TC-I Tidbits

Your daily dose of headlines:

Technology: Trak.in reports that a DesiWiki will help Indian start ups to increase their knowledge base on the technical aspects of starting a new venture.
Education: In order to encourage students to stay in school, the government approved a merit scholarship that will award deserving students of lower income sections with Rs [...]

TC-I Tidbits

In 65 days, 70% of Gujarat’s villages will be linked with Broadband connectivity, promised Chief Minister Narendra Modi[via iGovernment]. Lets see if he comes through. He cant fool us here at TC-I, our correspondent Prerna is in Ahmedabad as we speak. Staying with promises, the Chhattisgarh government proposed to electrify 79 villages using Solar Energy [...]

IBM and Rural India Make a Connection, Literally.

As a follow-up to previous posts relating to the role of mobile technology as an enabling factor in the development of rural India, IBM has recently launched a pilot project in south India that will allow rural communities to access information ranging from healthcare service providers to potential markets for finished goods through a toll-free [...]

Cellphones and Development

Recently, the NYTimes featured an article entitled, “Can the Cellphone Help End Global Poverty?”, in which it highlighted a new wave of “human behaviour” research funded by cellphone companies such as Nokia in order to tap into less developed markets. The author of the article centers around a series of conversations/interactions with Jan Chipchase, [...]

Midday Newsfeed

Technology: Although it is a hub for information technology, India is only #50 on the world’s most networked economies list, partly due to its poor ICT infrastructure.
Health: According to a survey, in the next decade, one in 20 female deaths in India between the ages 30 to 69 will be caused by smoking. (Source: India [...]

InternetSpeech - The New Digital Genie?

In a recent interview with Fortune Magazine, Muhammad Yunus beautifully articulated his dream of a “Digital Aladdin’s Lamp”, which would provide poor women around the world with access to global markets and trends for local benefit:
“A genie comes out of it and asks, ‘What can I do for you, ma’am?’ And she says ‘I make [...]

IIM-A Launches iAccelerator

Pluggd.in discusses the launch of an incubation program for technology start ups at IIM-Ahmedabad.
“iAccelerator aims at accelerating the web and mobile related brainwaves into prototypes and possibly build a team around the idea, get some funding and most importantly achieve some traction from the potential customers. We feel that it is a novel way of [...]

Women Barefoot Solar Engineers

We highlighted Barefoot College in a previous post, and they are in the news again as four illiterate women from Hyderabad are now fulfilling the role of solar power engineers. An Asia Sentinel article features the unlikely group that received training from Barefoot College’s Rural Technology Park and went on to complete tasks such as [...]

Evening Edition

Some table topics as you start preparing for dinner:

Humanitarian awards:  The Grameen Foundation reports today that Mohammad Yunus will be awarded the James C. Morgan Global Humanitarian Award.  The award will be bestowed upon Yunus at the Tech Museum of Innovation award ceremony in November (by the way, the nomination deadline for the Tech Museum [...]

Midday Newsfeed

Some headlines before you head off to lunch:

Technology/Connectivity:  

Mobile connectivity will be in the hands of millions of new subscribers thanks to BSNL’s $100 million contract to Nortel for supporting GSM network expansion in the southern part of India.  The plan is expected to be completed by the end of 2008.  
On a different note, IBM Research [...]

India’s Affinity with Africa - A Question of Self Interest?

According to the International Energy Agency, India’s energy needs - fueled by 8% annual economic growth - are projected to double by the year 2030.  Moreover, India is expected to become the biggest net importer of oil by the year 2025, after the United States and China.   
In an attempt to secure energy resources for its buxom economy, India is courting [...]

Midday Newsfeed

Employment: The social justice ministry concluded that the participation ratio of SCs/STs in the NREGA, a rural job scheme, shows that despite the fact that tribals are half the number of Dalits, they consistently outnumber them in the program, and that this needs to be corrected.
Environment: The government is working on a formula to compensate [...]

Market for Wi-Fi will top $744 million by 2012

To piggyback on a recent post by Shital, the aforementioned report on “Wi-fi in India” also forecasted that “the overall Indian Wi-Fi market (including WLAN hardware, systems integration and software services, not including embedded devices, laptops) is predicted to grow from the current $41.57 million to exceed $744 million by 2012 (compound annual growth rate (CAGR) [...]

Wireless Technology for Development

Wi-Fi Alliance released a report titled “Wi-Fi in India: A Key Enabler of Economic, Social and Community Development,” which studies the impact of wireless technology in rural and urban India.
The report profiles the work of a non-profit organization, Byrraju Foundation, which leverages Wi-Fi technology to connect rural farmers to experts in agriculture, remote patients to [...]

Internship Opening: Entrepreneur Training & Business Development for Rural BPO

The purpose of this internship is to develop business for Source for Change, an all-women rural BPO, and to expand the capabilities of its local entrepreneur (Attachment here Source For Change.doc).
The interns will be responsible for:

Generating new business opportunities in data-entry and digitization services
Training a local entrepreneur and developing operational processes to deliver quality services
Delivering sales [...]