1. I believe that the winning companies of this century will be those who prove with their actions that they
can be profitable and increase social value – companies that both do well and do good …
Increasingly, shareowners, customers, partners and employees are going to vote with their feet –
rewarding those companies that fuel social change through business. This is simply the new reality of
business – one that we should and must embrace - Carly Fiorina, Ex - CEO Hewlett Packard
Kuppam HP i-community
Introduction
The i-community draws its inspiration from the Kuppam Factoids
e-inclusion mission of HP which aims to
provide people access to greater social and • Kuppam is 105 kms from Bangalore on the
Bangalore – Chennai Railway route
economic opportunities by closing the gap
between technology empowered and • 285,000 people, 62,400 households in five
technology excluded communities while (5) mandals – 627 habitations ( 231
focusing on sustainability for the communities revenue villages) live in Kuppam
and HP. • Historically a backward and neglected area,
The vision for the i-community is to help create a but of late has witnessed many
development activities.
thriving self-sustaining economic community
where Information and Communication
Technology (ICT) solutions are strategically deployed to significantly improve many facets of its
citizens’ lives.
Objectives of the i-community
visioning session for kuppam
• Sustainable IT and communications infrastructure
• Self-sustaining new job/income opportunities
• Profitable revenue streams by providing access to new markets
• Leadership and capacity within the community
• Self-sustaining, scalable and replicable business models
oct ober 200 2 / c op yright 200 2 by hp. all rig hts r eser ved. / P ag e
15
Strategy of the i-
community
The objectives of the i- community is
being accomplished by creating an eco-system
involving the Government, NGO’s, private
sector players and the broadest possible active
inclusion of relevant community stakeholders.
The deployment of people, technology and
know how in the i-community is helping HP
realize both brand value and business value
for both it self and its partners while delivering
social and economic value to the community.
Domains of Impact
To create a holistic impact the i-community focuses on working in the domains that were identified by
the various stake holders – education, health, economic development, citizen empowerment and
interface with the government.
Key initiatives of the i-community.
Suite of applications on the i-community portal
HP has created a citizen centric multi lingual portal to provide several useful applications to the rural
community. Typically rural communities need to conduct several transactions with the local
government and this interaction leads to both long waits and needless expenditure. HP worked with
2. the State government of Andhra Pradesh to devise a web enabled solution, Yojanalu that contains
details of the various government schemes and applications leading to a more efficient service
delivery by the local government. The Yojanalu portal proved its value to the Kuppam community
when over 2500 citizen’s availed of the services of Yojanalu to secure their Ration card, a service
that not only enables the citizen’s to subsidized food supplies but also serves as an identity card to
obtain many other subsidized facilities from the government.
Besides these HP has created several others like a Farming Information system, literacy testing
solution, a Self Help Group Management solution, a Rural e-Yellow pages, a Public Grievance
Management System and an Electronic Employment Exchange.
Village Photographer Programme
The HP Village photographer initiative exemplifies this
program at its best. The available analogue photography
solution based on a central high cost processing lab
located in a large town is ill-suited for the rural areas. In
contrast to this, the HP photography solution comprising
of a Digital camera and a photosmart printer offers instant
photography at 1/100 the capital cost of the processing
lab and without the inconvenience of over a week’s wait
and ½ a day travel to the nearest large town. The power
of HP technology has been coupled with the inherent
entrepreneurial energy of rural women and as of now 14
women members of the self help groups have been equipped with HP Camera’s and printers. and they
earn a living by capturing small slices of life across homes and communities in Kuppam. Since the
photographers are women and they stay in the village, large number of pictures like festival’s, family
occasions, children’s pictures, numerous events that would have other wise being ignored are being
captured, photographed and printed leading to a bank of pleasant memories for the rural community.
The program not only helps the women earn a living but it also leads to the social empowerment since
now they have a service that is valued by their community. Needless to say HP also gains, firstly by
adding revenues from a market it would not have ordinarily addressed and secondly by getting
superior insights on the drivers for photographic services in the underserved markets.
Eco system of Electronic Employment Exchange, Training
Centre, and Finishing School
Initially in the program, only the Electronic Employment
Exchange solution was deployed, a solution that enables
both job seekers and employers to post their requirements
and helps in job matching. However soon it was apparent
that there was mismatch in skills offered by job seekers and
skills desired by employers. The Training Centre and
Finishing School have been started to bridge this gap and
will impart the necessary skills to improve the employability of
the youth in Kuppam. The Training Centre trains job seekers
on hard skills like computer skills and the finishing school imparts training on soft skills like English
speaking, interviewing etc and together help bridge the skill gap among the youth of Kuppam.
“I am doing my B.Sc. course and want to become a teacher. I have already learnt to maintain eye
contact with people I meet - Bharthi a trainee in the finishing school
The above are just some of the initiatives of the Kuppam HP i-community, the others are similarly
varied and range from an ITES centre in partnership with Datamation, school computerization
project run in partnership with American India Foundation and World Links, an alternative
employment program run in partnership with Foundation for revitalization of local health
traditions to a telemedicine program in partnership with the local PES Medical College and
TeleVital.
