Category: Publications

Our investor, Digital News Ventures, have written a fantastic article in their newsletter about Mobile Vaani. Original source here.

Communities understand the development issues they face better than anyone.

This simple philosophy guides the work of Delhi-based social tech company Gram Vaani and inspired it to create a voice-based social media platform – or ‘mobile radio network’ – for some of India’s rural poor.

Gram Vaani was set up in 2009 with the goal of reversing the traditional flow of information. Defying the traditional media model, they seek to make information flow from the bottom-up, rather than the top-down. They do this by using simple technology to give some of the poorest people a voice that’s loud enough to be heard by officials, and have even created a platform for sharing news and information with each other.

Mobile Vaani is Gram Vaani’s answer to Facebook or YouTube for the rural poor. Unlike most social platforms, Mobile Vaani is voice-based so it can be used by people who can’t read. Taking advantage of the widespread availability of mobile phones even in rural areas, where villagers often share phones or rent them for short periods, it is an intelligent IVR (interactive voice response) system that allows people to call into a number and leave a message about their community, or listen to messages left by others.

The Mobile Vaani network spans 15 districts in Jharkhand and over 30 community radio stations in the states of Uttakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Andra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Orissa. Its flagship roll-out is in Jharkand State in Eastern India, where it has more than 20,000 users who call over 2,000 times per day, discussing wide-ranging issues under four broad topics: culture, information, feedback on government schemes and local updates and announcements. The messages are moderated and 60 to 70 are published each day.

Its impact has been immediate and far-reaching. In one case, a villager in a remote area of Jharkand State with no access to a hospital reported that an outbreak of malaria had killed three people. The message was moderated and posted, and passed to the appropriate authorities. Within one day, an ambulance with medical provisions was sent to the village.

In another instance, villagers reported corruption in food supply ration shops. The local authorities acted quickly on the Mobile Vaani call for action and police arrested the officials involved.

Mobile Vaani clearly has an important role in alerting the authorities and motivating them to act in cases where, in the past, the voices of local people would not have been heard. It also acts as a local noticeboard and sharing hub. For example, people post folk songs so they can be heard in other villages, as well as use it as a bulletin board for local job fairs and sharing information on health or agriculture.

Digital News Ventures, MDIF’s fund for making seed investments in news and journalism start-ups, has provided financing for Gram Vaani.

Our community engagement technologies can be useful for micro-finance organizations to reach out to their customers and remain updated on their problems, to offer prompt service. See the original article here.

Startups flourish with technology services for micro finance firms
Biswarup Gooptu, ET Bureau Aug 22, 2012, 11.08AM IST

BANGALORE: A new wave of start-up companies are building technology enabled services aimed at bridging the communication gap between borrowers and lenders in the embattled Indian microfinance industry.

These fledgling ventures are creating services across cloud and mobile platforms which include credit rating of micro borrowers, online data storage and community radio services that could provide a fresh fillip to a crisis-ridden industry.

India’s Rs 26,000 crore microfinance sector has struggled since the Andhra Pradesh government promulgated an ordinance barring MFIs from recovering loans disbursed in the country’s largest micro-lending market in October 2010.

“The problem with microfinance was that the cost of acquiring new clients was being loaded onto existing clients,” said Puneet Gupta, chief executive of IFMR Capital, which owns Kshetriya Gramin Financial Services.

The launch of new innovative technology led services for data collation, analysis and setting up of critical back-end systems could help reverse this trend say industry executives.

InVenture, a 13-month old Bangalore-based start-up, helps microfinance borrowers by tracking their daily cash flow through text messages through its proprietary platform InSight. It then charts this data to create credit scores for individual borrowers. This data is sold to microfinance institutions (MFIs) and non-banking financial companies (NBFCs), as they look to reach out to greater number of the base of the pyramid population.

“It helps us undertake real time data monitoring, and plays a role in creating the right financial product that the customer needs”, said Ramakrishna Nishtala, cofounder and chief operating officer, Vistaar Financial Services, one of the first MFIs to start using this service.

“It’s early days yet, and customers have to become familiar with the process, but it has promise,” he said. Vistaar, is running pilot programmes using the service in branches across Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.

“The beauty is we have been able to create a tool for the borrower as well as the lender. In the long run, it helps the customer’s money management and helps them to be better borrowers,” said Shivani Siroya, founder, InVenture.

The start-up which has raised risk capital and received grants from Vodafone is in talks with Chennai-based microfinance companies Equitas and Ashirvaad, to market its product according to Siroya.

Artoo, another technology start-up founded in 2010, offers communication technology to microfinance institutions on the Android and cloud platforms.

Its technology platform is designed to take the entire process of data collection and loan disbursement online, and helps microfinance field agents to remotely connect with the centralised operations of the MFI.

Bridging the Gap

Artoo has worked with urban microfinance company Ujjivan Financial Services and Bangalore-based Grameen Foundation, and its founders claim that its platform can significantly lower an MFI’s operating expenses.

“We use android phones and tablets that connect to an organisations back-end, including core banking solutions and accounting systems, which will reduce a customer’s turn around time, and can also lead to lower interest rates charged,” Sameer Segal, co-founder of Artoo pointed out.

The lack of innovative technology has had a debilitating effect on the growth of the microfinance sector in India, especially in the fields of data collation, analysis and setting up of critical back-end systems.

“Our plan is to be the standard for credit scores in India. India’s microfinance industry lacks the formal standards and organisation, and technology can create that financial transparency,” she said.

The Reserve Bank of India has specified that a margin cap, not exceeding 10% for large MFIs with loan portfolios upward of Rs 100 crore, and 12% for the rest. This has forced micro-lenders to drastically reduce their operating expenses in their bid to stay afloat.

“We use android phones and tablets that connect to an organisations back-end, including core banking solutions and accounting systems, which will reduce a customer’s turn around time, and can also lead to lower interest rates charged,” Sameer Segal, co-founder of Artoo pointed out.

Started in 2009, Gram Vaani has taken a slightly different road.

The company is a technology provider to over 40 NGOs, aid agencies and social ventures, and offers a community radio platform, hosts voice solutions, such as phone surveys or community news platforms, to providers in verticals including health and education.

“For MFIs, we offer information shared voluntarily by users, community level qualitative data and surveys taken by users. We also track the progress of initiatives in the community, and there are currently no data products in the market which offer regular,structured feedback in the post-lending period,” Roshan Nair, director of programmes at Gram Vaani said.

Gram Vaani, which is a co-recipient of a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, is now working to develop sector useful data products for several sectors including health, agriculture and microfinance.

“One shortcoming which has effected MFIs thus far has been a lack of community engagement, which has led to lesser understanding of risk factors which are non-financial, community-level and qualitative. We offer such a solution,” Nair said.