Rural Kiosks: Real Challenges, Potential Opportunities Kentaro Toyama, PhD Assistant Managing...
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Rural Kiosks:Real Challenges, Potential Opportunities
Kentaro Toyama, PhDAssistant Managing Director
Microsoft Research India
eIndia ConferenceNew Delhi – August 1, 2007
Outline
Introduction
Sustaining rural kiosks is very difficult!
Some kiosk types are more likely to endure.
Focus on end-to-end service.
Outline
Introduction
Sustaining rural kiosks is very difficult!
Some kiosk types are more likely to endure.
Focus on end-to-end service.
Definitions
“Rural kiosk”– Rural center with PC as the
focus of services– Socio-economic
improvement as goal
“Sustainable”– Self-sustaining, as a
business
(for the purposes of this presentation)
Research MethodologyData sources:
• Ethnographic studies– 200+ site visits in India and Africa, over
2.5 years – ~550 hours of in-depth interviews, both
open-ended and structured • Interviews with kiosk agencies
– 20+ organizations– Small NGOs, start-up firms, MNCs,
state governments, academics• Kiosk surveys
– 300 kiosks, 2 years, once per quarter, 5 customers, 1 operator per kiosk, n-Logue and Drishtee [w/Kiri et al.]
– 1250 people, single survey, Kerala [w/Pal et al.]
• Results from software logging tool– 13 kiosks in Maharashtra
• Discussions with third-party observers• Literature in journals, books, web sites,
whitepapers
Published
• Renee Kuriyan, Isha Ray, Kentaro Toyama. Integrating Social Development and Financial Sustainability: The Challenges of Rural Kiosks in Kerala. 1st International Conference on ICT and Development, UC Berkeley, May 2006
• Kiri, K., Menon, D., Rural kiosks on profit mode. I4D, June, 2006.• Nedevschi S, Sandhu JS, Pal J, Fonseca R, Toyama K, Bayesian Networks, a Statistical Approach to
Understanding ICT Adoption. International Conference on Information and Communication Technology and Development, Berkeley, 2006.
• Rangaswamy, N. and K. Toyama. (2005) Sociology of ICTs: the Myth of the Hybernating Village. HCI International 2005 (Las Vegas), July 2005.
• Rangaswamy, N. (2006) Social Entrepreneurship as Critical Agency: A study of Rural Internet kiosks. First International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (Berkeley), May 2006.
• Rangaswamy, N. (2006) Global Events Local Impacts: Rural Emerging Markets in India, Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference, Portland, EPIC.
• Toyama, K., K. Kiri, D. Menon, J. Pal, S. Sethi, J. Srinivasan. (2005) PC Kiosk Trends in Rural India. Policy Options and Models for Bridging Digital Divides (Tampere, Finland), April 2005.
• Toyama, K., K. Kiri, M. Ratan, R. Vedashree, R. Fernando. (2004) Rural kiosks in India. Microsoft Research Technical Report. http://research.microsoft.com
• Veeraraghavan, R., Singh, G., Pitti, B., Smith, G., Meyers, B and Toyama, K. Towards Accurate Measurement of Computer Usage in a Rural Kiosk. Third International Conference on Innovative applications of Information Technology for Developing World – Asian Applied Computing Conference, Nepal, December 2005.
• Veeraraghavan, R., Singh, G., Toyama, K. and Menon, D. (accepted poster, 2006). Kiosk Usage Measurement using a Software Logging Tool, IEEE/ACM Int’l Conf. on Information & Communication Technologies for Development, 2006.
In preparation…
• Renee Kuriyan. The state and rural ICT. In preparation.• Joyojeet Pal. A survey of Akshaya centres in Kerala. In preparation.• Rajesh Veeraraghavan, Balaji Parthasarathy, Ken Keniston. Computer kiosks in a sugar cane cooperative. In
preparation.• Savita Bailur. Community participation in rural ICT projects. In preparation.
Research Papers
Outline
Introduction
Sustaining rural kiosks is very difficult!
Some kiosk types are more likely to endure.
Focus on end-to-end service.
Source: various published articles
Sustaining rural kiosks is very difficult!
