An alternate would be look at some areas where digital applications are gaining ground and make those centres more viable through additional applications. A case in point will be say the Bhoomi experiment in Karnataka. It has digitised all land records and all taluks have a Bhoomi kiosk where a farmer can get a copy of any land record for a fee of Rs. 15.

Now if these kiosks are handled by entrepreneurs, there is scope for incremental revenue through undertaking other tasks like online payment of taxes. You could even consider telemedicine out of such facilities. The focus needs to be on consolidation of more billable applications through such digital outlets since the challenge in villages is to get enough volumes for small scale enterprises to be viable

Scenario:

It is observed that people in villages very often commute to cities (state capitals) for the following purposes.
1) Payment water tax
2) Payment of electricity tax
3) Sales tax and several others.
Since the above mentioned activities are inevitable, they have no choice but to go to the city.
Then they face the following problems.
1) They have to take a day (maybe more) off from work and it adversely affects their productivity.
2) They have to spend hundreds of rupees for transportation and the accommodation.
3) They are often cheated and they might have to pay bribes for the clerks and the babus in the capital.
4) The whole experience is traumatic.

Idea:

A software company which completely works within the BOP model can set up shop in small towns/ villages and reduce this pain by making all the payment online.
They can probably use the existing services of government sites like.
http://www.bangaloreone.gov.in/

Working:

The villager needs to go company representative/ shop and register himself. He explains his occupation and tells the company about the frequency of his visit to the town.

He pays his taxes online and also seeks advices regarding the same from the company reps who would know a lot about the people like him.

Suppose Mr.Ram is a blacksmith and he might need to go to town 10 times a year, he would communicate the details to the company. Company has a list of blacksmiths and would be quite familiar with the best practices for a blacksmith. It could advice Ram regarding the taxes and also prepare him for the same.

The software company needs the following system in place.
• A good database system which can keep track of all the details of its customers. It has to link people with the same profession who face similar problems.
• Collaboration with the govt. and private players like fertilizer/machinery companies which could accept payments and transact online.
• Business model which is scalable and software system which works with as minimal manual intervention as possible

Business Model:

A small processing fee is charged from the customers and the challenge is in winning their confidence. Once that is done, other BOP players in the ecosystem might be willing to advertise their products.
Egs: SKS microfinance, ICICI etc…

The expenditure is in maintaining good a software system and training/ retaining local talent who are hired for exactly this purpose.

Waiting for Comments.

Thanks,
Arun.PC