Need and Relevance of Mobile Based Information Services

Need and Relevance of Mobile Based Information Services in Emerging Markets - India Gnanapriya C (gnanapriyac@infosys. com) , Principal Architect, Communications Service Provider Business Unit Puneet Gupta (puneet_gupta@infosys. com) , Research Area Leader, Convergence Lab, SETLabs Copyright Infosys Technologies Ltd, 2006

India ICT – A SNAP SHOT 2

ICT Projects in India Name of the Project Purpose Future planes Akshaya Making a district E-literate, limited employment generation. Delivery of multiple service at Akshaya centers and expand it to other districts Bhoomi Issue of Land title at 177 Bhoomi kiosks and through privately owned kiosks Expand rural kiosk network Drishtee Creating a network of privately owned kiosks for e access to info, government and service commercial Expand Network to cover new kiosk E-choupal The prime target is farmer. Farmers get information about seeds’ price, etc Scale to more users N-Logue Multipurpose Internet kiosks based on WILL Expand for commercial utilization Gyandoot Connecting rural cyber café catering the everyday needs of the masses. Extend for global Internet Education Gram Pts Road Transport Land Records National ID Pensions Central Excise India Portal GIS e-Courts e-Office Insurance Munici palities EDI Core Policies e-Posts e. Biz Gateway e-Procure Police Banking Land Regn Common Service Centres Source: Dipankaj G Medhi, Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand Comrl Taxes MCA 21 Income. Passport Visa Treasuries Tax Civil Supplies Employment Exchanges Agriculture 3

Earlier Recommendations … “GDP can grow only if we concentrate on integrating agriculture, food processing, education, healthcare, information and communication technology into governance. " - Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam, President of India Source: Domestic IT - Broad Based Economic Development , HCL at 7 th round table conference of Panchayathi Raj 4

Better reach out with Mobile Technologies • Internet usage is more in urban areas where literacy is more, supported by better local connectivity infrastructures. But for a wider reach, especially to rural India, there is a demand for other technologies that are more accessible and at suitable price points. • With monthly subscriptions inching towards six million additions per month - 5. 9 million of them - are new mobile subscriptions, making India’s net addition the highest in the world, overtaking that of China – though the penetration levels may be lower. India today offers the lowest telecom tariffs as compared to rest of the world with local mobile call rates at less than 2 US cents a minute. The combination of the above two facts makes mobile based information access an extremely practical and attractive value proposition for a country like India. • The number of cellular subscribers in the country is expected to treble to 300 million in the next three to five years • Every cell phone can technically be used as a data access device. Wireless Technologies that are used for information services are GSM data bearers, GPRS packet data access, CDMA, Wi. Fi Mobile penetration has been successful from this perspective and has not only been used for networking & communication, but has gained a significant place in doing business and to stay in touch with latest information. 5

Mobile Value Proposition In India, the primary drivers for mobility are accessibility and less dependence on the fundamental last mile infrastructure. And given the near ubiquity of coverage, mobile access has become/is becoming powerful access medium for internet access as well Mobile technologies comes with their inherent advantages not available with traditional Internet access, – – Location Identification Higher levels/relevance of presence awareness Context awareness Anywhere, Anytime access 6

… for enterprise • A new channel to reach out to customers and employees alike • Another self service channel: As end users start getting used to experience a wide range of mobile voice and data services using mobilizes, an implicit demand to be able to reach out to your business is emerging- Self service via mobile channel can be a killer App • Employee enablement. Providing the right data, applications and mobile tools to your field service can substantially enhance productivity and effectiveness, factors that have direct impact on day to operations and real customer service • Expanding to far-out and less accessible rural areas where having a physical presence may not make sense. Very cost effective in virtually extending your enterprises to wherever your customers are, also acquisition of new clients 7

