Project information
| Status | Finalist |
| URL | Go to website |
| Category | Economic Development Information based businesses |
| Country | India |
| Operational areas | Rural |
| Target groups | Youth, Women, Men, Seniors |
| Wireless connection | GSM, CDMA , Bluetooth |
| Access points | Business |
| Interact | , Cellphone, PDA |
| Software License Types | Open Source |
Project location
Random images Challenge 2008
Enabling financial inclusion and increasing efficiency of Self Help Groups Microcredit Federations
- Brief description
- CAM is a three-tier document-based architecture for providing remote rural information services for SHGs in Microfinance. The user tier consists of a set of paper forms that people use to record information, perform queries and conduct secure transactions. The server is a standard web application server, which can reside locally, in a nearby town, or virtually in the Internet. The middleware resides on the mobile phone, which plays the role of scanner, user interface, network, cache & pre-processor in the system. The system creates a decentralized multi-level management information system, increases efficiency of finance management, increases security and reduces credit journey cycle.
- Vision, Objectives and Goals
- The main objective of the project is to remove the digital divide, in providing the real time information of microfinance transactions of SHG’s available online that enhances the stakeholders to get needy information on time anywhere. The secondary objective is to enable the rural women to get financial and or non-financial assistance by using the timely and accurate information that leads to the economical / social upliftment. The wider vision of usage of this technology framework is to get service access to the communities in other sectors like non-financial services through banks, insurance, retail, providing real time market information of agri-products, prices of commodities, supply chain management information etc.
- How does ICT contribute to the organisational objectives
- ekgaon work is centered around enabling support for rural enterprises to build economies of scale by efficiently using ICTs and building management systems centered around primary producer communities across South Asia. In line with its mission ekgaon has been working over several years across South Asia with development stakeholders and partnering on projects for enabling development process and building communication and information systems for increasing efficiency of business enterprises and value chain process, enabling information flow and delivering financial services, technology solutions and strategic consulting.
ekgaon unique business model identifies its user group as customer for information based services, that are sometimes very crucial for business/professional decision making and hence for sustainability of the business and livelihoods of the client. We while creating cost effective technology systems ensure that sustainability of services are beyond the system on which it has been built. Our thinking in this line has led us to believe in principles of open source and emerging technologies enabling through networked approach.
The main problem in rural financial services is the non-availability of accurate, timely and needed information for decision making at higher levels. In microfinance sector, due to the lack of information, the SHG members could not ascertain the financial position (profitability) of their group, the documents / reports required for the submission to obtain loans, to portray their strengths as a financial institution.
Since the data is captured using a mobile phone and sent to the online server, the field staff monitoring the Self Help groups would supply the computer printed reports to the SHG’s which help them to overcome all the difficulties in terms of reports, book-keeping and portfolio management. This also enables the other stakeholders like Federation, banks, NGO (CCD), SHPI, MFIs to track their loan repayment online and arrive at the decisions on time. - Transferability
- The scalability of the project is clear from the open source model of technology sharing that ekgaon adheres to. ekgaon shares the software and code with clients and only provide services for customisation and extension services.
The Apex financial institutions of government which have larger mandate of financial inclusions and programmes to support the same could benefit from such a technology in a major way with the scale which will bring depth in reach and financial transparency for better management of large scale financial inclusion programme. - Project summary
- ekgaon has good experience and expertise in the field of community finance and developing management solutions for developing communities. One of ekgaon’s product is the simplified colour coded paper based Management Information System for financial management at Self Help Groups. The paper MIS is widely popular and freely shared under creative common licensing. This experience led to ekgaon’s initiation into another level of system intervention in microfinance value chain to develop a technology that would suit the rural atmosphere of power consumption, network coverage, device utility, rough handling and communicative mechanism. After a series of interface suitability research with community over a period of one year we decided to use the mobile phone for recording the data / financial transactions from rural areas that could to be operated by semi-literate / illiterate users. The visual and audio prompting of the transactions by the mobile through our unique software (CAM Browser) installed in the mobile was developed to aid in usage by diverse community of users in rural areas.
While identifying the connectivity solution, various available choices of sending the data such as MMS, GPRS and SMS from the mobile phone to an online server were tested. Situational analysis of the rural scenario identified SMS as best delivery mechanism to send the data from rural areas. The application that runs on the mobile allows functioning of the system in non-network coverage area, which actually fit for the Indian rural areas and send the SMS from the queue when the user reaches the network coverage area.
The backend online application has been developed using the open source software of PHP for front end and MySql for database. The SMS gateway receives the SMS and update the online database. The online system generates financial reports, portfolio management reports and accounting reports as per the accounting standards and microfinance reporting standards specified by the apex institutions. To make the printing and usage of reports easier, the report are available in html, pdf and excel formats and could be generated in realtime as per the user queries.
The framework provides a decentralized, user centric realtime financial management system serving the financial and information needs of the stakeholders in the rural (microfinance) finance sector.
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