24 February,2009 09:26 AM IST | | Kaumudi Gurjar
Unique SMS newsletter for rural subscribers helps generate employment for youth in rural Maharashtra
A Pune-based companyu00a0 has been running a SMS newsletter service for mobile phone owners in rural Maharashtra dedicated to local news for the last two years. This service reaches out to nearly 300 communities spread across 25 districts in the state.
And most importantly it has become a source of income for the rural youth, whou00a0 call themselves 'mobile' journalists. They are paid Rs Rs 3,000 to Rs 6,000 per month.
"I had no job before I started this SMS newsletter in Parbhani. This venture has given me name, fame and a steady income," said Ahmed Siddique, editorial coordinator for Parbhani district, who joined SMSONE Media Services Pvt Ltd last year.
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"The concept was awarded the social innovation award by the The National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) on February 11," said said Ravi Ghate of SMSONE, who began the newsletter by training 300 unemployed youth in mobile journalism.
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u00a0"I put the concept into practice in October 2007 because I felt the need for location-specific media to open communication channels between neighbourhoods in an integrated, interconnected and interactive manner," he added. Ghate, incidentally, discontinued studies after he cleared HSC.
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"We asked each of our mobile journalists to collect a database of 1,000 mobile numbers from the community along with letters from people willing to subscribe to the free newsletter," Ghate added.
While news on subjects of interest to rural subscribers (see box) is sent free, revenues are generated from local advertisers.
"We always maintain the ratio of one local news for every four promotional messages. Our rural subscribers trust us because we do not bombard them with messages like some companies in big metros.
Keeping this in mind, we have asked each of our journalists to send not more than four SMSes to a subscriber in a month. Moreover, the response of the rural population to SMSes is different from that of the urban population, which is overloaded with information," said Ghate.
The honours
Government of Malaysia wants Ghate to start a similar service in their country
Governments of Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu have also evinced interest
Walter Fust of the communication and development committee of UNESCO wants Ghate to demonstrate the concept to UNESCO officials Ghate's unique SMS news letter has bagged the NASSCOM social innovation award
Source: Ravi Ghate
