Eko In Action - Video (Hindi)

An Eko video trying to track customer response to Eko at the Pilot site:

The language being used is Hindi. I guess someone might put together an English voice-over / sub-titles - till then, please catch hold of a Hindi speaking friend to translate ;-)

"Banking@the Grocers" - Dataquest on Eko

What if you could just walk up to your good old neighborhood general store or chemist shop, spend around five minutes (a few minutes give or take), and come back opening a bank account?...

Here's the link to the complete article on Dataquest.

An A4 sized problem

This issue shows how important it is for product and services companies to make sure that their offerings are localized for their target locations.

Now, the office stationary world is divided into two main standards - The (North) American and the International. (All paper size standards and figures courtesy: Wikipedia)

While the North American system uses the following:

Size in × in

Letter 8½ × 11
Legal 8½ × 14
Ledger[2] 17 × 11
Tabloid 11 × 17

The International system uses this:

Size in × in

A0 33.1 × 46.8
A1 23.4 × 33.1
A2 16.5 × 23.4
A3 11.7 × 16.5
A4 8.3 × 11.7

The most common forms of paper used for office/home printing are the A4 and the Letter size.

You'd notice, that the A4 is almost the same width, but longer than the 'Letter' size by three quarters of an inch.

Now, here is the real problem:

A4 is the de-facto paper-size standard in India. You go to any paper/ stationary shop and ask them for office printing paper, they will hand you a pack containing A4 sized sheets.

Unfortunately, most software (and printer drivers) used in India are thoughtlessly set to the American 'Letter' size. So when you make a document on say - MS Word, the document is formatted and margins are left based on the Letter paper layout. And guess what happens when you click the Print button? This 'letter' sized document gets printed on A4 sized paper and that leaves close to an inch of unprinted paper at the bottom (not considering the 'margins' one might have set). And most people printing them out are blissfully ignorant of this issue!

What a sheer waste of precious ecological resource! Roughly, for every 15 pages you print, 1 page is just wasted due to this simple setting! Add the numbers up for your entire organization and across the country - thats a COLOSSAL waste we can easily live without.

Here's my recommendation to all people who use word processing and printing on their computers - please, check your default print settings and match them with your paper sizes - especially if you are in an A4 paper country, forced to use a Letter setting.

And to all developing print products - please ensure that the default values for paper sizes match the standards prevalent in that locale.

Lets do our bit in cutting paper waste and making this world a better place :) Please spread this message around at least at your work-place.

Motorolling down

- Here's an icon that gave the world a technology product that would have the power to connect its people in a way it would probably have never imagined. Unfortunately, it is today an icon of what complacency can lead to. Its a lesson on how even a technology pioneer, a product giant, can be beaten in its own game by relative newcomers with the fire of innovation in their bellies.

Beginning of 2008, there were rumors of its mobile handsets division being spun off, then there were talks on its imminent fall, and finally signs on the ground - close to 10K layoffs reflecting its dismal state.

Sad, but thats what happens when a company like Motorola puts all its eggs in one RAZR basket. RAZR was an OK phone (I think it was pretty average) - but they stretched it way too far, refusing to come up with market-shaking new products at a time when the competition was churning new stuff by the dozen every week!

Sub-prime

The vagaries of the stock market have always confounded me. To me - a techie, the way economies run (or don't) is nothing short of amazing (random is another word for it).

One phrase perhaps best characterizes the state of what I'd call the US Corporate Confidence Index (yaay! I seem to have pulled off another one of those fancy acronyms ;) ). Despite its sombre tone, theres a sadistic beauty about it and years hence our descendants might study it in their history books. So I decided to frame it on my blog. Here goes:

"We're all sub-prime" - Kevin Logan, a US Economist, after the recent 'crisis'

I'm a dad!

March has been a month of drastic changes for me. A new location, new career direction and a newborn :). A cute little baby girl arrived and that makes me a dad :) - a pretty young dad!

And heres a snap of the stork who brought us our beautiful package. Though I could see the mother and child only on the 7th, thank God everything went normal and there were people to look after both of them :)

The future of communications - Neural Interfaces. Presenting Audeo

If you've read some of my older posts, you might realize that the way I see tele-communications developing in the near future is through Neural Interfaces - and I've been trying to follow a few cutting edge developments in this direction.

When we say neural - it does not necessarily have to imply 'implanted' capsules within our brain tissues. In fact, it seems the best way to neurally catch one of our 'senses' is to catch it someplace before it terminates into a sense organ :).

The latest comes from the world of sound (thanks to textually.org for the lead). The company is Ambient Corporation, its innovation is called Audeo and its tagline is 'Speak your mind'. I guess the tagline gives you a fair premonition of where this leads to ;).

What they have to offer is a neckband. Yes - a neckband that sort of eavesdrops on the neural signals sent by the brain to the vocal chords, interprets em and plays out synthesized speech based on its database of neural patterns and words.

And the good part is - you don't really have to even speak - just a careful trained thought that you are speaking something is enough to trigger this thingy. Awesome! A definite help to people who have problems with their vocal chords and just as helpful to people who might want to talk with their girlfriends right in the middle of a busy market.

