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Geodesic open sources C/C++ reference code of Aadhaar Authentication API specifications v 1.5 to UIDAI.
https://developer.uidai.gov.in/site/node/26
Reference implementation of Auth API v1.5 available on GeoAmida platform.

A real focal point for innovation, CARTES & IDentification is the event where the sector’s future and main trends are decided (contactless payment , authentication , M2M , etc.).
learn more at http://www.blogcartes.com/

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Darshana Rai, 65, seethed with anger as she stood at the tail end of a long queue outside a community centre in Rohtak, a dusty town 75km west of Delhi. "With every new government comes a new scheme. What a waste of time!" fumed Rai, a housewife. Inside the community centre, a large hall with cream-yellow walls and Mediterranean blue windows, four data-entry operators subcontracted by the state-owned Punjab National Bank (PNB), were enrolling account holders for Haryana's new electronic scheme to route social-sector benefits like old-age and widow pensions. Rai has every reason to be sceptical.

The money due to her, part of India's vast, leaky social-security funding network, is presently routed so inefficiently via village heads, sarpanchs, that it threatens to throw national finances, and the UPA government's political agenda of inclusive growth, off track.

Over the next five years, the Centre will spend $250 billion (R11.5 trillion) on subsidies, including old-age pensions, healthcare and the national jobs-for-work programme. Of this, at least 40% ($100 billion) will be siphoned off, mostly by "ghosts" (fake or undeserving recipients), estimates brokerage CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets.

That's enough to bankroll India's largest handout - the food subsidy of R55,000 crore ($12.4 billion) - more than seven times over.

With the government increasingly veering around to the view that direct cash payments into the bank accounts of beneficiaries is the answer, bypassing official middlemen (like the sarpanchs), the project in Rohtak is a harbinger of what might be.

The problem, presently, is that only 40% of India's 1.2 billion people have bank accounts. Of India's 600,000 villages, only 30,000 have bank branches. Contrast that with Britain, where 95% of its people have bank accounts.

The government can save R1 trillion a year - enough to reduce its fiscal deficit by more than 20% or fund the forthcoming Food Security Act - by channeling cash via bank accounts, says a study from consulting firm McKinsey and Co.

But banks can't be everywhere. So, the operators in Rohtak work not for the bank but for Seed Infrastructure and Solutions (P) Ltd, a banking correspondent (BC), a bank-appointed company that provides financial services in unbanked areas. Last month, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) allowed for-profit companies and individuals - retired bank employees, ex-servicemen, public call office operators - to become BCs with banks.

The BCs extend these services by tapping into India's infotech prowess, using hand-held electronic swipe devices called point of service (POS) machines or mobile phones.

Armed with laptops, biometric registration machines and webcams, the Rohtak operators worked feverishly. After 30 minutes, it was Rai's turn to be enrolled. She gave one of the operators the information they sought, called in banking parlance KYC, know your customer, details: name, father's/husband's name, address, annual income and a copy of her election identity card. After keying in the information, the operator took Rai's biometric details (two thumbprints) and a photo. Rai, who never had a bank account, will soon get a no-frills, zero-balance account into which her R700-a-month government old-age pension will be deposited.

By 2012, the RBI wants such no-frills banking outlets or BC networks in 75,000 villages. On offer will be savings, credit and remittance facilities.

Can India do a Brazil?
Ensuring that every rupee reaches the person it is meant for, as Brazil's popular cash-transfer scheme Bolsa Famila Programme (BFP) shows, can strengthen India's fight against poverty. BFP transfers cash via banks to poor Brazilian families on the condition that their children attend school and are vaccinated.

According to a World Bank study, BFP, which reaches 12.7 million families, helped lift 20 million people out of poverty between 2003 and 2009.

In that time, poverty - based on a purchasing power parity of less than $2 a day - fell from 22% of Brazil's population to 7%. The income of Brazil's poor grew seven times faster than that of the rich, and three times the national average. Inequality in the country is now at a 30-year low.

Brazil has 12.71 bank branches per 1,000 adults; India has 10.11.

"The building blocks and policy framework (for financial inclusion) are in place," said Usha Thorat, who retired as RBI deputy governor in November. "Today, it is possible to have a viable business model for providing affordable financial services."

"For the banks, more customers mean more income from disbursing cash transfers," said Anirban Roy, managing director, Seed. His company has opened at least 1.5 million accounts in 17 states for different banks. On Monday, RBI governor D Subbarao urged commercial banks to see financial inclusion as an "opportunity rather than an obligation" and use technology to achieve their targets.

