TARAhaat is a for-profit social enterprise which delivers education, information, services and other opportunities to rural areas, through internet. It is an initiative of Development Alternatives Group, a New Delhi-based non-profit organization, which was establishes in 1983 to create large scale sustainable livelihoods.

TARA stands for Technology and Action for Rural Advancement and 'haat' is a Hindi word which means a mall or kiosk. TARAhaat was setup in the year 2000 after an extensive review by a panel of technology, rural and business experts. It uses a franchise model wherein TARAkendras ('Kendra' means Centre) are setup in rural areas and the services are delivered to rural consumers through these 'kendras'. A mother portal, TARAhaat.com, has been setup for this purpose.

TARAhaat mostly utilizes India's existing telecom infrastructure, such as telephone lines, but these offer low-speed erratic connectivity. A satellite-based alternative solution was tried out, but that is a not-so-economical solution.

The most interesting aspect of TARAhaat is its strong focus on developing products and information content relevant to rural consumers. For example, its TARAgyan products offer customized computer education to rural areas. Information is also offered in a few local languages. A lot of time and energy is being invested in order to develop new products and improve existing products and services based on feedback and demands from rural consumers. Additionally, TARAhaat provides extensive support, both financial and knowledge, for rural entrepreneurs setting up its franchises. It also encourages its franchisees to come up with new product ideas.

TARAhaat enjoys the advantage of being associated with Development Alternatives, which is one of India's oldest organization working on sustainable development. This association brings an in-depth knowledge of the needs of rural India and experience in handling the challenges. This has helped TARAhaat achieve success in creating economical and social value.

Meanwhile, Development Alternatives Group, in association with the Confideration of Indian Industries (CII), is hosting the 2nd Sustainability Summit: Asia 2007 in New Delhi on 11th and 12th December 2007.

It has been three months since I started blogging on "The Edge". Nowadays, I find myself being contacted by several people - friends, acquaintances and strangers - informing me about their own social initiatives or the ones that they know of. Last month, an acquaintance who lives in Chennai (previously Madras), informed me about Ericsson India's Gramjyoti Rural Broadband Project, a pilot project which has brought the benefits of mobile broadband connectivity to a few selected villages and small towns in the Southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

The Gramjyoti (which literally means 'Village Light' in Hindi) project was launched in September this year by Ericsson India and it uses the Wireless CDMA/ HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) technology, which is an evolved version of the existing GSM international mobile telephony standard. This is probably India's first 3G (third generation) wireless network which supports high-speed wireless data transfer.

Ericsson India, which currently connects 18 villages and 15 small towns in Tamil Nadu through this project, has tied up with various domain experts to offer services and information content which are relevant to its target audience. For example, Ericsson has tied up with Apollo Hospitals to offer Telemedicine and mobile healthcare services. It has also tied up with Bangalore-based Edurite Technologies to offer E-learning services and the local Government to offer E-Governance to Gramjyoti villages and towns. Ericsson is also collaborating with Turner Broadcasting Systems (a division of Time Warner which includes CNN and Cartoon Network) to provide infotainment services. New Delhi-based One97 Communications provides the technology infrastructure for this project.

An interesting collaboration in this project is with an NGO named Hand in Hand, which has been operational in a few districts of Tamil Nadu working for social causes such as eliminating child labour, encouraging education and fighting poverty. The NGO already runs citizen centres across the state and Ericsson intends to make use of these centres to provide Gramjyoti services.

I personally think that the idea and the model behind Gramjyoti is fantastic. It is a project in which a multinational telecom company provides the technology base and has tied up with domain experts to offer user-relevant services and information content. The project also exploits the existing 'social network' and experience of an NGO. The project is intended to be a revenue-generating, sustainable business in the long-run. When compared to a host of other technology-based rural information/service provider systems in India, Gramjyoti looks very promising. I hope it achieves mass popularity in rural India, very soon!

Meanwhile, it is the festival season in India and the festival of lights, Deepavali (or Diwali), will be celebrated this weekend. I always look forward to visiting my parents during this time of the year and this year is no exception!