Check out its demonstration video on YouTube:



Thats one of our five senses tapped digitally, others are well on their way. Soon we will be communicating in all our senses without - moving our lips, opening our eyes, reaching out our hands, sniffing with our noses or opening our mouths. Things are beginning to sound more and more like The Matrix to me!

My first month at Eko, an intro

Its been almost a month (though Feb is a short month) since I joined Eko. The past few weeks have been typically hectic with Eko launching its 5000 customer target pilot in Delhi.

Before I proceed any further, I guess it would be appropriate to point out what exactly Eko is all about.

Eko (www.eko.co.in) - startup based in Delhi, India aims at extend banking facilities in these untapped/un-banked areas through the use of mobile phone as a channel; currently there are over 200 million mobile phone subscribers (GSM & CDMA). Eko is looking to ensure greater financial inclusion and increase the outreach of the banking sector as envisaged by RBI – the Indian Federal Bank through the use of Business Correspondent Model.

Eko’s unified approach to financial services will address two key challenges - ubiquity and comprehensiveness of range of financial services. Often financial services with the focus for financial inclusion have resulted in high transaction & servicing costs, inadequate collection & use of customer information, and a focus on credit based services leading to the exclusion of more needed services including Savings.

Our first initiative is “Branchless Banking” using mobile phone as a channel. For now we have initiated a pilot project at Uttam Nagar in Delhi in partnership with Centurion Bank of Punjab under the “Business Correspondent” model. Our first offering is “Abhilasha” - No Frills Savings Account to customers with only two transaction - deposits and withdrawals.

Customers are acquired through Eko Relationship Officers (EROs: local salesmen of the locality with full KYC and good banking record) while they can transact (deposits and withdrawals) at Eko Cash Points (ECPs: local retail shops). EROs are remunerated for customer acquisition while the ECPs are remunerated per transaction.

The model is such that money is deposited to the bank, through the distribution chain of ECPs, even before the savings are mobilized from the retail customers. Hence there is no exposure to the bank. Subsequently, ECPs mobilize savings from retail customers. The customers have all the protections extended just like any other depositor with a bank.

Eko issues Signature Booklets (filed for patent) to every account holder. The Signature Booklet is used to secure the transactions and ensures more than ATM like security for the transactions. Eko also issues a comic for easy communication to the customers.

Eventually, multiple value added services would be offered to the members, through the network of EROs and ECPs including more credit and savings product apart from transactional services.

We would like to invite all those interested to visit our Pilot site at Uttam Nagar in Delhi. The directions are:
1. Take the Delhi Metro Blue line, get down at the 'Uttam Nagar West' station.
2. Once there, if you are facing west (or looking opposite to the direction of 'Uttam Nagar East' station), take the first turn left immediately after the station.
3. Ask directions for Eko, T 105, 'Shukkar Bazar' Road. (Its essentially three blocks straight and three blocks right from the beginning of the road and normally you zig-zag one block straight and one block right at a time)
4. Keep watching en-route to spot shops (medicos, groceries) sporting the eko signboard.

The following is the location of the Pilot Project on Wikimapia (you have to reach somewhere near the bottom left corner):



In my next post (when I get the time for it) I will post with pictures and illustrations how the transactions are carried out. So folks, watch out this space!

Add VOIP to your mobile

Here is a list of some of the products through which you could use the mobile phone to make calls over the IP network (GPRS or WiFi) instead of GSM, in other words VoIP over mobile (though cheaper- not all are 'free'):

1. Mundu Mobile, by Geodesic.

2. Skype on Mobile, by iSkoot.

3. Yeigo.

4. Fring.

5. MobileTalk, by Packet8.

Unless its over a WiFi network or a 3G/4G GSM network, most of these solutions would suffer from slight delays due to the nature of mobile data networks today (network latency.

Though not exactly pure mobile VoIP, JAJAH is an innovative solution that would probably have better results than the ones mentioned above simply because, though you can make free calls even over mobiles, at least the last loop on your end of the call would be over the GSM network (though its a VoIP at heart).

So wish you all happy cheaper calls!

The future of commerce in India - the Mobile way? Part III

Two m-ticketing offerings from Sam Pitroda's C-Sam inc have been introduced recently:

1. Indian Railways (IRCTC Mobile)
2. Jet Airways (JetWallet)

These initiatives have the following drawbacks:

1. While not exactly m-ticketing, since tickets do not reside on the mobile and the paper tickets have to be delivered by hand (courier/ counter) or over email, these initiatives could be called m-ticket-booking, since the payment part is handled on-device.

2. Requires a phone supporting java (or windows mobile) + gprs (or supports sms- Wireless Messaging API). While a good number of mobile subscribers might have java phones, only a small proportion have gprs enabled. While most of the latest java phones support JSR 120/205 (sms), most of the earlier phones in the market do not.

3. Requires a credit card account.

Functioning within the sweet spot among the limitations above, these are good initiatives.