"What is required now," said Thorat, who in her 38 years at the apex bank also handled the financial-inclusion portfolio, "is scaling up, for which banks need to take strategic steps and make concerted efforts." To scale up quickly and efficiently, banks are using BCs like Seed to reach unbanked areas and people like Rai with the help of technology.

A few meters from Rai at the community centre was Karan Singh, a frail 75-year-old unhappy with the government-pension scheme and unconvinced by the new efforts. "Dead people still get pension. I am alive but I don't get it regularly," he said. "Last month, I was in the hospital and the sarpanch returned the pension to the department. Now I don't know how to recover it."

Once he gets a bank account, Singh's pension will never be sent back to the government; it will remain in his savings account and earn interest. By electronic transfers to the biometric-backed accounts, the government can weed out the ghost pensioners.

The icing on the cake: once included in the banking system, Rai and Singh will not have to go to a faraway branch to withdraw their pensions.

On a designated day, a Seed employee will go to their village with a swipe machine, match their biometric details and hand over the pensions. The account holders will be given transaction slips in Hindi and an interactive voice response system will inform them of the transaction details.

In future, Rai, Singh and others like them would also have access to loans, insurance, money transfer and overdraft facilities via the banking channels.

Despite these obvious advantages, enrolling new account holders is difficult. "The village heads often create hassles because they see the government-bank-people link a threat to their power," explained Saurav Kanti Dev, senior manager, Seed.

Seed also runs one-room kiosks for PNB in bigger villages, through which account holders can withdraw or deposit up to R5,000 per transaction per day via a swipe machine.

THE UIDAI BACKUP
Some bankers say financial inclusion may not be cost-effective in the long-run. "The Centre must subsidise some portion of the costs to make it viable," said Gobinda Banerjee, general manager, PNB. There are teething problems too: Lack of trained manpower and an insufficient number of POS machines.

The next big push to the programme, some say, will come from the Nandan Nilekani-led Unique Identification (UID) programme, Aadhar, a national project to give every Indian resident an exclusive digital identity.

Ashok Pal Singh, deputy director general, Unique Identification Authority of India, explained how Aadhar could push the financial-inclusion programme.

"While enrolling for an UID, citizens can indicate that they need an account. In Temli (Maharashtra), where the UID project was launched, 1,500 people were enrolled. Nearly 97% of them wanted one (a bank account). None had an account, though there is a bank half a kilometre from Temli," Singh said.

Individual data gathered by Aadhar will be enough to meet the KYC requirements of banks, said Singh.

"The UID will be a powerful instrumentality for helping poor people establish their identity to meet bank's KYC norms," Subbarao said last month.

Some banks, however, are not convinced. They want more stringent background checks of new account holders when enrolled to prevent fraud. Singh said there would be no trade-off between security and inclusion in a UID-tagged account because the Authority's encryption technology is of the "highest quality available".

To allow transaction in real-time and increase the BC coverage, Aadhar has proposed microATMs (micro automated teller machines). A BC can use a microATM to connect to the bank, authenticate customers and perform transactions - either via mobile phones or the Internet. But it cannot store or dispense cash.

Wiring rural India so this can all happen is the responsibility of the R20,000-crore public information infrastructure project - to link every gram panchayat to broadband in three years - headed by Sam Pitroda, adviser to the PM on public information infrastructure.

"Once this ecosystem (microATMs, Internet and mobile connectivity) develops," Nilekani said, "a migrant worker in Delhi will be able to send cash to his hometown, effortlessly and without wasting money on intermediaries."

Download complete story (PDF)

Resource (www.expresscomputeronline.com)

Mumbai, 30 November, 2010 - Geodesic Limited (BSE: 503699, NSE: GEODESIC), a leading provider of content, communication and collaboration solutions to the enterprise and the retail segments today announced its partnership agreement with Credit Information Bangladesh Ltd. (CIBL). This association will enable the two companies to offer technological solutions, products and expertise across varied fields such as banking, insurance, remittances and e-governance. CIBL will offer Geodesic’s Geoamida, an award winning last mile technology platform and other allied products for its customers in Bangladesh.

