‘The number one benefit of information technology is that it empowers people to do what they want to do. It lets people be creative. It lets people be productive. It lets people learn things they didn’t think they could learn before and so, in a sense, it is all about potential.’ -   Steve Ballmer

The journey started with nine telecentres or TARAkendras in Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh in India. Nine village-level entrepreneurs stepped into the digital age with VSAT satellite dishes for connectivity, small power generators for uninterrupted power supply and highly upgraded computers for access to tarahaat.com and, thereby, to a plethora of knowledge and information. In the first year itself, the span of TARAhaat’s wings spread to eight new TARAkendras opening up in Bhatinda, Punjab. The initial stages of the pilot project saw potential users feeling apprehensive about visiting TARAkendras, partly because of skepticism towards technology becoming a part of their day-to-day lives and partly because of the conservative social setup of India. Therefore, the services and product portfolio on offer from TARAkendras was based on the consumer demand in these areas, primarily to draw people to these telecentres and overcome their hesitation in using technology to enhance their quality of life.

The subsequent years of TARAhaat saw the organization maturing to the ground realities of the complex market it was operating in. While Bundelkhand region was one of the most downtrodden areas of India, Punjab was one of the few well-off Indian states. So, on one hand the challenge was in meeting the needs of different buying capacity populations; on the other hand was the hurdle of various languages. These real-time challenges only helped TARAhaat in diversifying its services and, thus, making the complete model more robust. While the focus was always on customized IT education in local languages for revenue generation, TARAhaat also successfully implemented e-Governance services in Tikamgarh district. Vocational courses started coming up on the horizon at individual TARAkendras with innovative ways of delivering offline products, as new revenue channels were implemented to keep these telecentres running on profits. From the organizational perspective, solid systems and processes began to take shape, thus, effective implementation of the business model. ERP implementation, operations and training manuals, training workshops - all worked towards one goal, of making the entire system efficient and self sustainable. The TARAhaat family grew steadily with the support of a long list of esteemed partners like the USAID, Indian Space Research Organisation, United Nations Development Programme, National Institute for Smart Government, Ford Foundation, the World Bank, Microsoft, Shell, Scojo Foundation, USHA, ICICI Bank, One World South Asia and Samsung Digit All Hope.

These institutional partnerships also brought about a series of innovative products and services on offer by TARAkendras. While the e-Governance initiatives gave the villagers the option to get their ration cards, birth certificates, land records and driving licenses made at their local TARAkendras, Agri Advisory services through mobile phones meant expert help for farmers at their doorstep within 24 hours. The Village Resource Centre programme of ISRO helped TARAhaat deliver quality capacity building content online from the expert centre in its Delhi Head Office to remote TARAkendras in Bundelkhand.

In addition to TARAkendras, TARAhaat also developed some innovative ICT-based products on a pilot basis. TARAhaat created the revolutionary Entrepreneurship Development Support and Services (EDSS) programme to provide entrepreneurship guidance using fun-filled animations to villagers in an attempt to create sustainable livelihoods using ICT. The trainees of the course were further linked by Ask the Expert service for subsequent hand holding. TARAhaat also developed its most talked about product, TARA Akshar. This literacy software was scientifically put together with the capability of teaching an illiterate person to learn to read and write in exactly one month.

Today, after seven long years of perseverance and dedication, TARAhaat stands on the brink of a revolution - a revolution which is not in its infancy anymore but is mature enough to take responsibilities on its shoulders. The last three years have witnessed a 100% annual growth rate in the number of operational TARAkendras. With the network size of TARAkendras now exceeding 250, TARAhaat has a strong presence in 8 Indian states: Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Bihar, Jharkhand, Haryana, Chhatisgarh and Himachal Pradesh. The products and services have the right blend to make any entrepreneur earn profits in the first year of operations. The IT courses come with a Microsoft certification. Different vocational courses are being offered as per the socio-economic condition of an area. While areas in Bundelkhand offer courses on stitching and tailoring, other states have graduated to high-end computer courses. Courses on Practical English Learning and Personality Development are very popular in some areas. The effectiveness of the TARAhaat model has been proved by the fact that a number of our TARAkendra franchisees have been profitably associated with TARAhaat for more than five years now.

