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Drive by WiFi in Indian villages: Fortune at the bottom of the pyramid ?
Check out this innovative concept of drive by WiFi being pioneered by United Villages. They offer email in Indian villages for as low as 1 Re per email (1 Rs is 2.2 cents approx). It might sound ridiculous to charge for email itself. But remember we are talking of remote and isolated villages here with no regular form of connectivity. This reminds me of C.K.Prahalad's Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid. Let us do a quick economics check on this model:
Population of Indian villages : 718910672.9
Hypothetical internet penetration percentage in villages : .05 % (3.5 % is the all India figure ).
Hypothetical number of emails in a month/person : 2
Annual Revenue : $ 18.9 Million (assuming 2.2 cents per email).
This is just revenue from email alone. A whole host of value added services can be brough to the table once the basics are in place. I don't know what the cost structure of this model is but seems interesting at first glance. Would love to know what you think ? Is this a money spinner or will it fall flat like the Simputer ?
PS: John Roese, CTO Nortel, has an interesting viewpoint that while we enter an era of hyper connectivity, we need to keep the economic and social impact of the connection in mind lest we actually start worsening the digital divide. Consumer Internet Digital divide Indian Business Life
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