This association will provide Geodesic an access to service an emerging market having similar need for inclusive growth & e-governance. Through this partnership, GeoAmida, world’s first Linux based integrated mobile computing platform has further strengthened its services to extend its presence in Bangladesh. The mobile computing platform will enable Government, Financial institutions, NGOs and Enterprises to mainstream marginalized people and deliver sophisticated services in the remotest of the places in Bangladesh.

Speaking on this occasion, Mr. Pankaj Kumar, Executive Chairman & Co-founder, Geodesic said, “We, at Geodesic, believe that providing services to remote areas safely, cost effectively and securely is indispensable in every market, to reach the unreached, be it essential financial/banking services or other government benefit services for the masses. GeoAmida was conceptualized to serve this need and serve the masses across India and other developing countries.”

“This partnership will enable us to explore and contribute to the services reaching the unreached in remote areas of Bangladesh. We thank CIBL for providing this opportunity to serve people of this country. We are excited to work with CIBL and committed to provide all the support required”, he added.

Speaking on this occasion, Muhammad Mahbub Hussain, Executive Director, CIBL said, “We are proud to be officially associated with Geodesic and its unique products as a Channel Partner with exclusivity for the Bangladesh region. CIBL, in association with Geodesic is determined to become a magic wand in generating high business value for the customers in the Bangladeshi Public and Private corporate sectors”.

Through this partnership, Geodesic grants CIBL an exclusive, non-transferable right to market, support and distribute GeoAmida in Bangladesh.

About Geodesic Limited:

Geodesic Limited is an innovator in software products focused on Information, Communication and Entertainment (ICE) for mobile phones and desktop computers. Headquartered in Mumbai, India, Geodesic's Mundu suite of products includes solutions for Instant Messaging, Mobile Voice‐over‐IP and Internet Radio. Since its inception in 1999, the Mundu Interoperable Instant Messenger has been used by several hundred thousand users on the mobile phone and over 5 million users on the desktop. The company is listed on the National Stock Exchange and Bombay Stock Exchange in India. Geodesic has offices in Mumbai and Bangalore in India, USA, UK, UAE, Hong Kong and Mauritius.More information about Geodesic and GeoAmida can be found at Geodesic and Geoamida

About CIBL

Headquartered in Bangladesh - CIBL Technology Consultants Limited is a strictly quality-driven System Integration, Software Development and IT Services specialist with major domain focus on the Banking & Financial Services. CIBL shares dedicated domain expertise with its' parent concern Credit Rating Information and Services Limited (CRISL) – a highly respected corporate entity in Bangladesh, active since 1996 as a Credit Risk Assessment and Related Financial Services Provider. With unique combination of visionary leadership, experienced resources, intelligent processes and compatible infrastructure, CIBL is committed to solve business challenges, and promote innovation through strong business alliances with Global Leading Innovative Technology Solution Providers, and offering wide range of solution spectrum such as - Custom Application Development & Support Services (On and offshore), System Integration Services, Comprehensive Banking Solutions (Core Banking, Risk, Treasury, Trade Finance, Payment Processing etc.), Full Insurance Solution, Complete Brokerage Solution, Work-flow based Document Management System, ERP Solutions for Apparel & Manufacturing (Other) Industries, Corporate Training Services etc. With steadily growing number of trained professionals, CIBL is gradually crossing borders by stabilizing activities in Europe, Australia and South East Asia.More information about CIBL Technology Consultants Limited can be found at CIBL

Press Contacts:
Navita Sharma
Head Corporate Communications
Geodesic Limited
navita.sharma@geodesic.com

Fullerton India faced several problems with its existing IT system for rural collections including the cost of smart cards, short on-field battery life of the reader, lack of flexibility as well as the unfamiliarity of consumers with the button-based interface. It deployed the GeoAmida platform to tackle these problems. By Prashant L. Rao

Fullerton India’s rural market business consists of providing small to medium sized loans to individuals and group consumers. The business process involves the consumer applying for a loan with Fullerton, which after appraising the credit-worthiness of the potential customer, sanctions the loan amount. Loan amounts are disbursed to the consumer through branches and re-payments are collected at agreed intervals.

Problems with the old system

Fullerton had already deployed a mobile solution for its collections process, which it found to be lacking on various aspects.