Mobile technologies for data services in various segments in India Sl. Industry segment Segment details Access / Information requirement Applicability for Mobile Internet 1 Government executive, legislative and general government, justice, public order and safety, public finance, taxation, monetary policy, administration of HR, environmental quality, housing, economic programs, national security and international affairs, and all other Central, international and local government. Enable mobility to e. Governance (National e. Governance plan) Update status, alerts, notification via SMS based on which users can get into the e. Governance portal for more details 2 Agriculture Harvesting, Marketing, pest control, crop rotation Online advice, transactions, information retrieval Alerts, Advice, transactions can be handled by SMS based applications or via thin client mobile browser based interfaces 3 Health Care Hospitals, clinics, doctors, nursing, dentists, medical and dental laboratories, And other health services. Data sharing, Expert advice, registration for public health service, appointment, alerts, notification SMS based applications for information/alerts and transactions based on Wi. Fi / GPRS connectivity at home and hospitals for real time heavy data uploads / downloads N o. 8

Mobile technologies for data services in various segments in India Sl. Industry segment Segment details Access / Information requirement Applicability for Mobile Internet 4 Financial Services Banking, securities, insurance (other than health) and health Insurance (the payer). Mobile Banking, Financial transactions, Micro finance, Micro Insurance Information retrieval (account, loan inquiry, status check), Banking transactions, payments, requests (DD, Cheque book etc) SMS / WAP based applications. Thin client mobile browser based interfaces. J 2 ME based thick client apps for providing online/offline information access 5 Retail Trade, Trading General retailers, specialty retailers, grocery, restaurants and hotels. Interactive communication / Financial transactions / M-commerce Online store can leverage the mobile channel to deliver instant information to users, assisting them to make informed buying decisions, while helping the retailers to understand evaluate consumers' preferences. Auctions is another attractive application area SMS / WAP based applications. Thin client mobile browser based interfaces. J 2 ME based thick client apps for providing online/offline information access N o. 9

Mobile technologies for data services in various segments in India Sl. Industry segment Segment details Access / Information requirement Applicability for Mobile Internet 6 Utilities Electric, gas, oil, nuclear power and sanitary services Real time Meter reading updates Bill payments Real time info sharing SMS based applications Wi. Fi / GPRS for heavy data uploads 7 Communicat ions Wire line, Wireless, Cable, Television, Radio broadcasting Mobile Content Delivery News, Alerts, Content (Music, Video clips), Gaming SMS based applications, Streaming with GPRS / 3 G / 4 G network services (Xo. IP, IPTV etc) 8 Manufacturi ng automotive, industrial, electrical and commercial equipment, medical equipment and supplies, computer and high-technology, electronics, transportation Equipment and all other discrete manufacturing. Mobile Field Force , real time updates, low cost supply chain management – info access SMS based applications as well thick client based models for storing information for offline access. Real time data updates with Wi. Fi and GPRS networks. 9 Transportati on water, rail and air transportation, urban passenger transit, motor freight Transit, pipelines, warehousing, couriers, and transportation support services. Fleet Management (real time updates), M Ticketing, Schedule updates SMS based applications for updates, m ticketing, schedule updates, status check N o. 10

Mobile technologies for data services in various segments in India Sl. 10 N o. Industry segment Segment details Access / Information requirement Applicability for Mobile Internet Services IT service providers, software publishers, professional, scientific and technical services, real estate, and business and consumer services. Real time data access, mobile Content delivery, m-trading, m-bookings SMS based applications, Streaming with GPRS / 3 G / 4 G network services (Xo. IP, IPTV etc) 11

The mobile Technology Landscape- Appreciating the options Native App Development Smart Client Using Mobile Development App Framework Thin Client Nokia-WAP Thick Client Erricsson Middleware Open Wave Security Smart Client Identity Management Messaging Services Interne t Synchronization Mobile User Device Tablet PC Laptop Mobile Phones App Server CRM Database SMS c. HTML SQL Server SMTP x. HTML Oracle HTTP HTML DB 2 Palm OS HTTP/S XML ODBC Blackberry SOAP WML PDA Smart Phone Device Management Enterprise Win CE Pocket IE SQL CE Symbian Access mechanism Nokia GPRS GSM WAP RFi. D TCP/IP 12

