Start Up to Connect Rural India
India is a country of villages. Over 60 percent of its population lives in rural areas. Rural development has a significant impact on the economic growth of the country. Communication plays a significant role in the development process. It amplifies voice, facilitates meaningful participation, and fosters social change. However, there is a divide between rural and urban communication. There is dearth of information providers and a fragmented market for information with many individual clients or client groups in rural areas. There is lack of well developed ICT infrastructure and low levels of ICT skills. "Radio Pitara", a start up, tackles this problem of communication gap among rural populace. It works as a communication service provider targeted to rural audience. Founders of this company Gaurav Dikshit and Shubhankar Bhardwaj gave up their lucrative MNC jobs to start the venture which uses basic telephone and a toll free number to reach out to its rural target audience. The duo spoke to ‘Employment News’ Anand Saurabh about their journey of entrepreneurship. Here are the excerpts of interview:
Question. How did you get the idea for the business?
Answer. This chart is the germination of our thoughts in Rural. As a matter of fact, India resides in its villages. With about 50-60 crore population residing in the erstwhile BIMARU state, there is hardly a media platform to reach this audience through traditional media. Even if we have, it is just limited to only Doordarshan and All India Radio. During our stint in advertising we realized that there is not any robust media choice available to reach this target audience.
While the communication form has evolved for urban audiences, rural reach is still a far off dream for many brands and agencies.
India is a country of villages. Over 60 percent of its population lives in rural areas. Rural development has a significant impact on the economic growth of the country. Communication plays a significant role in the development process. It amplifies voice, facilitates meaningful participation, and fosters social change. However, there is a divide between rural and urban communication. There is dearth of information providers and a fragmented market for information with many individual clients or client groups in rural areas. There is lack of well developed ICT infrastructure and low levels of ICT skills. "Radio Pitara", a start up, tackles this problem of communication gap among rural populace. It works as a communication service provider targeted to rural audience. Founders of this company Gaurav Dikshit and Shubhankar Bhardwaj gave up their lucrative MNC jobs to start the venture which uses basic telephone and a toll free number to reach out to its rural target audience. The duo spoke to ‘Employment News’ Anand Saurabh about their journey of entrepreneurship. Here are the excerpts of interview:
Question. How did you get the idea for the business?
Answer. This chart is the germination of our thoughts in Rural. As a matter of fact, India resides in its villages. With about 50-60 crore population residing in the erstwhile BIMARU state, there is hardly a media platform to reach this audience through traditional media. Even if we have, it is just limited to only Doordarshan and All India Radio. During our stint in advertising we realized that there is not any robust media choice available to reach this target audience.
While the communication form has evolved for urban audiences, rural reach is still a far off dream for many brands and agencies.
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