• The solution was based on contact-based smart cards, which were not cost-effective. Each smart card cost Rs. 100 and one had to be issued to each customer. However, there were lots of cards getting damaged while printing; a number of incidents were reported of lost cards. Managing the inventory of the smart cards that were issued, damaged or lost was tedious.
• The mobile battery of the reader did not last for more than a couple of hours with all the additional power required for running the application. Because of the short on-field battery life, the device could not be used for the entire work day leading to the manual recording of transactions or carrying forward of transactions to the next day. This resulted in duplication of work and reduced productivity for the field-team.
• The existing solution did not provide the flexibility to handle unscheduled or user-defined transactions. This, often times, resulted in loss of revenue for the company, with no control over the monitoring of such transactions.
• Users found the conventional navigation buttons to be inconvenient for easy navigation
• Fullerton was keen to plug these holes with an integrated mobile solution, which would allow it to service its customers at their doorstep, while enhancing the productivity of its on-field team

GeoAmida gets chosen

"We will be implementing G Life by November 2010. It will enable us to track inventory, battery life and the other health parameters of a handheld helping resolve issues faster on the field avoiding back-to-bench replacement costs" - Ajay Vernekar, Director - Technology Infrastructure, Fullerton India Credit Co. Ltd.

After evaluation, the company chose the GeoAmida mobile computing platform to service its remote customers. The solution consisted of the GeoAmida device with embedded software applications to enable the user on the field. Each device costs Rs. 19,000 and there are 700 on the field today.

The deployment commenced in April 2008 and the pilot was completed in two branches by September 2008. The full roll out completed in February 2009. “Currently, it forms our standard build for any new branch that is rolled out,” said Ajay Vernekar, Director - Technology Infrastructure, Fullerton India Credit Co. Ltd.

How the process works

At the start of the business day, the Fullerton Business Correspondent (BC) authenticates himself on the device using his biometric fingerprint. Once signed into the device, the BC uploads the updated list of customers (including their biometric templates) and the day’s transaction details onto the device using the desktop/WAN at the branch location. The BC carries the device while visiting his customers. The customer gets authenticated using the in-built fingerprint scanner and the required transaction is carried out. The details of the transaction are captured by the device and the customer is given a receipt on the spot. At the end of the day, the BC returns to the branch office and uploads all of the day’s transactions onto the desktop PC, which is then synchronized with a central database at regular intervals. A unified Remote Terminal Management module is also proposed for tracking and monitoring the health of devices while on the field. “We have completed the evaluation of the management module called G Life and we will be implementing the same by November 2010. This software is built and will be supported by the handheld vendor and it will enable us to track the inventory, battery life and other health parameters of the handheld helping us resolve issues faster on the field and avoid unnecessary back-to-bench replacement costs,” commented Vernekar.

Solution details

The Disbursement and Collections software for GeoAmida was custom developed as per client specifications. Several features and functions were added including fingerprint-based biometric authentication of customers, recording of disbursement and collection transactions, printing of transaction receipts, view past transactions, local language support, easy-to-use graphical and touchscreen interface, voice-based announcement of transaction details in multiple languages, day-begin and day-end upload/download of data from the central server etc. The software environment consists of Linux 2.6.xx.x and the programming language used is C along with the SQLite database.

Benefits vis-a-vis the old solution

The earlier solution was based on a more expensive model of using contact-based smart cards for customer identification. With GeoAmida's in-built storage capacity and integrated fingerprint sensor, Fullerton could undertake a foolproof method of customer authentication without dependence on smart-cards. The existing device had a short battery life. The process was semi-automated with continued dependence on manual entries. GeoAmida’s longer battery-life enabled Fullerton to move into a fully paperless collection process. The solution was not customized to suit Fullerton’s unique business processes. Geodesic has developed a tailor-made solution, which enabled Fullerton to continue with its well-established processes in a more efficient manner. Earlier, there was considerable delay in getting reports from the field. Today, a centralized architecture enables Fullerton to track daily business from a central location.

With GeoAmida's in-built storage capacity, Fullerton could do away with the smart-card interface, thereby immediately providing substantial cost savings on every customer. GeoAmida's longer battery life has enabled the Business Correspondent to undertake 60% more transactions in a day. The software application provides flexibility to input user-defined amounts, thereby enabling the capture and tracking of the unscheduled transactions. It also reduces the requirement for manual intervention and enhances the productivity of the on-field team. Advanced authentication techniques help reduce fraud, the integrated printer on a hand-held form factor has improved portability and the customer experience has been enhanced through a multi-lingual interface and voice-based interactions. Maintenance and service costs have been reduced through a unified terminal management software and customer-touch points expanded with minimal investments on setting up new infrastructure. Today the number of transactions per day stands at 200-250 with Rs. 20,000-25,000 of collections per day per point of transaction.

