E-BUSINESS

ASSIGNMENT-1
PROF. SUDHINDRA. S

SHASHANK BAJPAI
1120022 MARKETING-1 CUIM 9/26/2012

1. What are the barriers for growth of Internet/E-Commerce in India? How can these be overcome?

i.

Lack of awareness about benefits of ICTs: Despite growing number of people who own a computer and have Internet access, most people in India have little opportunity to connect to the Internet. They are unaware of socio-economic benefits and stimulus to good governance that ICTs can bring. Their inability to access ICTs deprives them to reap the benefits of ICTs. Access to ICTs remains very low, particularly in rural areas. In rural India only 1.2 per cent people have Internet access whereas it is 12 per cent in the urban India.

ii.

Lack of access facilities: The access facilities mainly comprise computers and connectivity in rural areas. The Internet and computer are expensive to be accessible to ordinary citizens. It is often available only in urban cities, where most Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have their market.

iii.

Language barriers in using the Internet: These prevent people from familiarizing themselves with benefits of Internet based information resources that invariably require an ability to understand international languages, especially English. As a result, most people in India cannot read and understand most of the Internet content. Another factor is high illiteracy rate among rural people. IMAI , 2008 made a clear case of content and applications in local languages in order to ensure higher and faster adoption of internet in rural areas.

iv.

Technology There are serious infrastructural hindrances in developing countries. There are various infrastructural characteristics as barriers hindering ecommerce adoption in India. Among the most pressing infrastructure limitations are access to technology (computers, connectivity, and gateway to Internet), limited bandwidth, which reduces the capacity to handle audio and graphic data; poor telecommunications infrastructures (most of which are still analogue and can only transmit voice) and unreliable electricity supply.

v.

Telecommunication (network) The Internet connection in India is unreliable because of the poor telephone communications and the erratic power supply. India is not ready for ecommerce, because of its lack of network infrastructure especially among individual users and entrepreneurs. E-commerce success relies heavily on a number of technology infrastructures.

Telecommunication infrastructures are required to connect various regions and parties within a country and across countries. A weak telecommunications infrastructure cause a concentration of the technology in urban areas, which makes the participation of rural users more difficult. vi. Infrastructural barriers The specific infrastructural barriers hindering the adoption of e-commerce in India. Some of the barriers include lack of credit cards (the wide availability of them for the general public in India) and convenient payment means, poor distribution logistics, lack of specialized, trust-worthy online merchants of reasonable size, imperfect legal system,

and lack of large scale telecommunication transmission capability (broadband), Internet security, lack of feel-andtouch associated with online purchases, problems in returning products, and selection (product availability and breadth).

vii.

Educational system The poor state of educational system in India is seen as barrier to ecommerce adoption.The lack of appropriate IT education is perceived to be a reason why the potential value of computers and the Internet as a means to participate in ecommerce is not appreciated. In most developing countries, school curriculum does not include computer education. There is a need for early computer education so that people could become computer literate in school. It is argued that computer literate populations have greater potential to appreciate and participate in ecommerce.

TO OVERCOME THE BARRIERS

a. The present indicators of IT penetration in Indian society are far from satisfactory. PC penetration is 1.21% (China with 4.08%, Asia at 6.39% and world average at 9.63%). To demonstrate awareness and impact of ICTs among people, projects such as Hole-In-The-Wall Training System for slum area boys and girls who has no knowledge of English and WorldCorps for imparting technical and business skills that promote employment such as Internet centres to economically poor, are already functioning.

b.

In India, male literacy rate is about 58.8% and female literacy rate is about 47.3%. There are 18 languages officially recognized, each having a different character set. Realizing the need to overcome language barrier and offer IT to the masses in their own language, the government initiated a Language Technology Mission to make available these software tools and fonts in the public domain. The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing has developed these, initially in Tamil, Hindi and Telugu languages. Similar efforts are in progress to develop software tools, utilities and applications in other Indian languages.

c. In TARAhaat the in-built motivation has empowered people to eliminate middle men in marketing their produce
directly over network, online services to several rural communities and consumer-to-consumer, and e-choupal has successfully bridged the gap between rural community and buyer, to increase income level of farmers. e-Choupal, launched in June 2000 by ITC. Through e-Choupal today, farmers are empowered to determine the market prices of their produce using Internet kiosks set up by ITC in their villages. Prior to this initiative, farmers sold their produce through local middlemen in places called Mandis (major agricultural marketing centers in rural areas of India

2. What are the various projects/initiatives by the Govt of India to bridge the digital divide? Explain each project briefly.

