This blog is my attempt to present opinions, facts, raise thought provoking issues pertaining to the creation of a positive impact on the world. Please feel free to share your ideas, start a discussion, insult my overwhelming use of the passive voice,  or post witty comments on the state of the universe…

For this post, I wanted to draw attention to an article that appeared a while ago in the New York Times, which describes the economic and social change being brought about by cell phones in developing countries. The article covers two very fascinating themes.

1. New paradigms may be applied to “old” technology to bring services to people in developing nations:A rather clever example from the article:

Ugandans are using prepaid airtime as a way of transferring money from place to place, something that’s especially important to those who do not use banks. Someone working in Kampala, for instance, who wishes to send the equivalent of $5 back to his mother in a village will buy a $5 prepaid airtime card, but rather than entering the code into his own phone,he will call the village phone operator (“phone ladies” often run their businesses from small kiosks) and read the code to her. She then uses the airtime for her phone and completes the transaction by giving the man’s mother the money, minus a small commission.

Banking is another service being made accessible to people in rural regions of developing nations. The absence of formal banks led to difficulties in accessing credit, developing healthy saving habits, and a lack of access to payment services. Recently however, several companies have introduced cell phone banking services, giving people in these regions for the first time the ability to make and receive payments, purchases or withdraw cash. As you can imagine, this has the potential to be a powerful agent for poverty alleviation in those regions.

2. Product design for developing markets at ultra low price points: As someone who is deeply entrenched in the technology industry, I have observed that cascading technology products unchanged from developed nations to developing ones is usually not a great idea. Typically, the product becomes either ridiculously over priced for the new market (an anecdotal example: a $1049 previous generation white Macbook selling for $1900 in an electronics store in Mumbai) or ends up being too feature crippled to be very useful.

For a product or service to be both useful and profitable in this segment, two aspects appear to be important- a thorough understanding of the usage model in the target market, and a laser focus on price during design and product development. Examples of innovation in product design and development for developing countries include:

The development of new techniques to iodize salt by HLL in India ,

The Tata Nano-the $2000 dollar car ,

(from the NY Times article) An ultra low cost cell phone developed to use pictures instead of text as the user interface, aimed at serving illiterate people,

Cataract Surgeries at 1/10 the cost at Arvind Hospitals

and the list goes on.

Overall, much food for thought. This "niche" appears to offer boundless possibilities for the astute business to make a profit while providing very positive community impact.

Your thoughts?