The majority of financially excluded groups are from poor, socially underprivileged, disabled, elderly, as well as children, women, uneducated, ethnic minorities and mobile population. People living in remote areas are discouraged by the cost of transportation for approaching the nearest banking center, which apart from money also involves spending time that could otherwise be spent earning a livelihood. The only way to include the leftover segment in the economic mainstream is to reach them at their place of residence or work i.e. by arming the financial intermediary with cost-effective mobile technologies. A few financial institutions have already initiated projects in different remote parts of the country utilizing smart cards/mobile technology to extend financial services similar to those dispensed from their branches. Information & communication technology (ICT) is vital to bridge the last mile and take banking to the un-banked.

Resource (www.expresscomputeronline.com)

IDBI Bank has already launched the Financial Inclusion drive, ‘Aarthik Vikas Kee Ore’ in unbanked villages of Maharashtra.

As a step towards including the urban poor into the folds of banking, R.M. Malla, Chairman and Managing Director of IDBI Bank Ltd., launched the Urban Financial Inclusion program at Ambedkar Nagar, Cuffe Parade, Mumbai on Saturday July 17, 2010.

Under this program, basic banking services would be provided at the doorsteps of the customers with the help of biometric smart cards and hand-held devices through Business Correspondents of the Bank.

IDBI Bank has already launched the Financial Inclusion drive, ‘Aarthik Vikas Kee Ore’ in unbanked villages of Maharashtra

Resource (www.indiainfoline.com)

"Shagun" is a young woman living in a small village near Yavatmal, India. She makes and sells bread in her village, proudly contributing to her family's income that is often less than $50 a month. One day she was feeling feverish, and wondered if she had malaria. The nearest doctor was two hours away by bus, and she would lose a day's wages and have to pay for transportation to get there. Luckily, her neighbor, "Nalina," had helped her enroll in a health insurance program a few months ago. Nalina was trained by a not-for-profit called CARE Foundation to be a Village Health Champion (VHC) who provides "healthcare at the village doorstep." She has been trained to ask the right questions, and to record basic medical symptoms and vital statistics such as blood pressure, heart rate and temperature, and identify emergency symptoms. For routine diagnoses, Nalina can use a hand-held terminal with a built-in clinical decision support system to provide appropriate medical advice and order prescriptions. In Shagun's case, Nalina liaised with a remote CARE doctor who recommended treatment through an SMS prescription. Over-the-counter drugs were dispensed by Nalina from her medical kit, and within a few days, Shagun was feeling better and back to making bread!

CARE's rural health delivery and microinsurance scheme focuses on the provision of outpatient care in the village setting. Final testing of the technology, training of health workers and product design are being completed. The product will be piloted this fall, with a target outreach of 50 villages that have approximately 100,000 low-income residents by 2012.

CT to increase outreach, reduce costs and improve client value
CARE's tele-medicine and hand-held terminals represent the frontier of microinsurance: using technological innovation to offer higher quality services to remote clients while keeping costs low. Microinsurance, or insurance designed to serve low-income clients, has become a better-known poverty alleviation strategy in the last ten years. However, there is much to be done before poor people are well-protected. Only about three percent of the low-income people in the world's 100 poorest countries benefit from microinsurance, leaving approximately two billion vulnerable to economic shocks. If microinsurance is to reach these two billion people, technology will be key.

Why technology?
Access to information technology in the global south is increasing at astonishing rates. Subscriptions for mobile phones in developing countries have grown from a few hundred million at the beginning of the century to three billion in 2008, and in Africa there are on average 40 mobile phone subscribers per hundred people (Lloyds 2009). Falling prices of mobile broadband and the increasing availability of 3G, the new generation of wireless technologies, are expected to improve internet access considerably in coming years.

Furthermore, the "global digital divide" could potentially have a silver lining, as developing countries can "leapfrog" obsolete phases of technology and jump directly to new advancements. These advancements, such as satellite data, Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and point of sale terminals, have the power to improve microinsurance in a variety of ways.

According to the World Resources Institute, "Technology does two key things that help drive the development of financial services: it cuts costs, and bridges physical distance." These two issues - high operating costs and clients that are spread out and difficult to access - represent two of the biggest barriers to microinsurance development. The Microinsurance Innovation Facility's partners are testing a variety of technological solutions to overcome both of these challenges.