The government has made encouraging steps to bridge the gap of digital divide in India. Most of the initiatives are directed towards bridging the gap of rural and urban digital divide. The Indian government has passed Information Technology Act, 2000 to make to e-commerce and e-governance a success story in India.

Card Project The Computer-aided Administration of Registration Department - CARD in Andhra Pradesh is designed to eliminate the maladies affecting the conventional registration system by introducing electronic delivery of all registration services. CARD was initiated to meet objectives to demystify the registration process, bring speed, efficiency, consistency and reliability, substantially improve the citizen interface etc. Six months following the launch of the CARD project, about 80% of all land registration transactions in AP were carried out electronically. Since 60% of the documents, Encumbrance Certificates (ECs) and certified copies relate to agricultural properties, the success of the CARD project has great benefit for the rural farming community. CARD is operational at 387 Sub-registrar offices in the entire state of Andhra Pradesh since 1998.

E-Seva (electronic Seva) Launched on the 25th of August 2001, electronic seva (e-Seva) is the improved version of the TWINS project launched in 1999, in the twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad in Andhra Pradesh. There are currently 36 eSeva centres spread across the twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad and Ranga Reddy district, operating from 8:00 am to 8:00 pm every day and between 9:30 am and 3:30 pm on holidays. 70 centers are in operation at different municipalities covering thirteen districts. eSeva centres offer 118 different services like payment of utility bills/taxes, registration of births/deaths, registration of applications for passports , issue of births/deaths certificates, filing of Sales Tax returns, Trade licenses of MCH, B2C services like payments of Tata Teleservices, Reliance, sale of Airtel Magic cards. These services can be availed at any counter in the centre and at any place in the city. 21 more services like railway reservations, TTD services, bill payments of Airtel, Hutch etc. are in the pipe line.

Gyandoot This project is an outcome of the agreement between Drishtee and the district administration of Dhar. This would perhaps be the mostoutstanding initiative by government to launch a e-governance paltform. Gyandoot is more of community-owned, technologically innovative and sustainable information-kiosk. The project covers 20 village information kiosks in five Blocks of the district. The entire network of 31 kiosks covers 311 Panchayats (village committees), over 600 villages, nearly 50% of the entire district. Users fee is charged at the kiosks for the services provided. Local rural youth act as entrepreneurs, running these information kiosks along commercial lines.

Bhoomi Project Bhoomi (meaning land) is the project of on-line delivery and management of land records in Karnataka. It provides transparency in land records management with better citizen services and takes discretion away from civil servants at

operating levels. The BHOOMI has computerized 20 million records of land ownership of 6.7million farmers in the state. Land records are required for a variety of social, economic and legal purposes e.g. security of tenure, seeking crop loans, getting scholarships.

Vidya Vahini Project Pilot project Vidya Vahini meaning transporting education is being implemented by Department of IT and Ministry of communication of the government of India over its nationwide terrestrial as well as satellite network by integrating Intranet and Internet tools into learning environment Program focuses on : Providing ICT infrastructure to educational institutions Training of the teachers to develop educational content & use ICT for imparting education Providing different learning resources which include educational tools, course curriculum and other learning material In the initial stage schools have been connected on intranet & internet through Broadband VSATs

The Simputer project Scientists from IISc and the Encore software brought this idea into practice. This project grew out of the dare need for an affordable access device for the rural population in the country.The Simputer is a low cost portable alternative to PCs, by which the benefits of IT can reach the common man. It uses simple and natural user interfaces based on sight, touch and audio eliminating the need for IT literacy. The in built Smart Card feature enables the Simputer to be shared by a community. Approximate cost has been fixed to half that of the normal PC.

