Rural Kiosks: Real Challenges, Potential Opportunities

1
Rural KiosksReal Challenges, Potential
Opportunities

• Kentaro Toyama, PhD
• Assistant Managing Director
• Microsoft Research India
• eIndia Conference
• New Delhi August 1, 2007

2
Outline

• Introduction
• Sustaining rural kiosks is very difficult!
• Some kiosk types are more likely to endure.
• Focus on end-to-end service.

3
Outline

• Introduction
• Sustaining rural kiosks is very difficult!
• Some kiosk types are more likely to endure.
• Focus on end-to-end service.

4
Definitions
(for the purposes of this presentation)

• Rural kiosk
• Rural center with PC as the focus of services
• Socio-economic improvement as goal
• Sustainable
• Self-sustaining, as a business

5
Research Methodology

• Data sources
• Ethnographic studies
• 200 site visits in India and Africa, over 2.5
  years
• 550 hours of in-depth interviews, both
  open-ended and structured
• Interviews with kiosk agencies
• 20 organizations
• Small NGOs, start-up firms, MNCs, state
  governments, academics
• Kiosk surveys
• 300 kiosks, 2 years, once per quarter, 5
  customers, 1 operator per kiosk, n-Logue and
  Drishtee w/Kiri et al.
• 1250 people, single survey, Kerala w/Pal et al.
• Results from software logging tool
• 13 kiosks in Maharashtra
• Discussions with third-party observers
• Literature in journals, books, web sites,
  whitepapers

6
Research Papers

• Published
• Renee Kuriyan, Isha Ray, Kentaro Toyama.
  Integrating Social Development and Financial
  Sustainability The Challenges of Rural Kiosks in
  Kerala. 1st International Conference on ICT and
  Development, UC Berkeley, May 2006
• Kiri, K., Menon, D., Rural kiosks on profit mode.
  I4D, June, 2006.
• Nedevschi S, Sandhu JS, Pal J, Fonseca R, Toyama
  K, Bayesian Networks, a Statistical Approach to
  Understanding ICT Adoption. International
  Conference on Information and Communication
  Technology and Development, Berkeley, 2006.
• Rangaswamy, N. and K. Toyama. (2005) Sociology of
  ICTs the Myth of the Hybernating Village. HCI
  International 2005 (Las Vegas), July 2005.
• Rangaswamy, N. (2006) Social Entrepreneurship as
  Critical Agency A study of Rural Internet
  kiosks. First International Conference on
  Information and Communication Technologies and
  Development (Berkeley), May 2006.
• Rangaswamy, N. (2006) Global Events Local
  Impacts Rural Emerging Markets in India,
  Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference,
  Portland, EPIC.
• Toyama, K., K. Kiri, D. Menon, J. Pal, S. Sethi,
  J. Srinivasan. (2005) PC Kiosk Trends in Rural
  India.  Policy Options and Models for Bridging
  Digital Divides (Tampere, Finland), April 2005.
• Toyama, K., K. Kiri, M. Ratan, R. Vedashree, R.
  Fernando. (2004) Rural kiosks in India. Microsoft
  Research Technical Report. http//research.microso
  ft.com
• Veeraraghavan, R., Singh, G., Pitti, B., Smith,
  G., Meyers, B and Toyama, K.  Towards Accurate
  Measurement of Computer Usage in a Rural Kiosk.
  Third International Conference on Innovative
  applications of Information Technology for
  Developing World Asian Applied Computing
  Conference, Nepal, December 2005.
• Veeraraghavan, R., Singh, G., Toyama, K. and
  Menon, D. (accepted poster, 2006). Kiosk Usage
  Measurement using a Software Logging Tool,
  IEEE/ACM Intl Conf. on Information
  Communication Technologies for Development, 2006.
  
• In preparation
• Renee Kuriyan. The state and rural ICT. In
  preparation.
• Joyojeet Pal. A survey of Akshaya centres in
  Kerala. In preparation.
• Rajesh Veeraraghavan, Balaji Parthasarathy, Ken
  Keniston. Computer kiosks in a sugar cane
  cooperative. In preparation.
• Savita Bailur. Community participation in rural
  ICT projects. In preparation.

7
Outline

• Introduction
• Sustaining rural kiosks is very difficult!
• Some kiosk types are more likely to endure.
• Focus on end-to-end service.

