Rural Kiosks:
Real Challenges, Potential Opportunities
Kentaro Toyama, PhD
Assistant Managing Director
Microsoft Research India
eIndia Conference
New Delhi – August 1, 2007
Outline
Introduction
Sustaining rural kiosks is very difficult!
Some kiosk types are more likely to endure.
Focus on end-to-end service.
Outline
Introduction
Sustaining rural kiosks is very difficult!
Some kiosk types are more likely to endure.
Focus on end-to-end service.
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
Research Methodology
Data sources:
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Ethnographic studies
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Interviews with kiosk agencies
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300 kiosks, 2 years, once per quarter, 5
customers, 1 operator per kiosk, nLogue and Drishtee [w/Kiri et al.]
1250 people, single survey, Kerala
[w/Pal et al.]
Results from software logging tool
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20+ organizations
Small NGOs, start-up firms, MNCs,
state governments, academics
Kiosk surveys
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200+ site visits in India and Africa, over
2.5 years
~550 hours of in-depth interviews, both
open-ended and structured
13 kiosks in Maharashtra
Discussions with third-party observers
Literature in journals, books, web sites,
whitepapers
Research Papers
Published
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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.microsoft.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 Int’l Conf. on Information & Communication Technologies for
Development, 2006.
In preparation…
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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.
Outline
Introduction
Sustaining rural kiosks is very difficult!
Some kiosk types are more likely to endure.
Focus on end-to-end service.
Sustaining rural kiosks is very difficult!
Source: various published articles
Sustaining rural kiosks is very difficult!
Dhawan, Vivek (2004)
Critical Success Factors for Rural ICT Projects in India
Masters Thesis, IIT-Bombay
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
Who Loses?
Kiosk Entrepreneur
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Potential harm
– Debt, if kiosk doesn’t break even
– Drain on other businesses
– Loss in trust by community
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Between 1/3-2/3 of all for-profit
kiosks fold each year
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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/2004010209620400.htm)
Source: Microsoft kiosk survey (Kiri, et al) and ethnography (Toyama, et al) [2004-2006]
Scaling is even harder!
100,000 villages
6 villages/day x 365 days/year
 46 yrs
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ITC can lay claim to the most kiosks
in rural India (around 6000-7000)
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There are ~20 companies in India
that are the size of ITC
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At peak, ITC set up ~6 kiosks a day.
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It required a large dedicated staff.
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.
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Value of the PC kiosks themselves
(as opposed to their modernized
market hubs) is not clear.
•
After seven years of dedicated
efforts to set up many kiosks, India
currently has ~15,000 kiosks total.
Dhawan, Vivek (2004)
Critical Success Factors for Rural ICT Projects in India
Masters Thesis, IIT-Bombay
Outline
Introduction
Sustaining rural kiosks is very difficult!
Some kiosk types are more likely to endure.
Focus on end-to-end service.
Enduring Model? (1/4)
E-gov’t 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)
Enduring Model? (2/4)
Computer-education centre
– Wealthier parents will pay for
children’s education on
computers
– Relatively lucrative for centre
• Examples
– 1st-phase Akshaya; some 2ndphase Akshaya
– TARAhaat
– recent Drishtee
Joyojeet Pal, Renee Kuriyan, Kentaro Toyama
Site visits, surveys
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
Enduring Model? (4/4)
Computerized photo shops
– Primary a photo shop
– Services:
• Prints
• Photo touch-up
• Wedding photo services
– Can be lucrative
• Examples
– HP’s “photo backpacks”
– Otherwise, one-off instances
of photo shops adding kiosk
services
Joyojeet Pal, Renee Kuriyan, Kentaro Toyama
Site visits, surveys
Outline
Introduction
Sustaining rural kiosks is very difficult!
Some kiosk types are more likely to endure.
Focus on end-to-end service.
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?
Summary
Introduction
Sustaining rural kiosks is very difficult!
Some kiosk types are more likely to endure.
Focus on end-to-end service.
Thank you!
http://research.microsoft.com/research/tem/kiosks
[email protected]