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Changemakers Forum:
Entry: CAM - Mobile Enabled SHG Microfinance Management System for enabling decentralized rural financial services
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Dear Vijay,
Greetings from Team SIGMA, XLRI !!!
Congratulations on your initiative and efforts. Your model looks to be really fascinating and having a huge potential.
Here are some comments on your business plan:
1. Since your technology works in relation with money transactions. How safe is your technology against hackers?
2. Please explain all the services that could be provided through mobile apart from money deposits.
3. Since most of the villages doesn't have a good mobile service network. How much feasible is your idea where you have low bandwidth network and you need to send scanned papers and pictures through mobile phone?
4. Please provide the financial analysis of the whole plan.
Best Wishes,
Chandresh Jain
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University Ambassador,
SIGMA - XLRI, India
Dear Mr. Jain,
Many thanks for your comments. Allow me to respond on specific issues requiring clarifications
1) The technology is quite safe, we follow RBI approved mobile transaction standards. The standards used on mobile and application are as under.
Mobile Phone: Issued to Business Correspondents - Encryption Algorithm SHA-1 would be used for both data files stored in phone and SMS content (transactions information used)
OneMIS Application Server: OneMIS Data Integrator Application would decrypt the information received and integrate with the OneMIS Banking Solution
2) Various kind of services can be offered on the same platform, these include
Balance inquiry
DD Demand
Credit & Debit
Money Transfer from Account to Account (Inter bank only)
Remittances (to remote locations)
3) Financial Analysis - this is a confidential information. However our effort is to reduce the cost of service to end client (Customer). Our initial aim is to reduce current cost of service delivery by 75%.
Hope this clarifies to some extent.
thanks again
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Best Wishes
Vijay Pratap Singh Aditya
CEO, ekgaon
Email: vijay@ekgaon.com
Hi Members,
The venture capital & investment models available in India do not offer support for initiatives such as ours, which do not have "proven" market model.
IT VC investors focus on models which are proven "in" and "for" western markets, rather then investing for creating a market. There is a huge potential for microfinance market however we are yet to convince a investor to invest in our initiatives. We continuously face there questions which could probably be answered easily by a Facebook or BigAdda.
We found even the so-called social investors, having myopic view of service provisioning for rural markets. Measuring success or growth in proven markets does not always qualify safe investment, as can be easily seen from the failure of big investment banking firms. While financial returns are important and must, but at the same time period of those returns should be based on realism of the market you are working and not based on some "proven-USA" model.
We would like some understanding and opinion from members.
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Best Wishes
Vijay Pratap Singh Aditya
CEO, ekgaon
Email: vijay@ekgaon.com
Dear Vijay,
Thank you for submitting your entry!
The idea of enabling mobile phones with an MIS system demonstrates a great intersection between banking and emerging technology by integrating their subsequent infrastructure. Seeing as you are in the pilot phase, we are interested in learning more about your plans for implementation. What is the potential for impact of this new system, and have you gathered data that highlights this potential impact?
Since the judges spend more time reading the entry form than the comments, please also update your entry in addition to responding to our questions and other comments. This will provide the panel of expert judges with the most comprehensive explanation.
Thanks so much! We look forward to learning more.
Best wishes,
The Changemakers Team
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Kaylena Bray
Ashoka's Changemakers
Hi Kaylena,
Thanks for feedback from your team. First a clarification, the project did started as a pilot in 2005 since we wanted to understand various aspects of technologies operational issues. Since 2007 we have started implementing customised solutions of the technology in India, Sri Lanka and soon in Nepal with different CBFIs, MFIs and Banks.
Further on our plan for implementations; we have evolved a new OneMIS platform which allows various types of financial associations like SHGs, JLGs, Chit Funds and normal MFIs, Banks through Banking Correspondent model to use the platform to enroll there customers and provide them multi-interface services such as mobile phone, Kiosk, Cyber Cafe and printed reports/statements. The platform is currently under launch preparation we are tying up partnerships for service delivery with mobile companies, Community Information Centres and PCOs. We are also exploring venture funding for expanding the service base and identifying franchise for providing services. The various services t be provided under OneMIS are credit connect, rating, audit, portfolio management, investment advisory etc. We hope soft commercial launch by the end of this year.
We shall update the entry such that it clarifies this point mentioned above.
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Best Wishes
Vijay Pratap Singh Aditya
CEO, ekgaon
Email: vijay@ekgaon.com
It is great to see Ekgaons focusing on innovation that will to minimize transaction costs for microfinance products while improving management information systems (MIS). As MFI expand, it is often MIS that is least able to handle this new scale. The use of video to explain the product is excellent.
For what I believe is an excellent summation of the MIS issues that Indian MFIs face see my Centre for Microfinance colleague Doug Johnson’s focus note, “MIS in Indian Microfinance”:
http://ifmr.ac.in/cmf/focus_notes/mis-in-indian-microfinance.pdf
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Featured Commentator
Ashoka's Changemakers
Hi Dan,
Thanks for your feedback. We have gone through the report mentioned by you. Another work on the same was done by Media Lab Asia way back in 2002, Tapan Parikh (also our co-founder and now Prof. at UC Berkley) undertook the study.
The Indian School of Microfinance for Women in Ahmedabad, India is in the process of bringing out State of Practice Report on the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Microfinance later this year, our work would also be covered in the same.
Our rationale of build a scalable open framework and provide managed services was to provide best of technology support for community owned financial institutions in such a way as they would want. We are presently working on much wider expansion of our system for which we are looking at raising funds for expansion as well as new means of local service provisioning through a franchise model of service delivery. We have ongoing talks for the same with various service providers to make the reach effective and affordable.
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Best Wishes
Vijay Pratap Singh Aditya
CEO, ekgaon
Email: vijay@ekgaon.com
Have seen a biometric solution that uses the mobile phone camera to capture the end user's fingerprint as authentication for transactions. Take a look at it at www.classifeye.com - very interesting application that becomes the unique second factor. Call Raj at +91-9886741389 or +1-9255770949 if you see anything that works for you.
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Featured Commentator
Ashoka's Changemakers
Dear Mr. Ramachandran,
Thanks for the suggestion we shall surely look into the technical aspects of using for recognising figure print.
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Best Wishes
Vijay Pratap Singh Aditya
CEO, ekgaon
Dear Members of the community,
We are attaching our entry for your feedback.
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Best Wishes
Vijay Pratap Singh Aditya
CEO, ekgaon