Drishtee is providing a range of needed services in rural India through its extensive network of locally-owned, franchised kiosks.
The Challenge
- One in eight people on this planet lives in an Indian village. The country's 638,000 villages are home to more than 775 million people, nearly half of whom survive on less than $1 a day.
- Surveys have found that the average villager earns $90 a year and spends 80% of that income on subsistence items like health, housing, and food. Health is a particular challenge, and falling sick often destroys what limited welfare and dignity a poor family has: more than 25% of those hospitalized fall below the poverty line to pay for care.
The Innovation
- Drishtee is a rural "Information and Communications Technology" (ICT) network orchestrator that helps local entrepreneurs to set up kiosks that provide a variety of services to villagers for a fee. Current service offerings include computer education, English education, e-governance, health camps, and a wide range of products such as mobile phone recharge coupons, insurance policies and rechargeable flashlights.
- With Acumen Fund's investment, Drishtee is expanding its kiosk programs to include a variety of health-related services such as health information and medical check-ups, with plans to offer hospitalization insurance and quality medicine. Drishtee will also significantly increase the number of kiosks and their geographic reach.
- Acumen Fund has also invested in Drishtee's services subsidiary, Quiver Infoservices, to scale operations across its broad range of programs and services.
- A structured loan made to Drishtee Foundation, a non-profit trust, is now helping Drishtee to focus on supporting successful women entrepreneurs by providing them with micro-credit opportunities.
The Impact
- In 2007, Drishtee and Quiver served more than 400,000 people through products and services ranging from mobile phone recharge coupons to Computer Education and health check-up camps.
- Drishtee added 1,300 new entrepreneurs to its distribution network in 2007, and plans to scale to 10,000 kiosks over the next three years.
- Drishtee Foundation has funded 300 women entrepreneurs out of Acumen Fund's loan, enabling them to establish their own Drishtee kiosks.
- Quiver has rolled out a test pilot to experiment with providing irrigation and drinking water to Saurath village, with the aim of scaling up to reach 750 farmers and 100 households over the next four years.
- Drishtee is also partnering with another Acumen Fund investee, VisionSpring, to offer Drishtee franchisees the opportunity to become Vision Entrepreneurs and to sell VisionSpring reading glasses at their kiosks.