8
Sustaining rural kiosks is very difficult!
Source various published articles
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Sustaining rural kiosks is very difficult!
Dhawan, Vivek (2004) Critical Success Factors for
Rural ICT Projects in India Masters Thesis,
IIT-Bombay
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Business vs. Social Cause

• Achieving both ends is exceedingly difficult
• Difficult even for other businesses in wealthy
  communities
• Sends mixed messages to entrepreneur
• Branding issues
• Analogy
• Hard to run a five-star hotel and an orphanage in
  the same building

Renee Kuriyan, Isha Ray, Kentaro Toyama
(2006) Integrating Social Development and
Financial Sustainability The Challenges of Rural
Kiosks in Kerala ICTD2006
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Who Loses?

• Kiosk Entrepreneur
• Potential harm
• Debt, if kiosk doesnt break even
• Drain on other businesses
• Loss in trust by community
• Between 1/3-2/3 of all for-profit kiosks fold
  each year
• Suicides from agriculture-related loans the
  survey indicated that most suicide victims had
  loans ranging from Rs.10,000 to Rs.1 lakh.
  (http//www.hindu.com/2004/01/02/stories/200401020
  9620400.htm)

Source Microsoft kiosk survey (Kiri, et al) and
ethnography (Toyama, et al) 2004-2006
12
Scaling is even harder!

• ITC can lay claim to the most kiosks in rural
  India (around 6000-7000)
• At peak, ITC set up 6 kiosks a day.
• It required a large dedicated staff.
• Value of the PC kiosks themselves (as opposed to
  their modernized market hubs) is not clear.

• There are 20 companies in India that are the
  size of ITC
• Even if all of them worked together, and applied
  the same resources as ITC, it would still take
  2.3 years to set up 100,000 kiosks.
• After seven years of dedicated efforts to set up
  many kiosks, India currently has 15,000 kiosks
  total.

13
Dhawan, Vivek (2004) Critical Success Factors for
Rural ICT Projects in India Masters Thesis,
IIT-Bombay
14
Outline

• Introduction
• Sustaining rural kiosks is very difficult!
• Some kiosk types are more likely to endure.
• Focus on end-to-end service.

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Enduring Model? (1/4)

• E-govt service outlet
• But, only if
• service is frequently and widely needed, and
• All other options for service eliminated.
• Examples
• Bhoomi
• Rural E-Seva

Renee Kuriyan The State and Rural ICT (in
preparation)
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Enduring Model? (2/4)

• Computer-education centre

• Wealthier parents will pay for childrens
  education on computers
• Relatively lucrative for centre
• Examples
• 1st-phase Akshaya some 2nd-phase Akshaya
• TARAhaat
• recent Drishtee

Joyojeet Pal, Renee Kuriyan, Kentaro Toyama Site
visits, surveys
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Enduring Model? (3/4)

• Internet café
• Usage is similar to ordinary Internet cafés
• Browsing (exam results, jobs, news)
• E-mail
• Desktop publishing
• So far, not a systematic approach by any kiosk
  agency
• Cf., Sify, largest Internet café operator, runs
  3500 cafes in top 150 cities
• (Note, Internet cafés also tough.)

Veeraraghavan, R., Singh, G., Toyama, K. and
Menon, D. (2006) Kiosk Usage Measurement using a
Software Logging Tool ICTD2006
18
Enduring Model? (4/4)

• Computerized photo shops

• Primary a photo shop
• Services
• Prints
• Photo touch-up
• Wedding photo services
• Can be lucrative
• Examples
• HPs photo backpacks
• Otherwise, one-off instances of photo shops
  adding kiosk services

Joyojeet Pal, Renee Kuriyan, Kentaro Toyama Site
visits, surveys
19
Outline

• Introduction
• Sustaining rural kiosks is very difficult!
• Some kiosk types are more likely to endure.
• Focus on end-to-end service.

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Focus on End-to-End Service

• Rural kiosk itself is not the challenge

• Is a human professional needed at rural site?
• Who provides the service on the other side?
• Is back-end computerized?
• What needs to be transported (other than bytes),
  and how is it transported?
• Etc.

Rural computing?
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Summary

• Introduction
• Sustaining rural kiosks is very difficult!
• Some kiosk types are more likely to endure.
• Focus on end-to-end service.

22
Thank you!
http//research.microsoft.com/research/tem/kiosks
kentaro.toyama_at_microsoft.com