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“We’ll take 70% of India’s population on the information highway”
The Common Service Centers (CSCs) project is the biggest IT project taken up by the Indian government in its bid to improve PC penetration. SREI Sahaj E-Village, a subsidiary of SREI Infrastructure Finance Ltd, is driving this project and making it successful in five states of the country under the government’s National eGovernance Plan (NeGP). Sabahat Azim, CEO of SRIE Sahaj, discusses the grand project with Faiz Askari, Bureau Head, Network Computing. Excerpts:
 India is a country full of opportunities and potential. While heading an organization like SRIE, how do you foresee India combating the digital divide?
It is a huge task ahead of us since we have undertaken the responsibility of taking 70% of our population on the information highway. Although we are still struggling with the physical infrastructure, we have made considerable efforts toward taking the information [revolution] to the masses.
For the CSC project, West Bengal has always been a success story for Sahaj. What are the areas that you are going to expand?
Yes, West Bengal is an area where we have already made our mark. We are investing Rs 100 crore to set up 4,937 CSCs by May 2008. Of these, 650 CSCs are already operational in West Bengal. However, we have five states to expand this project. We will be covering Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Bengal, Assam and Tamil Nadu. We will be building 22473 CSCs covering all these states. In this regard we will be covering around 19 crore of the Indian population. Assam has just been added to our portfolio. We have already received the Letter of Intent (LoI) for Tamil Nadu and UP and we are awaiting the same for Bihar now.
How will this project affect the masses?
Over 47 million people in the villages of West Bengal would benefit through this program. It envisages setting up one CSC for each cluster of six villages falling within each Gram Panchayat and Panchayat Samiti offices.
What services will be made available through these CSCs?
We have planned to introduce three agricultural services in West Bengal by the end of this month. A job portal has already been introduced where a villager can register and post his bio-data. This is being supported by the Ministry of Labor, in the sense that every time a villager lands a job, an amount will be paid to SREI by the Government as a token of appreciation.
What is the business model for opening a CSC from an entrepreneurial perspective?
The total expenditure is Rs 1.2 lakh. Out of this investment, the entrepreneur has to bring Rs 30,000 from his side and we finance the remaining Rs 90,000. The total budget that Sahaj has decided is Rs 50 crore for all the states. Half of this amount would go for the computers and wireless networks. Under our well-decided and transparent business strategy, we would ensure that a person would come to a level of a breakeven position in 3 months’ time.
On an average, initially, each centre would be able to earn close to Rs 3,000 per month after payment of salaries and rent for the building. This could go up to Rs 15,000, depending on the scale of operations and the variety of services.
Which specific community will get maximum opportunity from this initiative?
This project will benefit the retailers, wholesalers, Fast Moving Consumer Good (FMCG) companies, and the services sector. Corporates, Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), banks, service providers, and commercial houses can sell their products through these CSCs.
What would be the basic service offerings from these CSCs?
We would like to enable the CSC to become an information delivery center with multiple services to offer. For example, railway reservations, e-learning services, computer education, land records etc.
What additional investment is Sahaj going to make to transform a villager into an entrepreneur?
We will take care of the complete training and selection of right set of people for this. We are also going to make sure that the applicant gets finances and in this regard, we have tied up with SBI and Union Bank. However, an entrepreneur can also establish other line of businesses like cyber café, digital studio etc. His earnings definitely going to increase with the addition of service offering.
How is the private sector associated in this and what are the partnerships involved?
We are getting good support from the private sector. We have partners like Wipro, Intel for hardware, Oracle for databases and middleware, and Smart Bridges for connectivity. We also have an alliance with Deloitte.
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