In my last article, I opened up a topic named as “how Indian language computing products (hardware & software) can help to bridge the gap between urban India and rural India.”

In this article, i would like to touch on bigger pie of this business and i.e. how rural India and citizens residing in rural India can enjoy more fruits using linguistic web based application, products, services & so on.

Honestly, I am making an attempt. You as reader have to validate & comment whether I addressed this issue in totality or not.

Today I am able to see large number of cyber café’s all across urban cities located in India. They are also available in rural India. However, number is less. Reasons could be plenty.

Today most of the urban users who visit Cyber Café’s they do use services like sending emails, chatting with customers, using company’s Intranet based application (Pharma sector employees are using very extensively now-a-days) for on-line reporting, booking ticket for Air/Train/Private bus, filling up admission form, downloading passport application form & so on.

All these users are using most of these applications in English language and none of them is using it in local Indian languages. May be need is not there and/or need has not become as a fire where service providers have to bother about linguistic contents, linguistic applications, services via linguistic GUI & so on.

However and having said this, in rural India, most of the Cyber Café’s are used only for e-mail, chat, games & above all watching good/bad short films.

And that is the failure of IT & ITES.

Now to over come on this aspect, there is a great need for software developers, product companies, services companies to come together and offer respective products/services via web.

While doing so, integrate multilingual interface so that urban consumers as well as rural consumers can buy those products, can use web based services and in turn effective use of IT increases.

It also helps rural Indians to buy more & more IT. It will also push Govt. of India to establish more robust infrastructure in rural India.

Today following consumers/customers are using linguistic tools and those are :-

1. Agrinet, Mumbai (Agricultural product based company)
2. Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata (Research institute)
3. Systems India Ltd., Hyderabad (Solution provider for eGovernance)
4. Tata Consultancy Services, Kolkata (Product/solution providers)
5. Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (Research institute)
6. Lokmat, Nagpur (Print & digital media generator)
7. Rediff.com, Mumbai (Web based media & product supplier)
8. National Informatics Centre, Delhi (Government of India's IT/ITES backbone)
9. Netra Network for Educational Transformation, Pune (Web based education provider)
10. Soft-Aid, Pune (Software development company)
11. Nine Stars Information Technologies Ltd., Chennai (Digital content creators)
12. State Health System Development Project - II, Health and Family Welfare Dept., Kolkata (Health initiative of West Bengal Government)
13. CMC Ltd., Kolkata (eGovernance solution provider)
14. Reliance, Mumbai (Needs no introduction)
15. CMC Ltd., Bangalore (eGovernance solution provider)
16. Brain Power Pvt. Ltd., Pune (Software supplier for cooperative sector)
17. Gramin Sanchar Society, Kolkata (NGO from West Bengal)
18. Interactive Communication Technology (I) Pvt. Ltd., Mumbai
19. Webel Technologies Ltd., Kolkata, Ranchi (Nodal agency of West Bengal Government)
20. Chief Electoral office, Goa (Govt. of India organisation handling voter's ID & database)
21. Sakal Papers Ltd., Pune (Leading print & media content creator)
22. Telugu Desam Party, Hyderabad (Local political party of Andhra Pradesh)
23. Dept. of Agriculture, Govt. of A.P., Hyderabad (Agricultural department belonging to Government of Andhra Pradesh)
    

Now when You look at the above mentioned list of customers who are available on Internet in linguistic form? You may have a question. What is that they are using & doing with linguistic GUI + contents and for whom?

All of them are using “Web Samhita” and “Shree Dynamic linguistic fonts” developed by Modular Infotech.
What they are doing? i suggest & appeal to each one of You to visit their site and see it through Your own eyes.

But when i look at insurance companies, government & private transport agencies, health care, mobile phones supplier, mobile services supplier, education providers, political parties, various states government portals & so on? i realised that need is so huge for linguistic contents & GUI that no single company can do justice with the need.

In turn, via this article i am appealing to everyone across India to look in to this business opportunity. Have look at rural India. Talk to them. Understand them. And give them everything that urban citizen is getting via web and that too in his/her language where he/she is most comfortable than pushing him/her in English.

Today, this is food for thought that i wish to share with all the reader.

