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INTERVIEW: RAVI GHATE, SMSONE, WWW.SMSONE.IN

Building SMS network for empowering poor

Ravi Ghate, Chief Coordinator, SMSONE, Pune, India [email protected] What made you initiate the idea of launching SMSONE? Everyone is aware that ‘Mobile’ has changed the entire communication scenario of the World. In India, mobile telephony has brought the communication revolution so suddenly that nearly 230 million of Indian population are now connected!!! And right from street hawkers to businessmen every one is now ‘mobile’. Indian Government is expecting around 70 crore of mobile users by 2015. This will eventually result in higher number of SMSs being transmitted through mobile networks. Personally, I think that SMS as a medium is faster and more effective than any other medium. And if advertisements are considered, it has a high response rate, say 9 percent as per international reports. SMS readability ratio is 95 percent. And strong messages send through SMS services can bind the community too. In a bid to unite all the community users under a single umbrella and also to form location-based, integrated, interconnected

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On the occasion of Baramati Initiatives – ICT 2008, the i4d team caught up with Ravi Ghate of SMSONE, Pune. Ravi Ghate, National Youth Awardee by Govt of India is the Chief Coordinator of SMSONE. As a Social Entrepreneur, Ghate has been working towards the empowerment of grassroots and marginalised people since the last 15 years. As a coordinator of SMSONE, Ghate has been working since the last two years. His pathfinding innovation, ‘Self Employment Promotion Through Local SMS Community Newsletter’ won the Manthan Award last year & Clinton Global Initiative’s YES FUND Award for Best Business Plan this year. Here, his perspectives and views on connecting every household, empowering them through SMS news & services and providing employment opportunities for the school/college dropouts are discussed. and interactive communities, SMSONE was launched. How are you going to develop SMS as a media ? Considering the high numbers of SMSs, we are trying to develop SMS as a MEDIA. Apart from using SMSs to transmit messages at one-to-one level, we are also using bulk SMS technology to communicate one-to-many type of messages for the welfare of common citizens. Banks and insurance companies are already using bulk SMS technology to extend their reach. SMS as a media can be as powerful as Print, TV, Radio or Internet. On an average, every household has a mobile phone. For watching TV one has to be at home. For sending e-mails one has to have Internet connectivity and supporting logistics, but with a mobile in hand, any message or information can be sent out to you. It is a media which is always on and is always with you. Any news, message, alert, update can be transmitted within a minute to a specific

community which is faster than any other media. A day will come when every media house will mark SMS as priority media. What is the Local SMS Community Newsletter model that you follow? Local SMS Community Newsletter is a location-based citizen centric information & knowledge focused update & alert service through SMS which is free for the members and is run by a local – social entrepreneur. How do you regulate the SMSONE network? Through our network, we identify on a priority basis,10th/12th failed or highschool/college drop outs, opportunity less – street wanderers, demoralised and financially backward youths. We give them one day training and explain our system, procedures and social agenda. We call these boys ‘Community Leaders’. These boys are the main link to the community. The community leader’s first task is to conduct i4d | June 2008

a survey in the community and get some basic information from each household. During the survey we explain the community people that our service is free of cost and convince them about the efficacy and importance of our messages. We take their written consent before sending them any kind of message. Once information of 1000 mobile users is collected, the community leader sends it to our Head Office (HO) at Pune. We do the analysis regarding the profile of the community and after rewriting it and approving it, HO sends it to the 1000 community members. Then we create a location specific sender ID for the community. For eg. if we are operating in Karolbaug, then the sender ID will be Karol News or Karolbaug4U. We usually send family related messages between 6-8 PM as this is the time when most people come back from offices and are relaxed. As a matter of policy we send only one message per week, maximum four commercial and 2 or 3 social messages per month. If someone wants to send any kind of message in a particular locality, he/she contacts our community leader. Community leader has the full freedom to negotiate the price for each message that he sends, usually it is between INR 2-3 per message. What is the source of revenue for you and for Community Leader? Out of each message sent, I take 50 paisa, irrespective of the rate charged by the community leader. Rest of the money is kept by him and that is his income. There are instances when two or three people want to avail of our service in the same week. In such cases whoever is ready to pay more money, we circulate his message. During elections all the political parties want to use our service so whoever is ready to pay more for each message, we circulate their messages. But my share remains the same, i.e. 50 paisa per message, out of which 40 paise goes as SMS credit charges. What are the kinds of messages that people send through SMSONE. All kinds of messages are transmitted through our service. From Birthday announcement of a local politician to social messages like socio-cultural programmes to events and initiatives like blood donation campaigns, health camps, spiritual lectures etc. Our community leaders are popularly called ‘Mobile Journalists’ and at times government agencies contact them to reach out to the community. Like for example, if there is water cut in a particular area then through our service we tell all subscribers that there would be no water during a particular hour of the day. Through our service, we also provide community help and social service. For example, some time ago, in Pune, a woman fell ill and she didn’t have any financial support. Through our service, our community leader raised around INR 7000 and paid for her treatment. What is the total spread of your operation? We are currently working in 21 districts of Maharashtra with more than 275 local communities and have more than two lakh subscribers. Mention the challenges that you face while implementing SMSONE project? There are a couple of challenges that we face. One of the most June 2008 | www.i4donline.net

difficult challenges is the mentality of the young boys who come to us for work. As I mentioned earlier, we take only 10th and 12th fail students. When they come to us, they are totally demoralised and have very low self esteem. Convincing them that, the opportunity we are providing is going to change their lives and they can earn upto INR 6000 per month is the biggest and the toughest challenge. What are your future plans for expansion? We want to have a pan India presence with 10 million subscribers under 10,000 community leaders. We follow the franchisee model and partner with good statewide NGO’s in different states. What are your future goals? Very clearly, though our messaging service, we would like to generate more than 2,00,000 self employment opportunities for the youth in India. And through them, I want to weave every Indian house affectionately with the thread of SMS. What inspired you to start SMSONE? I idolise Mahatma Gandhi for his achievements in bringing people together and Dr. Muhammad Yunus for his efforts to bridge the social and economic divide. Personally, I think, now a days, Indian public seldom believes in any mass leader, therefore ICT’s can play an important role in bridging not only the ‘Digital divide’ but also the social and economic divide through right and on-time information based on genuine knowledge. Through SMSOne mission, we are trying to bring the people together, generate more avenues of employment and create a sense of oneness in the local community. How your project will bridge the ‘Digital Divide’ In Indian society, most of the earning members have mobile phones. By communicating with him/her, one can access all members of his family. Now just consider, if a self-employed youth sends a health camp related SMS, then the SMS would be discussed amongst all the members. Eventually, the members of the house who require medical aid and advice would attend the health camp. They also inform their neighbours about the health camp. Consider another case, if the community leader sends an SMS stating that please attend the Spiritual Lecture by some Saint, then the elderly members of the house generally attend the Lecture. This clearly indicates that irrespective of whether the elderly members or kids have access to telecommunications technology or not, we can reach them through SMS and encourage them to take part in social activities, thereby bridging the digital divide. How this project is a Social Networking Project? One social SMS impacts at least five members of the house. And we are connecting 1000 mobile users in a Local community, which clearly means that we are communicating with not less than 5000 citizens. Likewise we are forming at least 1,000 such communities in Maharashtra, that clearly means that we are networking more than five million Maharashtrians under one roof. The social networking and the empowerment of the unemployed youth at various nodes of community living marks the success of SMSONE. „

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