3. Solution Delivery Infrastructure
The Kuppam HP i-community has deployed Community Information Centres (CIC’s) a Mobile
Solutions Centre and community computer literacy trainers to provide access to the various i-
community services. Internet access to the CICs and other service providers in the community is
provided through the high speed broadband wireless 802.11b technology which currently spans over
30 access points.
Community Information Centres (CIC)
There is currently 13 CIC’s providing a varied portfolio of
Information and communication services to the community
in Kuppam. These range from basic internet browsing,
email and chat to HP e-solutions, photography, eye testing
software, computerized horoscope, Insurance services etc.
The continuous addition of new services by HP is both
helping them deliver greater value to the community and
also helping in improving their financial viability.
However while the CIC’s serve as hubs of ICT services in
the community their utility is limited by the fact that they mostly they cater to a population living in 2-3
kms of the vicinity of these CIC’s. Additionally they do not give an opportunity to non users to touch,
feel and try these services. To overcome this two programs have been started a) Mobile Van and b)
Community Computer Literacy trainers. Both these program are now driving ICT penetration in the
rural community by promoting both awareness and utility of ICT services.
Mobile Van program
There are currently 3 Mobile Van’s on the ground in
Kuppam, One that is a combination of community
information centre and a soil testing lab and two that are
run in partnership with the local PES medical college
and have a doctor’s clinic attached.
Besides delivering the same portfolio of services as a
fixed CIC, the mobile van also focuses on giving demos
of the various available solution’s, promoting the use of
computers by
children through games and educational software. The medical
clinic in the two new mobile vans’ supports and complements
the computer centre as the clinic’s clientele is mainly the older
citizens and women of the community, a section that has a
lesser exposure to ICT and the HP staff in the mobile van use
this opportunity to tell them about the many uses of computers
in their lives.
The mobile van program also leverages the attraction of the
rural community for cinema and shows movies during the
evening. Through this mode they leverage the large gathering
for the movie show to talk about matters of interest to the rural community. Another positive rub-off of
showing movies is also that it increases the recall of
the mobile van and builds an association of the mobile
van with both ICT services and entertainment. The
movie show also helps in promoting ICT services
among a wider cross section of the community.
Community computer literacy trainers
This program takes advantage of the sharp fall in the
computer note book prices over the past 2 years
rendering an elite product extremely relevant to the
rural community. Computer note books have two
4. important advantages firstly they consume relatively less than 30% power of a conventional PC and
with its advantage of portability are the ideal vehicles for increasing ICT penetration in the villages.
There are currently 11 Computer literacy trainers in the Kuppam HP i-community who earn their living
by showing various available content to different sections of the society -farmers, women, children etc.
on a notebook computer. This program has received surprising appreciation from the community for
many reasons, mainly for the accessibility of this service and this easy access is helping rural women
to use the computer and to pay and see UNICEF content on pregnancy and child birth. The father of a
computer literacy trainer is so convinced about the utility of this program that he accompanies his
daughter when she visits the neighboring villages at night. This program also gives HP superior
insights on what kind of content if shown to the community will be paid for. There are a few other
beneficial unintended consequences also, for e.g. it is promoting a community feeling in the villages
when people come together and jointly pay and learn about knowledge available through the
computer.
Partnerships
Besides the Government of AP that is the primary
partner in the i-community project, HP has forged
relationships with a number of private sector players to
work together on initiatives in Kuppam. Some of the
key private sector partners working with HP in Kuppam
are ICICI Bank in the domain of financial services, AIF
and World Links in the education domain, PES Medical
College, Televital, in the domain of health and
telemedicine, UNICEF in the domain of health
education, Samuha and FRLHT in the domain of
economic development and Datamation in jointly
building a ITES centre in Kuppam.
Working with partners is win-win for all the three
parties, i.e. HP, the partner and the community as HP is able to deploy a complete end to end solution,
many components of which do not exist in HP’s current portfolio. The community reaps the benefit of
this holistic solution and the partner is able to leverage the grass root investments of HP to reach new
consumers.
Conclusion
The i-community initiative distinguishes itself from several other corporate projects in many ways. First
it starts with first principles of understanding the community needs and then works to create a holistic
impact on all the domains of interest to the community.
The i-community as is demonstrated in our many initiatives also embraces a systems thinking
approach and integrates the various initiatives into a composite programme. For e.g. the training
centre, the ITES centre, the employment exchange portal and the placement services are all linked to
fulfill the i-community goal of creating enhanced employment opportunities through ICT.
But more importantly within HP the i-community projects represent a new breed of initiatives that fuse
HP’s global citizenship strategy and its business strategy. The processes, learnings, business models
and technology solutions from the i-community will be a basis for future replication in several
underserved regions around the world. This implies that each project in the i-community is built for
sustainability beyond HP’s continued engagement in the community. Most initiatives like the CICs,
Village photographer etc have a viable business model that will enable it to be both sustained in
Kuppam and scaled in similar communities’ world wide