In case You want to know more about “Shree Dynamic fonts” & “Web Samhita”? Please do write to me on phadke@modular-infotech.com. You can chat with me using Gtalk using subbod@gmail.com mail ID. You can also chat with me using Skype and ID is “Phadke1”. You can also reach out with me using mobile. 94220.15600 is my mobile number.

(Thoughts mentioned in above article are writer’s sole thoughts. You may agree, You may not. You can be connected with writer, Mr. Phadke Subodhkumar Narayan via email and his email ID is phadke@modular-infotech.com . Writer is associated with Modular InfoTech and writing is his passion apart from many activities that he do in his personal as well as professional life)

Bridge the gap between urban cities & rural India

Only Indian language computing can bridge the gap between urban cities & rural India

For last 2 decades++, urban citizens from all the categories have been using & enjoying fruits of IT and ITES. Speed is increasing day by day, month after month & year after year.

However, IT penetration (in terms of buying IT, in terms of using IT, in terms of enjoying fruits & in turn becoming smart, effective, productive & meaningful person) is still not happening the way it is happening in China, in Russia, in US, in Europe and/or in UK.

Reason(s)

There could be many.

My own reading is linguistic gap is still not bridged by hardware firms by providing various linguistic hardware products, by software firms by not providing large number Desk Top, Web based & mobile based applications. Above all, by service providers by not offering them linguistic services based on IT.

Still IT is happening in English. It is not happening in majority of official languages spoken & understood by masses.

Everyone is talking about next big thing is going to happen in rural India. How?

Today when I visualize fellow citizens living in rural India and trying to map their 24 hours life mechanism, I do not see IT over there.

Having said this, they do use large number of mobile phones, but only for talking and not for applications. Applications are still running in English language. They cannot compose & send text messages. Mobile numerical pads are in English.
Schools are still not riding the horse of IT.
Various businesses that happen all across rural India, they are not using IT.
Transport systems used by rural Indian’s, they are not using IT.
Education is not using effective use of IT.
Medicine is not using effective use of IT.
Agriculture (one of the largest business that happens in India) is not using the power of IT.

In turn, I see & visualize great business potential. I can call it business potential if addressed else this large community will be left from mainstream. In turn, India becoming largest power is going to be dream. Indian citizens becoming largest consumers is going to be dream.

Today these large consumers are not able to buy train tickets, air tickets, inter state and/or within state bus tickets using PC + web/mobile. Same situation for private transport.
Large numbers of students are not able to learn their first standard to 10th standard education using web based systems and when everyone knows there is great shortage of schools & infrastructure. Above all non-availability of good teachers.
Large number of agricultural farmers are still not benefiting from IT and ITES in terms of what products they can sow, how, when, etc.
Large numbers of homemakers are not able to do home accounting in turn income/expenses, they still have to do it manually.
Health services, insurance, etc. are still happening in traditional way rather than using IT and ITES.
Various taxes that they have to pay all across the life span, they have to still invest their valuable & productive time in person by visiting many offices. In turn, productivity is going haywire and time is wasted.

Today there is a great need for developing & designing dozens of hardware products, applications, etc. But no one is concerned.

And because of that, all the projections & marketing plans, may fail if this gap is not addressed by everyone.

My own reading is,

Top 1000 software companies from India as well as from globe, I do not see & read anything happening on their respective web sites/portals.
i do not see top 100 medical companies from India and from globe concern about rural India consumer.
I do not see that Indian railways, Indian airlines, private airlines, State transport system, Income tax department, Indian insurance companies, Private insurance companies, etc. etc. are interested to grab this huge customer base.

And that too when Modular InfoTech as a linguistic company is ready to offer multilingual products & tools to all these companies to grab the business.

(Thoughts mentioned in above article are writer’s sole thoughts. You may agree, You may not. You can be connected with writer, Mr. Phadke Subodhkumar Narayan via email and his email ID is phadke@modular-infotech.com . Writer is associated with Modular InfoTech and writing is his passion apart from many activities that he do in his personal as well as professional life)

Indian language tools for computing

In my last article, I talked about need of Indian language computing to bridge the gap between urban India and rural India.

In this article, I wish to touch base (I am trying to attempt) how this need (huge and cannot imagine how much) can be addressed using IT & using IT enabled application products/projects. In turn, help rural India & fellow citizens residing in rural India to use IT, IT products & ITES.

