While working with i-Flex Solutions and developing technologies for the banking sector, Prakash Prabhu saw big business opportunity in the Indian villages and remote areas of the country.
He felt, while banks, insurance firms, micro-finance institutions as well as the government agencies were increasingly engaging themselves in reaching out to the rural masses with various products and services, technology platforms facilitating the same would also prove highly fruitful. This was a good five to six years ago.
Today, Ganaseva, a technology platform developed by Prabhu’s Atyati Technologies, goes about helping banks and financial service firms to open accounts for villagers in districts like Bhagalpur, Gorakhpur, Burdwan, Bankura, and Midnapore districts located in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal.
“Our idea is to help reach necessary services for villagers through people friendly technology solutions,” says Prabhu, who self- funded and started Atyati in 2006 along with a colleague at i-Flex.
Ganaseva helps in opening bank accounts so that the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) wages and pensions given by the government can get credited into it, says Sudhakar Vulimiri, head, implementation, (Andhra Pradesh and Orissa) for Atyati. “Once banked, villagers can also avail of insurance, micro-loans,” says Vulimiri.
Ganaseva, which is provisioned on devices like the laptops, mobile phones, replaces manual systems with complete automation.
Moreover, the technology can also be used for automating the government’s public distribution system, as it provides support to supply chain transactions for transparent flow of goods and commodities, says Dhiresh Chakraborty, head implementation, (Eastern Region), Atyati.
Since this platform is aimed at rural areas, it not only has multi-lingual capabilities, but also the ability to work in zero level bandwidth locations, says Chakraborty.
“Thus it can work smoothly in places with massive power crunch.”
Vulimiri says that the Ganaseva platform can be simultaneously used by different organisations like banks, insurance firms, government institutions, which are looking for converging their services to a single person.
The technology platform has connected about 4000 villages so far, and Prabhu has set a target of entering another 12,000 villages in the next 18 months.
Srikakulum and East Godavari in Andhra Pradesh were the first districts the Bangalore based company forayed into three years ago.Madhya Pradesh, Manipur, Maharashtra, Meghalaya are some of the newer states the firm is planning to set foot.To get contracts, Atyati participates in tenders floated by the government and BFSI firms, and works closely with business correspondents and NGOs that reach out to villagers, says Prabhu.
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