Information and Communication Technologies for Development

Our Final presentation went well. We were planning to do a video with each one of us playing the role of a villager, MFI, agent and money lender but then decided to drop the idea due to time constraints and we were not sure how it would be taken since we were trying to portray villagers who were underprivileged, had little assets and were looking for micro loans to get on the track of progress. We ended up just recording use of the SmartMicroLoans website which did not turn out to have good audio quality so I finally just let the video run with no sound and talking live during the presentation.

I was able to get through some hurdles related to handling user login/logout sessions and the prototype looks in good shape, though there is more work to be done. I was also able to make use of the nokia WiFi/GPRS enabled phones/devices, the Nokia E61i and Nokia N810, and access the SmartMicroLoans site using these phones and demonstrate different users (borrowers and MFIs) using the system during the poster session.

Things are finally coming together with the database designed and various web pages being developed. PHP has proved helpful and simple enough to get started and running. I have the basic framework ready, among them are the interface frames, menus, login (authentication) and navigation from one paqe to another.
Sangita and I were also able to talk directly to some villagers in Rajugela, India over the last couple of days and we have learnt a lot about the village and the situation regarding loans etc. We talked to the head of the village and about 6-7 other regular folks from the village some of whom had previously taken out loans and some who wished to take loans to start a new business.

The feedback all teams received in class last week emphasized the importance of metrics in defining the success of our projects. This is so true. One cannot evaluate what one does not measure! This has been drilled into me time and time again as a part of the class on Enterprise Architecting that I am taking this semester. Yet, what seems so natural and logical to do for corporate entities did not occur to me until it was explicitly pointed out in class.

Some General Guidelines for Selecting Metrics:
Metrics motivate behavior. It is critical to pick the right metrics since people perform based on what they are measured against.
Metrics need to be aligned with the overall goals of the organization
Metrics should not conflict with each other.

One example that comes to mind is the situation in a Customer Service Center - the agent's behavior would be very different based on whether s/he measured based on number of issues resolved in first call or on the total number of calls handled in a day.

I spent some time thinking about what would be useful metrics for the SmartMicroloan project. Here's a preliminary list -
1. Average income of the villagers (should increase)

we created a preliminary survey for the MFI's to complete, it doesn't share anything about our solution, and therefore doesn't threaten our opportunities to present our solution in a succinct, targeted manner to the MFI's. It was believed that the project will only receive one review by the MFI's, thus when we approach them we should have everything as close to finalized as possible.
April 13, 2008
Dear Sir or Madame,

WAMP is download and numerous examples tried. I am starting to get a hold of the technology and implementation of the design will begin fairly shortly.

On a sidenote, for my Tech Strategy class, I read an interesting article. The article talks about where money would flow as the techology evolve. In the early phase, when the technology is not good enough for the customer, money would flow to the companies that can best integrate the various componenets of the technnology. One the technology is good enough for the customers, the money would flow to the companies that produce the best compoents required by the techology. Loan technology is one of the example given, and I found it to be very interesting.

This document lays out the back-end of our program (it will be broken down into back-end workbooks, and the view for the bank (front end) will call up key components from those back-end workbooks).

Customer View for Bank Bank

Loan Applications Bank Responses

Update to the loan taken
- Should other banks see
what responses have
come?

1.) MFI, credit bureau
2.) Kiosks (market, successful), piggyback
3.) ICICI internet kiosk, smart cards: biggest bank see their successes
4.) SKS microfinance
5.) Compartamos, safesave, basix
6.) How important is time? –operation costs
7.) What volume are we looking at? –operation costs
-how many people vs low labor cost? (marginal)
8.) shared technologies (school): internet connection (dial up)
9.) MFI collect data, computer analysis outsource
10.) ATM, PAs
11.) Wireless Technology (GSM)
12.) shifting to for profit
13.) eliminate small player
14.) successful dimension:
15.) procurement cost and software funds
Untraditional data what is acceptable
Traditional microfinance no money lenders (change 1 element to ICT4D)
Staged approach
Meetings: traditionally held at the day?
SMS: enter data
-no widespread cell phone use (1 shared phone)
-save time by uploading
Traditional microfinance: w/agent
Collect finance info (feed data in)

Monday, March 10, 2008
Attendees: Leo, Ranjani, Esmeralda, Leigh, Kenneth

Rajugela: 100 families
9 other villages in 4km radius
Riya: 20 km away
1 shop: cigarettes
Land small, inefficient, subsistence farming
-who is the largest land owner?
-how is the land owned?
Mixed ecomony: how do they get TVs, motorbikes, cell phones From Delhi?/dowry
Illegal electricity
Dowry: big issue
-motorbike possible collateral
-help empower the woman: reduce violence associated w/dowry
14-90 year old woman: 300-350 (60 year old woman most active)
School: 5-9 years old
Villagers don’t think outside the box: market efficiencies (cooperatives)
Local temple???
Annie: detailed survey to study
Family: 7 members, 5 children each with 1 year between each
Boys 5 years old +: work with father
14 hrs men work