Today large numbers of Windows based PC’s are shipped month after month, year after year in rural India. Most of these PC’s are being used for playing music, playing games, watching movies & for little time for email and/or web surfing. Consistent and high-speed connectivity is still in pipeline. Over & above, there is issue of consistent power. Here I am forced to exclude Gujarat state due to their mind blowing achievement on power & offering consistent power.

Sadly, these Windows based PC’s are not flooded with application packages/products namely:-

• Home accounting package for homemaker
• Package for school kids
• Package for college boys/girls
• Package for fathers/middle age group people
• Package for farmers for agriculture business
• Package for educational institutes
• Package for insurance agents
• Package for dispensaries
• Package for hospitals
• Package for medical distributors, retailers, stockiest, etc.
• Package for small malls (Janata Bazaar)
• Package for transport
• Package for grocery business
• Package for standard accounting
• Package for appliances
• Package for vegetable market
• Package for tours & travel agency
• Package for home planning & scheduling
• Package for Mangal Karyalay (Marriage halls)
• Package for restaurants/hotels
• We can go on finding business & package for the business

Now when we talk about any application product? We talk about GUI, we talk about database handling, we talk about data entry, we talk about database indexing, we talk about database sorting, we talk about report printing, etc.

Moreover, all these simple needs of software development can be easily addressed by one of the finest linguistic tool developed by Modular.

Tool name is Shree Samhita.

Today good number of software development companies across India use this tool and develop application products. To name few:-

• Indian railway ticket printing do use Shree Samhita
• Few co-operative banks from Maharashtra do use banking application in local languageFew co-operative milk dairies from Maharashtra are using milk accounting in local language.
• Few co-operating water supply organisations from Maharashtra are using water distribution package in local language.
• One of the municipal corporation water tax & house tax department are using Shree Samhita for tax collection software.
• Few co-operative sugar factories from Maharashtra are using Shree Samhita for cane accounting
• One of the developer has developed mall software using Shree Samhita
• Modular themselves used Shree Samhita for Ankur Office product. Office suite from India and India’s answer for MNC office suite.
  

All above applications/developers used Shree Samhita and used various linguistic API’s (application programming interface) in the form of DLL’s supplied along with Shree Samhita.

Now when we talk about actual software development? Shree Samhita does wonder. How?

Let us discuss & understand

Now first & foremost thing that we do in development is create user friendly GUI. Now here linguistic fonts supplied in Shree Samhita can be used for developing GUI.

This is one of the most important aspects of catching consumer mind. Each application must carry simple linguistic GUI so that user gets connected with the application & starts using it.

Second aspect is about data entry

Now here there are two ways to handle this aspect.

• First, using Shree Samhita fonts, keyboard handling API, developer can give the pleasure to user to key in data directly in local language or second, using transliteration (based on powerful dictionaries) API, developer can give the pleasure to the user to key in data in English and convert it to local language and/or vice a versa.
• While doing data entry, developer can also use keyboard-handling API and give the pleasure to user to select his/her choice of keyboard layout for doing data entry.
• While doing data entry, developer can also use another powerful API of indexing. By using that, database will get stored as per Indian language indexing rules & regulations.

While using linguistic data & then printing various reports in local language, Shree Samhita comes with another powerful & out of the box API. That is fast printing API. Using this API, user can get various reports in local languages on dot matrix printers. One of the cheapest & fast printing solutions still available in India. DMP’s are cost effective. They are easily available & serviceable. Recurring cost is also less as compared to Desk Jet printers or Laser printers. They require less power as compared to Desk Jet & Lasers.

In fact, popular DMP suppliers like TVS, WeP & Epson, all three of them have also integrated local language printing firmware in respective printers. It was Modular only who did this job for TVS as well as for WeP.

Over all, I have not seen powerful tool like Shree Samhita available for software development. That is just what only selected development companies used.

Nevertheless, if this tool is used by large number of developers? IT usage in rural India will increase. I am 100% sure about this.

If You want to see the magic of Shree Samhita? Please get connected with me via email and/or talk to me over Skype using “Phadke1” ID and/or talk to me using Gtalk using subbod@gmail.com email ID.

(Thoughts mentioned in above article are writer’s sole thoughts. You may agree, You may not. You can be connected with writer, Mr. Phadke Subodhkumar Narayan via email and his email ID is phadke@modular-infotech.com . Writer is associated with Modular InfoTech and writing is his passion apart from many activities that he do in his personal as well as professional life)