What if you could pay your bills on the go without using your smartphone or laptop? Bharat Gupta, an auto driver by day and sandwich vendor by night, helps you do exactly that.
A resident of Indiranagar in Thane, which is home to a large north Indian immigrant community, Gupta started doing money transfers using the Airtel Money app on behalf of his fellow immigrant friends when he realised the hardships they faced when it came to sending money to their villages.
Helping them avoid long queues at the bank — which would cause them a loss of hourly wages — ‘Guptaji’, as he is fondly called, showed them an easier way out.
Over time, Guptaji extended his services to not just his friends, but to passengers as well. These services, done through Airtel Money, include the payment of electricity bills, booking of movie tickets, getting Airtel SIM cards and recharges for Airtel prepaid phone numbers or Airtel DTH account recharging — all of which help him earn a cool additional Rs15,000 per month.
Airtel Money was a service started by Airtel around two years ago, which allows Airtel customers to transfer money using m-wallet services from one mobile to another and pay bills, without needing an Internet connection or a bank
account. At a time when the government is trying to promote financial services to the unbanked, such retailers provide an immediate connect with the masses.
So how did Guptaji’s partnership with Airtel begin? “Once, on a visit to an Airtel service centre to avail of mobile number portability, I got talking to some people about the Airtel Money service and decided to try it out. A few months down the line, Airtel approached me to become an official retailer on a commission basis.”
Guptaji now says he has 100 other interested auto drivers willing to offer this service to passengers, while he is open to offering the same services on behalf of other telcos as well.
An Airtel spokesperson said the company is willing to help him graduate from an official retailer to an exclusive distributor for Airtel. Besides Guptaji, Airtel had also tied up with a nariyal paaniwala in Hyderabad, who peddles Airtel money services from his cycle, and a chaiwala in Chennai who provides customers with fringe benefits apart from a steaming hot cuppa.
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