Lok Mitra The Lok Mitra project was formally dedicated to the people of Hamirpur in Himachal Pradesh as a pilot phase on the 8th of May 2001. The services offered include information about vacancies, tenders, market rates, matrimonial services, village e-mail. An interesting feature is that citizens can use the IT enabled system as a grievance redress system. The LokMitra INTRANET set up in the district Hamirpur consists of two Pentium-III-based Servers (Under WindowsNT), with 4 Pentium-III-based Client systems and a Router, set up in a LAN using HUB, in a separate room at the Deputy Commissioner office, Hamirpur, named as LokMitra Soochnalaya. A total of 25 panchayats have been identified for setting up Citizen Information Centres. The project will be extended to cover all the districts of Himachal Pradesh

Taarahat Is a project conceived by the Delhi based Development Alternatives group. The project provides a bunch of services like employment, mandi-market, e-mail, weather, matrimonial, etc.to the village community. The highly picturised interface makes it easier for a lay- man to use.

E-Choupal Conceived by ITC in June 2000, e-Choupal has already become the largest initiative among all Internet-based interventions in rural India. 'eChoupal' services today reach out to more than half a million farmers growing a range

of crops - soyabean, coffee, wheat, rice, pulses-, - in some 4,500 villages through 770 kiosks across four states (Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh). Sanchalaks - as they call it can access information in their local language on weather & market prices, disseminate knowledge on scientific farm practices & risk management, facilitate the sale of farm inputs (now with embedded knowledge) and purchase farm produce from the farmers doorsteps. The company plans to extend the services other 14 states also, the net business of over 1billion has been transacted so far. Though the projects discussed are in their early stage of development they do reveal some of the primitive facts about, how and what make these projects tick. On the other hand the village knowledge centre project of Swaminathan Foundation has survived one of most important challenge of electric supply by establishing a self-reliant solar powered network connectivity.

3.

Explain briefly the role of private sector in bridging the digital divide in India. Name

one example where a business venture has substantially improved electronic communication in India.
The private sector, through investments and economic activities, plays an important role in bridging the digital divide. The numerous Internet cafes are a testament to fact that the drive for profit does not preclude doing social good (in this case making the Internet more accessible). Moreover, the development of new IT businesses contributes to employment and economic growth in general.

A number of global IT companies are also keen on helping to provide people with the necessary skills to succeed in the information age. Some of the private businesses, like the Tata Council of Community Initiatives, promote adult education in the country. The council has set up several computer based literary programs for adult education with the help of multimedia presentations.

Similarly, Ogilvy & Mather's rural connectivity project, "Param", that is paving the way for narrowing the digital divide between urban and rural India.The MSS Research Foundation's pioneering project in this field was aimed at delivering need-based knowledge to villagers through a hybrid, wired and wireless, network consisting of computers, telephones, VHF duplex radio devices and e-mail connectivity.It operates in 11 villages around Villianur in Pondicherry, covering a population of about 22,000. The information required by the villagers is collected and suitably processed through value-addition by experts before being delivered in the local language, Tamil. In 2006, the Government approved the National e-Governance Plan which involved setting up 100,000 Common Service Centers to help bring the benefits of ICT to rural India. Several state governments have since awarded or initiated steps to award e-Governance projects to private players. Hughes is today working to implement CSC projects in seven states. These centers will enable reliable connectivity but, more importantly, help deliver eGovernance services and other services, including vocational educational. In addition, Hughes is also independently deploying broadband centers all across the country to deliver e-Services to citizens in underserved regions.

SREI Sahaj e-Village Ltd, a subsidiary of SREI Infrastructure Finance Limited, has taken up the onus of bridging the digital divide between rural and urban India, under the NeGP of the Government of India. It is all set to establish 100000 Common Service Centres across the country. Each CSC will be owned and operated by a Village Level Entrepreneur (VLE). It will ensure to the villagers all services that their urban counterparts are already familiar with. Sahaj is all set to establish 4937 CSCs, called Sahaj Tathya Mitra Kendra in West Bengal, 5565 Vasudha Kendras in Bihar, 8118 Jan Sewa Kendras in Uttar Pradesh, 2282 Biju Sewa Kendras in Orissa and 2833 Arunadoi Kendras in Assam by 2008. The Project has already embarked on its journey to success with the leadership of passionate VLEs who are all geared to make a difference in the lives of millions."

Ogilvy & Mather is a business venture that has substantially improved electronic communication in India. Ogilvy & Mathers project called param was originally conceived for marketing communications but has evolved into a platform that can be shared by companies and government departments to reach out to the villages.