In addition to the flagship TARAkendras, TARAhaat has delivered significant results in several different projects. The EDSS pilot project has trained more than 500 potential entrepreneurs in planning their individual enterprises. The TARA Akshar project has witnessed unprecedented success and in its first year of implementation, the programme has seen more than 25,000 women becoming literate in rural India. The Agri Advisory project, Lifelines India, has answered more than 20,000 farmer queries in the drought-hit Bundelkhand region itself.

Examples of high social impact projects like EDSS, Lifelines India and TARA Akshar provide solid testimony to TARAhaat's social commitment. Often misunderstood as a just-for-profit-venture, TARAhaat has always helped entrepreneurs open profitable TARAkendras in the most remote areas of Bihar and Jharkhand. TARAhaat’s ultimate objective of transforming rural India to a self-sustainable entity is steadily but finally seeing the light of the day.

As TARAhaat steps into 2008, there are exciting things happening from a national context too. The Indian economy is surging at never before rates. Technology is mushrooming out to remote areas. Mobile phones and the Internet have slowly started accessing the poorest areas. The fruits of these new age technologies though are yet to ripen for rural India. While the government institutions take their time to think of ways to bridge the digital divide, TARAhaat is all set to unleash the power of knowledge and information to make people in rural areas self sufficient and provide for themselves as also others.

TARAhaat has already got an approval from Indian Railways to start e-ticketing from each of the Internet-enabled TARAkendras within a month’s timeframe. This will ease the life of a large number of people who today have to travel as much as 50 km, and at times even 100 km, to reach the nearest railway ticketing counter.

E-Commerce will finally be a reality as TARAhaat is in the final phase of talks with a couple of cash card / virtual money companies. People sitting comfortably in a TARAkendra will be able to pay their utility bills, shop from across the world and even recharge their mobiles.

TARAhaat will soon enter a new era as it readies itself for the communication age. With connectivity slowly reaching several parts where TARAhaat centres are in operation, there are concrete plans to deliver high-quality educational content through the Internet. Not only will it reduce the burden of finding good instructors in remote areas, it will also significantly improve the quality of the content delivery. This shift of delivery mechanism for a large number of TARAhaat’s services will truly realise ICT’s real potential.

TARAhaat is also readying itself to move down the education supply chain and enter primary and secondary education. There is a growing need of quality education in these areas and the students are left to the mercy of inefficient government schools and low-quality local tutors. There is a big gap in the supply demand scenario and TARAhaat is working hard in thinking of innovative ways to fill this gap in the best possible manner.

Job linkages are being made with big MNCs to give placement assistance to TARAhaat’s students. Top BPO companies have shown interest in tying up with TARAhaat for manpower to meet their growing requirements. TARAhaat, with its capacity building expertise, is a perfect link between these big employers and the even bigger potential employee base in rural India. Talks are on with a few companies about fine tuning certain courses to meet the needs of today’s market scenario.

TARAhaat is also exploring the various options to bring the Indian BPO success story to its telecentres. Although in its nascent stage, the idea will be perfect for TARAhaat’s model, wherein people earn their living by working either at the TARAkendras or at the TARAhaat Territory Offices and TARAhaat delivers high-quality low-level outsourced services like data entry, digitisation of local language books and manuscripts through its robust systems and processes. Groundwork for a pilot project has already started taking shape.

Scaling up of our successful pilots like EDSS and Lifelines is also in the planning phase and in the near future a much larger population will be able to enjoy the benefits of these high-impact services. Reengineering of the existing services and courses is also under progress to meet the fast changing needs of the market. TARA Akshar will see its first phase ending in February 2008 and plans to launch the second phase have already begun.

Harpreet Singh
hsingh@tarahaat.com