Mobile Vaani Media: A Case of Community Engagement through Mobile in India
3 Pages Posted: 13 Jan 2020
Date Written: January 10, 2020
Abstract
Mobile Vaani is a mobile-based social media platform that uses no internet and connects rural India via community engagement through Interactive voice response (IVR). It is a product of Gram Vaani, a technology community launch by Aaditeshwar Seth, a Professor of IIT Delhi in the year 2009 with a tagline "Social network for Rural India". The aim is to assist communities that were deprived of economic or infrastructural access to technology. The IVR system allows people to dial a number and leave a message about their community, or tune in on to news left by communities. This new Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) media was India's answer to social communication such as YouTube/Face book/ Twitter etc. for the bottom of the pyramid (BoP) section. The study aims at discussing how ICT is addressing transformation in the rural sector of India via mobile-based media platforms and the application of enterprise models and persuades the method in which companies change their framework to meet the requirement placed upon them. A case study method has been using to collect and interpret the information. The case further highlights a few challenges that are currently faced by Mobile Vaani and how to overcome them with appropriate strategies.
Keywords: Business models, Community engagement, Mobile phone, Social media, Sharing information, Strategy
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