Bringing Additional Value to Clients
Like Shagun, poor people often live in remote locations, making it difficult for them to access microinsurance. Microinsurers are experimenting with new technological innovations to bridge these distances. Point-of-sale devices are an example of one of these solutions - they allow customers to enroll and make premium payments remotely, saving both time and money. Mobile phones can also be used to improve access: in Kenya, British American Insurance (Britak) has recently launched a new personal accident insurance product that features enrolment and premium payment via cell phones.

Health microinsurance also presents unique opportunities for technological innovation to increase client value. The tele-medicine aspect of CARE's product is another valuable offering, since many poor clients live in areas where physicians are scarce. Technology also plays a key role in health insurance schemes that offer "cashless" claims. This type of coverage allows clients to access medical care without having to pay any money up front, which can be of life-saving value for extremely poor clients who have little access to capital. Well-designed software to manage data that can help the liaison between the insurer and the health care provider and better identify clients and store their information is crucial to making health insurance product work.

Back Office Efficiency
In order to be sustainable, a microinsurance scheme must minimize operational costs. Insurance requires a large number of policyholders in order to reach economies of scale. It can involve costly claims verification processes, cumbersome data management, and a high volume of transactions due to regular premium payments. When this model is translated to a micro scale, maintaining a good ratio of operating costs to premium payments becomes difficult. According to Richard Leftley, CEO of Microensure, "If 50% of a poor client's premium goes toward administrative costs, claims payouts are meager and client value plummets. If you had a dollar to invest in your microinsurance scheme, I'd strongly recommend spending it on back office efficiency."

Here, too, Facility grantees are working to find cost-effective solutions, often tailored to specific institutions' needs. One of the issues insurers face is the lack of uniformity in the technology that delivery channels use to register clients information. In Peru, La Positiva, a local insurance company, is collaborating with local water associations to combine premium payments with monthly water bills. According to Lourdes del Carpio, manager of the agricultural insurance segment for the company, adapting to the delivery channels' information systems is a challenge. "Some water associations have software that allows us to manage the information on each farmer and print the receipt...but some don't use any software besides Excel sheets. Others prepare their receipts manually." La Positiva is exploring technological solutions to the challenge: "We're trying to bring uniformity, evaluating the possibility of using electronic points of sale to aggregate information on clients." Though back-office solutions lack the glamour of other technological advancements, the further development of affordable management information systems (MIS) will be critical for the future of the microinsurance industry.

Reducing Fraud
Another way to reduce costs is by reducing fraudulent claims. In India, the number one milk-producing country worldwide, insured cattle are identified using ear tags. Unfortunately, some farmers send the severed, tagged portion of the ear for proof of a claim even if the animal has not died. Re-tagging is frequently used to substitute insured animals with sick or dying animals. Also, the tags often get separated from the ear or become unreadable due to harsh weather. To pre-empt fraudulent claims, Iffco-Tokio General Insurance Co. has received a Facility grant to implement a Radio Frequency Identification Device (RFID) in Kerala and Gujarat. The RFID device is a micro-chip implanted beneath the animal's skin that wirelessly transmits its identification number, which is linked to the date of birth, coverage and claims information, and veterinary history. The chip cannot be manipulated, and is effective even under rugged conditions.

Iffko Tokio recognizes that the biggest challenge to the viability of the scheme is the high cost of the RFID chip - a common challenge for innovative technological solutions. If cost can be lowered, this, along with the reduced number of fraudulent claims can lead to lower premiums, making the product more accessible to low income farmers.

The Future of Technology and Microinsurance
According to Pranav Prashad, a Grant Officer at the Facility, "Players in the microinsurance field need to cut costs and they recognize that technology is the solution, but given the current scale of operations, they aren't sure how much to invest and in which technologies." To help assess which strategies work and which don't, the Facility will offer one final call for proposals for Innovation Grants in fall 2010, supported by Zurich Financial Services, with the theme of "Scale and Efficiency". This round will focus on projects that are using technology to make microinsurance more affordable and accessible to low-income clients.

Ten years ago, it would have been difficult to imagine that a poor Indian woman would file a claim and receive a medical diagnosis electronically from her rural home. The next ten years will undoubtedly bring new and equally unexpected technological developments - developments with the power to bring the security of microinsurance coverage to the two billion people who need it most.

