Behtar Zindagi launch aims at rural uplift

Chandigarh: With value added services (VAS) providers increasingly shifting focus on serving the rural community, utility-based VAS is making its way into their lives.

VAS players are empowering the rural segment through partnership with government organisations and NGOs helping them to reap the benefits of mobile telephony. A leading solution provider for mobile entertainment and VAS, Handygo recently launched the biggest VAS product available in the market developed with an investment of over Rs 1 million called Behtar Zindagi.

The product is based on interactive voice response (IVR) technology and is available in 29 different languages and dialect which reduces the language barrier. Through this rural initiative, the company is poised to reduce the dependancy of farmers on agents for most basic information.

Praveen Rajpal, CEO of F Technologies (Handygo) informed FE the company has tied up with various government organisations and NGOs to provide critical information related to agriculture, managing livestock, commodity prices, weather forecast, information on coastal & inland fisheries, m-education, health and rural finance, among others. The organisations include Indian Meteorological Dept, Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services, CARE, India Development Gateway, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC), EKO and NETFISH .

“We have launched our operations pan-India and our services are available through Airtel at present. Empowering rural is patching the rural community with most updated and accurate information thus, empowering them,” he said. Adding further, “Behtar Zindagi is no more a VAS initiative in telecom but a strong tool, which will revolutionise both the generation and the delivery of information anytime anywhere. We look forward to deliver end-to-end solutions through Behtar Zindagi in the field of m-governance and others. This fiscal end, we look forward to have 10 million users on board. However, our priority is to experience higher usage.” As per industry estimates, by 2012, 60% of country’s projected 650 million total mobile subscriber base will be from rural areas.