Linking To Rural India

It's one of the perennial problems of marketing in India: How do you reach the 700 million people living in rural areas who, though poor, would still add up to a big chunk of change if they only knew about your products? That's something Satyan Mishra, 33, has spent a lot of time thinking about. Mishra is the founder and CEO of Drishtee, a six-year-old company dedicated to making services and goods found in cities available to country folk.

In Drishtee's early years, the company focused on connecting government departments to villages. Using small kiosks outfitted with a computer hooked up to an intranet, it allowed rural dwellers to apply for a driver's license or request a copy of a birth certificate online. The company charged a small fee--25 rupees, or 55¢, to apply for a driver's license, say--but the applicant saved 10 times that amount by reducing the number of visits to a government office in an often distant regional center. The system worked well at first. "But we discovered that there was a lot of pent-up demand and that after some time that demand went right down," says Mishra.

So Drishtee has been expanding demand by selling insurance policies, subscriptions to websites that match would-be grooms with prospective brides, classified advertising, an online health-advice service and even passport photos printed as you wait. The company has 1,019 kiosks in nine states and is aiming to open an additional 3,000 in the next two years. Each kiosk is run by an entrepreneur from the village, typically a man in his mid-20s. The cost of a kiosk package--computer, digital camera, Internet connection over a cell-phone line, and printer--is $1,500, which is paid back over a few years. Each entrepreneur also pays a fixed monthly fee of $11. For that, there is help if anything goes wrong with the hardware, special rural-focused online packages that Drishtee develops (like the matchmaking service) and regular visits from insurance-company reps. Drishtee and each village entrepreneur get a small cut for every new policy sold. Drishtee is also looking at cell-phone kiosks--essentially cell phones that will offer about half the services currently provided by a fixed kiosk.

The company is one of a few that have shown bigger firms that there is a market outside the cities. Indian banks and retailers are developing innovative systems to reach the provincials. The Indian government likes Drishtee's delivery model and is looking at creating its own version with at least 100,000 centers across the country. Mishra, who has advised the government on how to set up such a system, says competition will be welcome. He believes Drishtee is perfectly placed to specialize in supply-chain management for companies hoping to reach the same market. "It's all about empowerment and giving people the tools to uplift themselves so they can compete with the outside world," says Mishra. "And we think there's a profitable market in that."