Resource (www.nextbillion.net)

Geodesic’s innovative offering GeoAmida, world’s first Linux based integrated mobile computing platform has beefed up plans to extend its presence in the state of Gujarat. GeoAmida will reach out to all the major public and private sector developmental projects in the state, through reputed IT solution providers.

GeoAmida offers the most reliable and efficient last mile solution to reach the masses, enabling service providers to biometrically identify customers, deliver multiple services remotely and securely, and function efficiently in the remotest parts of the world.

GeoAmida, the mobile computing platform enables Government, Financial institutions, NGOs and Enterprises to mainstream marginalized people and deliver sophisticated services in the remotest of the places.  

GeoAmida has been well accepted by the industry as an integrated handheld computing platform to overcome last mile delivery challenges. Geodesic, in just over a year, has successfully deployed over 15,000 devices across different projects including NREGS, PDS, Financial Inclusion/ Micro-Finance etc. Clients include Source trace, Fullerton India, HCL, Glodyne, Indian State Governments amongst others.

Mr. Pankaj Kumar, Chairman, Geodesic Ltd. stated, "We plan to work with system integrators and other solution providers in Gujarat to serve various public and private sector projects such as Financial Inclusion, Public Distribution System, and Social Welfare project like NREGA, Healthcare, Banking and Financial Services - Financial Inclusion for the rural community, E-Logistics and other e-governance projects."

 As per the recent research reports, the microfinance market in Gujarat alone is estimated at over Rs. 6000 crore. GeoAmida has field proven solutions to reach the unbanked through branchless banking viz.  Microfinance, Pigmy Collections, Business Correspondent banking.

 GeoAmida has recently won the NASSCOM Social Innovation Honor awards 2010 under the category of ICT-led business innovation for development and also been nominated in the PC Quest Best IT implementation award 2010.

A recent success story of GeoAmida was the Fullerton India Credit Co. Ltd. which is a subsidiary company of Fullerton Financial Holdings Pvt. Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of the US $100 Billion – Temasek Holdings, Singapore. Fullerton successfully implemented solutions based on GeoAmida mobile computing platform to carry out its loan collections and reach out to its customers and enhance the on-field team's productivity.

Fullerton had a mobile solution for their collections process, which they found to be lacking in various aspects. The solution was based on contact-based smart cards, which were expensive. Typically, the mobile battery did not last for more than a couple of hours with all the additional power required for running the application. Because of the short on-field battery life, the device could not be used for the entire work day leading to manual recording of transactions or carrying forward of transactions to the next day. This resulted in duplicity of work and reduced productivity for the field-team which in turn resulted in loss of revenue for the company. There was a need for standardized operating procedures for the field force team to ensure that all transactions were conducted only using the handheld device with proper validations and authentication. Fullerton accomplished this with an integrated mobile solution based on GeoAmida mobile computing platform from Geodesic Limited. The solution composed of hardware and software components. The hardware comprised of GeoAmida devices and on the other hand a customized loan collections software was developed and pre-installed on each device. This new system was able enhance productivity of field force by at least 30%, through reduction in manual errors, remove duplication of work plus regular collection updates from the field has empowered decision makers of company to take pro-active business decisions.

Project Specs

• Project Head: Samir Khare, Sr.Vice President (Technology Applications)
• Deployment Location: Mumbai
Team Size: 15
• Tech Used: Linux OS C Programming SQLite Database
• Expected life: NA
• Implementation Partner

Geodesic

Resource

NASSCOM Foundation today announced the winners of its second annual Nasscom Social Innovation Honours 2010. The Honours were given to deserving projects that strive to bring about social change and development through technology at the NASSCOM India Leadership Summit 2010. The Honours were judged by an eminent jury of Narayana Murthy (Founder-Chairman, Infosys Technologies Limited), T. N. Ninan (Chairman and Editorial Director, Business Standard Ltd.), Rama Bijapurkar (Independent Market Strategy Consultant), Jaithirth (Jerry) Rao (Chairman, NASSCOM Foundation) and Saurabh Srivastava (Trustee, NASSCOM Foundation).

ICT led business innovation for development:

Geodesic Ltd. won the Honour for GeoAmida, the Perfect Last Mile to reach the Un-reached, enabling service providers to biometrically identify customers, deliver multiple services remotely & securely, and functions reliably in the remotest parts of the world. The multilingual, graphical interface (display, print & speak) is designed to address low IT literacy of the users & fundamentally improve ease of use.