Smart Microloans Meeting Minutes
February 28, 2008

Microfinance
Build IT: so that the banks don’t have to come to the village
A number of banks operate on a common platform
Education: mitigate risk (entrepreneurship)
Reduce rates: ICT (competition between banks)
Personal ID card credit rating (MFI, bank)
Village Association: peer pressure, back –up from peers
High pay back rate
Banks starting to enter the market
Data confidentiality: largest bank in India ICICI, SKS scale-up with proceeds
High interest rates
Smart cards: no agent who knows the customer (continuum of interest rates  contingent on
credit)
lacks a human element
School training
Group enforcement of payback
Education
Implementing technology
What algorithm?
Banks competition
Questions:
1.) Personal vs. group
2.) Hardware/proposal for algorithm

Monday, March 10, 2008 at 1:30 PM EST
Attendees: Elisabeth, Esmeralda, Annie, Vendita, Leo, Sangita, Ranjani, Beatrice, and Leigh

For Leigh’s trip to India (tentative March 20th-March 29th):
Availability of key villagers:
Principal of the India School Fund school- will not be around due to Holi
Vandita’s uncle and other influential villagers will be in the village
Goal of the trip:
Assess market opportunities
-survey conducted to understand villagers assets
Assessment of village
-what do villagers do?
-what are the ages of the villagers?
-what type of income and how much do villagers earn?
Intermediary
-ask questions about loans: comfort, etc
-ask whether they want to start businesses
Care must be taken when questions are asked so as not to promise the villagers anything prematurely.
-perhaps lending could begin with loans for family business
-loans for a business start-up: shouldn’t raise expectations (you aren’t giving money away)

Our team downloaded various versions of XAMPP (LAMP/WAMP) and are playing with it to develop the web application and web interface for the SmartMicroLoan project. XAMPP available as a package with easy to use tools has made the task really straightforward. We plan to get down to desiging the architecture, design our databases and maybe some concepts related to the interface this week(March 31st).

Finally, after all the efforts and confusion Leigh's trip to India for the spring break is cancelled. A trip is being planned for the May-June timeframe to help with the implementation of the project.
Meanwhile, we will have to work with surveys done through ISF India contact and conference calls.

I was able to download run java applications on the Nokia N82, Thanks to the extra session by Luis. I used the provided USB cable to download the application.
Also looked at 2D QR code to encode content that can be easily scanned and transmitted as an image, but it might not fit the bill for the smartmicroloan implementation.

A professor at Berkeley, did his Ph.D on using mobile technology for the developing world. His dissertation can be found at

http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~parikh/papers/parikh-thesis.pdf

Attached are several of his publications.

I think his research and foundings are very relevant to our projects.

Goal of the project
The purpose of this project is to use Information and Communication technology to solve the two problems mentioned above. In particular, we are trying to develop a complete solution, which include hardware and software, to achieve the following:
1. Provide a mean for Supple and Demand of microloan to meet
2. Create a market for microloan
3. Shift bargain power from Institute to individual
From a social responsibility stand point, the goals are:
1. To help the very poor people in India to find the best rate available for their microcredit.
2. To lower the interest rate of microcredit by attracting more financial institutes in the microfinance market and hence increasing competition among the institutes.

Problem Definition
In the region of rural Uttar Pradesh, illiteracy rate is high and economic opportunity is almost non-existent. People found the region difficult to have a sustainable business. Microfinance is known to be an effective solution to help people in such economic environment. By providing small credit without collateral requirement, microfinance can provide the initial fund needed for villager venture and eventually break the vicious cycle of poverty. Various forms of microfinance are available and other financial institutions are interested to enter the microfinance market. However one of the biggest problems of the faced by both the lender and the borrower is the lack of information flow. The banks have difficulties getting the information of the lender and the lenders have difficulties getting information about the bank. The lack of information is a barrier to many institutions to enter the microfinance business.

I was very excited to join the Smart Microloans team just over a week ago. Within that short week the team has become a cohesive unit, orchestrating meetings with our course advisor as well as our project sponsors from the India School Fund. Both of the meetings gave our team an invaluable amount of detail about the scope of our project and the deliverables expected at the end of the ICT4D class. Probably the best aspect of the ICT4D class is that at the end of the semester our prototype could actually be tested in India and be used to meet otherwise unmet financial needs of Indian villagers, how exciting.

When: 02/28/08
Who:

We focused on defining the problem and the scope for the Smart Microloan project keeping in mind the limitations within which the project needs to be developed.