Dhawan, Vivek (2004)Critical Success Factors for Rural ICT Projects in India
Masters Thesis, IIT-Bombay
Sustaining rural kiosks is very difficult!
Business vs. Social Cause
• Achieving both ends is exceedingly difficult– Difficult even for other
businesses in wealthy communities
– Sends mixed messages to entrepreneur
– Branding issues
• Analogy:– Hard to run a five-star hotel
and an orphanage in the same building
Renee Kuriyan, Isha Ray, Kentaro Toyama (2006)Integrating Social Development and Financial Sustainability: The Challenges of Rural Kiosks in KeralaICTD2006
Who Loses?
Kiosk Entrepreneur
• Potential harm– Debt, if kiosk doesn’t break even– Drain on other businesses– Loss in trust by community
• Between 1/3-2/3 of all for-profit kiosks fold each year
• Suicides from agriculture-related loans: “the survey indicated that most suicide victims had loans ranging from Rs.10,000 to Rs.1 lakh.” (http://www.hindu.com/2004/01/02/stories/2004010209620400.htm)
Source: Microsoft kiosk survey (Kiri, et al) and ethnography (Toyama, et al) [2004-2006]
100,000 villages 6 villages/day x 365 days/year 46 yrs46 yrs
Scaling is even harder!
• ITC can lay claim to the most kiosks in rural India (around 6000-7000)
• At peak, ITC set up ~6 kiosks a day.
• It required a large dedicated staff.
• Value of the PC kiosks themselves (as opposed to their modernized market hubs) is not clear.
• There are ~20 companies in India that are the size of ITC
• Even if all of them worked together, and applied the same resources as ITC, it would still take 2.3 years to set up 100,000 kiosks.
• After seven years of dedicated efforts to set up many kiosks, India currently has ~15,000 kiosks total.
Dhawan, Vivek (2004)Critical Success Factors for Rural ICT Projects in India
Masters Thesis, IIT-Bombay
Outline
Introduction
Sustaining rural kiosks is very difficult!
Some kiosk types are more likely to endure.
Focus on end-to-end service.
Enduring Model? (1/4)
E-gov’t service outlet
– But, only if…• service is frequently and
widely needed, and
• All other options for service eliminated.
• Examples– Bhoomi
– Rural E-Seva
Renee KuriyanThe State and Rural ICT
(in preparation)
Enduring Model? (2/4)
– Wealthier parents will pay for children’s education on computers
– Relatively lucrative for centre
• Examples– 1st-phase Akshaya; some 2nd-
phase Akshaya
– TARAhaat
– recent Drishtee
Computer-education centre
Joyojeet Pal, Renee Kuriyan, Kentaro ToyamaSite visits, surveys
Enduring Model? (3/4)Internet café
– Usage is similar to ordinary Internet cafés
• Browsing (exam results, jobs, news)
• E-mail• Desktop publishing
– So far, not a systematic approach by any kiosk agency
– Cf., Sify, largest Internet café operator, runs 3500 cafes in top 150 cities
(Note, Internet cafés also tough.)
Veeraraghavan, R., Singh, G., Toyama, K. and Menon, D. (2006)Kiosk Usage Measurement using a Software Logging Tool
ICTD2006
Enduring Model? (4/4)
– Primary a photo shop
– Services:• Prints• Photo touch-up• Wedding photo services
– Can be lucrative
• Examples– HP’s “photo backpacks”
– Otherwise, one-off instances of photo shops adding kiosk services
Computerized photo shops
Joyojeet Pal, Renee Kuriyan, Kentaro ToyamaSite visits, surveys
Outline
Introduction
Sustaining rural kiosks is very difficult!
Some kiosk types are more likely to endure.
Focus on end-to-end service.
Focus on End-to-End Service
– Is a human professional needed at rural site?
– Who provides the service on the other side?
– Is back-end computerized?
– What needs to be transported (other than bytes), and how is it transported?
– Etc.
Rural kiosk itself is not the challenge
Rural computing?
Summary
Introduction
Sustaining rural kiosks is very difficult!
Some kiosk types are more likely to endure.
Focus on end-to-end service.
Thank you!http://research.microsoft.com/research/tem/kiosks [email protected]