Challenges with state of art technologies Fundamental value proposition of mobile access to information and mobile transactions is clear, key associated challenges are – – – – Managing Device Diversity Context sensitivity Planning for but “not assuming” any-where, any-time connectivity Right approach to Security Minimizing the cost and complexity involved with mobilizing apps Immature standards in content rendering technologies Aligning to the right set of technologies for the business needs 13

Infosys approach to address these challenges …. Infosys has been looking into these challenges and our effort have been aligned towards • development of technology platforms • solutions that aim to bring the best value from application of mobile technologies in specific areas 14

Infosys mobility solutions with a strong Indian context • • • Insurance for Rural India Microfinance Application of mobile real time data for dairy professionals 15

Insurance for Rural India • Challenge – Ability to serve the client base in small towns and in rural areas where it is not practical to extend the company’s presence by setting up physical infrastructures. – Many of these places are not well served even from an internet connectivity perspective. • Trend – Even the remotest of these areas are today being served by mobile networks. • Solution – We have been working on creating technology platforms that enable creation of solutions that leverage a low cost mobile device that a local, employed by the company as its representative, can use to provide several services which were hitherto possible only when a customer were to visit the nearest office in one of the towns. – The field representative can use her/his mobile phone to access services like getting customer information, receiving alerts related to due dates for renewals and updation of premium payments received, just to give a few examples. – Using a low cost mobile device, the field agent can provide all critical services even in areas where setting up of basic internet infrastructure can be a challenge. – Advanced synchronization techniques supporting both SMS and wireless data technologies offered by GPRS as well as CDMA networks, ensure that the cost per transaction can be kept extremely low. 16

micro. Finance A credit company providing “micro”loans where the loan amounts are very small. The cost of transaction per loan sanctioned or payment made should be low. With the micro. Finance application, data is available with the finance company’s agent to monitor his clients’ loans and their payments. Transactions are offline and data is synchronized with backend server at a later time or when connectivity is available. 17

Application of mobile real time data for dairy professionals • Using Tru. Sync, Infosys mobile synchronization platform, is aimed at enabling field force of a dairy organization to enable use of mobile device like PDAs to provide nutrition, animal diet and wellness services as well as vaccination services to farmers who have no other effective mechanism to scientifically deal with animal care to increase net yields. • The solution strength lays in the ability of underlying technology platform to deal with the complexities of the wireless connectivity infrastructure. • The technology enables the application to work in offline situations when connectivity is not available or when the cost of connectivity is high. • The technology involves opportunistic pre-fetching of data and by masking the disconnectedness from the end application by fetching the data from the local database, masking the actual state of connectedness from the end application. • The solution is also aimed at demonstrating the feasibility of such mobile solutions both from technology and cost perspectives. 18

Infosys mobility platforms • • Infosys m-Connect platform True Sync 19

Infosys m-Connect platform • m-Connect is Infosys context aware mobile transactions platform that enables extension of any web based application to be made available for access from any web enabled mobile device in manner that is optimized for each device. • The platform takes into account factors such as Screen real estate, Input, Cost of Connectivity, Heterogeneity, Application Deployment, and Available Bandwidth • The platform is a web server side middleware that detects device type and in real time renders a transaction interface suited for a mobile device. • One of the critical aspects of the platform is the way existing back end infrastructure is leverages meaning that an existing application can be mobile enabled in incredibly short time frames. 20

True Sync • Tru. Sync is an Infosys platform for building mobile synchronization based mobile solutions. • By harnessing the power of “Context” Tru. Sync ensures that optimized mobility is realized and the solution understands and appropriately reacts to evolving environment conditions without end-user disruption • Essentially Trusysnc offers one time architectural foundation doing away with the need of dependency on the individual mobile applications to deal with issues such as network connectivity aberrations, security and transaction prioritization. • Key Architectural foundations: – Masking the occasional disconnectedness from the application and hence the end user – Ability to differentiate between application contexts – Removing dependence on both the network level security as well as the end application security architecture – Also manages transaction prioritization 21

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