning the system interfaces of the bank

applications with that of ALW. This provides a competitive first mover advantage

to ALW.

In the case of KIDROP, there is no issue of first mover advantage, as this is not a

commercial service yet. However, when it does scale up, the issues of interoperability

and ability of the IT solutions provider to provide solutions across different handset

capabilities and possibly different reporting formats may be important.

Influence of High End Mobile Devices on Business Operations: Innovative

applications may require a wide variety of handset capabilities. But most people in the

target rural and SME group in India are likely to have lower level handset capabilities.

Also, such handset deployments may increase the cost of deployment. In ALW, the high

end handset is required only by the village CSP, and in KIDROP, only surgeons require

iphone. In KIDROP, the current state of technology does not lend to the retina

photographs being taken by an iphone, as such photographs require very wide angles

which the phone cameras do not have.

This means that in general, application designers must take into account the limited

handset capabilities. Further, lower levels of literacy also mean that text based

menus/messages have limited role. Further, sms usage is fairly low in India, further

increasing the impediments to easy developments and deployability.

Availability of Wireless Broadband: Although network operators have upgraded

networks to offer VAS through GPRS, the non availability of 3G and other wireless

broadband services is a constraint for service delivery. Both ALW and KIDROP have

faced this constraint.

The government has delayed auction of 3G and other broadband services, to the

detriment of take off of innovative services. While most operators view wireless

broadband services a being relevant for only economically well off as they can afford to

pay for the higher bandwidth costs, the government and public agencies have

overlooked its potential to deliver development oriented services and mitigate the poor

quality of physical infrastructure. This leads to a vicious cycle as the lack of scale of

such applications does not permit the benefits to be visible. In the absence of visible

benefits, public support for such applications is reduced.

Financial Support

As the two projects scale, financial support for scaling up (hiring additional people,

deploying additional resources etc) is necessary. In the case of ALW, it planned to

become commercially viable at a significant scale of operations and being able to sell its

software products for other applications. However, as of the date of writing, it had not

reached commercial viability. In the case of KIDROP, the initial project funding was

provided by NN. Going forward, some funding may be available from the National Rural

Health Mission Project. However, with conflicting priorities in terms of health outcomes

for the rural poor, it is not certain how much support would be forthcoming in the future.

In this context, the role of public funding is important as brought out in the case of M-

PESA, especially during the development and launch phase (Leoni and Hughes). M-

PESA had received funding from Department for International Development. In any

commercial organization, internal competition for money for projects and the need to

reflect ROI may not allow socially relevant projects to come forward. In the case of start

up, such funding could be in the form of a grant, which could be turned to equity if the

project is commercially viable. Control mechanisms need to be in place to ensure that

public grants are provided to projects with high impact potential. Usually this is done

through a competitive bid mechanism. For corporates, such as NN, this could be through

access to public funds. Organizational mechanisms to facilitate tapping in to such funds

are important.

In India, the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF) of India, that is mandated to

spread rural telecom services, has a provision for supporting innovative applications.

However, in the absence of formal and ongoing processes for scouting, screening and

formally supporting such applications, there have been extremely few applications that

have been supported through the USOF.

Developing Formal Organizational Systems

As the pilots transform in to full fledged projects, it is important to develop a variety of

formal systems and processes. This could be perceived as being bureaucratic by the initial

team. Literature reports demise of several start ups in this process due to inappropriate

systems of incentives, human resources, and inadequate finances for growth. This

challenge is significant even for innovative projects within well established firms. For

example, the training process currently used in KIDROP where only a few technicians

need to be trained will have to become more formal if and when the project scales up.

This may require setting aside time in contrast to the more informal nature of training

prevalent now. The development of training material would need to be geared towards a

more diverse audience. Evaluation would need to be formalized. The costs of such effort

are often underestimated leading to poor or inadequate scaling up strategies.

Conclusion and Summary

Developments in technology, especially mobile, has given rise to opportunities for

innovative business models to emerge. Effective service delivery for underserved

populations requires public funding and supportive policy environment such as

framework for mobile wireless broadband.

Scaling up issues are significant and if these can be handled properly, mobile services are

effective mechanisms to serve underserved population in developing countries.

Developing and contextualization of IT interventions as a part of core innovation in

business models has challenges in a rural/underserved population due to the low

propensity to pay and/or high cost to serve, and low functional or digital literacy. On

another dimension, developing linkages with rural based institutions that could enhance

effective service delivery is difficult.

A 13 Update beneficiary account

1

2

Village level

List of NREGS

8 KYC compliant data

survey result

beneficiaries

Selected Bank

Link Branch

Government

Head Office

Department

9

Textual data NREGS Enrollment form

Beneficiary data on disbursement

as per KYC with some data fields filled in

updates BC’s mobile

7

3

12 Updated beneficiary account

at Head office

Scanned copy of barcode on beneficiary card

KYC compliant data

+ authentication

10a Stored photograph of beneficiary

11 Debit/credit transaction

6

ZMF Server

Printed forms

4 with unique

Collect Disburse cash

ZMF id

BC’s mobile

Photograph of

physical form

10b

5a (with ZMF id)

barcode from

beneficiary

Finger print authentication

BC’s mobile

via special device

5b + barcode card (specific bank id) laptop + camera

Physical bar + photograph using mobile + fingerprint capture device

coded card + 6 finger prints + pre bar coded physical

given to + details of physical id cards of select banks

beneficiary (ration card etc) + specially equipped mobile

for record keeping (2GB memory

purpose + enrollment software)

1.

Numbers indicate sequence of data flow

Village level

enrollment team

BC

b

c a

Beneficiary

2. Processes operated within the mobile:

a

Match stored beneficiary with photograph

b Display amount held by beneficiary

c Do the debit/credit transaction

Figure 1: Schem

atic Flow of Data

14

Figure 2: The beneficiary being photographed using a mobile

Figure 3: Finger prints being taken for storing for authentication at the time of disbursal

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Figure 4: Ophthalmic Workflow and Information flow

Sources: “Delivering Subspecialty Health Care to Rural India using the Mobile Phone” by Dr

Anand Vinekar at National Broadband Initiative and Research Agenda, 16th April 2010

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5a) iPhone Log-In Screenshots



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b) iPhone Worklist



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c) iPhone Viewer Screenshots



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