Empowering People With the Power of the Internet Without Actually Having Access to the Internet
Recently, I have been reading articles on USSD and how this 20-year-old technology is still helping the people across the globe.
I do not want to talk much about the tech associated with USSD, rather I would like to talk more about the use cases that should be considered and developed on the basis of this technology.
So let’s quickly understand what USSD is?
USSD is a code that runs onto your phone(almost all mobile phones) and lets you perform a few pre-defined tasks. I am sure most of you would be associated with this code. USSD codes start from ‘*’ and end with ‘#’. We must have used to check the balance in our phones. The codes to check the balance differs from operator to operator.
So this was pretty much the use of this code. But now the use of USSD has increased. You can even perform bank transactions using USSD.
How is that possible? Bank transactions need internet, correct?
Let’s understand how USSD use to work before and how it works now.
The image was self-explanatory and by now, you all must have understood the upgradation of the USSD tech.
To understand things in detail refer this link.
Now let’s trying to understand the use case of this tech in today’s world.
We take PayTM services as an example to understand the concept more clearly.
PayTM services include Recharge, Wallet, etc
If PayTM develops a USSD menu so that people who do not have access to the internet can also use its services. Imagine the width at which PayTM can expand if they implement such a service for the non-internet users.
Let’s check how big is the non-internet user market.
Urban India population: 455 mn
Urban India internet users: 295 mn
Urban India non-internet users: 160 mn
Rural India population: 918 mn
Rural India internet users: 186 mn
Rural India non-internet users: 732 mn
India’s total population: 1.3 bn
India’s internet users: 0.48 bn
India’s non-internet users: 0.89 bn
This data is as per the 2011 census: Reference
I know, these are old numbers. After the introduction of Jio, these numbers have changed. But the fact is even today, we have more non-internet users and these are the potential targets which companies forget to invest upon just because of the reason: lack of internet penetration.
We have an existing technology through which we can overcome this problem but why ain’t companies like PayTM looking forward to implementing this?
The Government understands this, we can do baking via USSD, TRAI has the full support then what is it that’s stopping the tech giants to access this untouched space?
I am not a full-time techie, but what I do understand is how to connect tech with humans and I find USSD as a very powerful tool.
Just imagine, you can conduct surveys via USSD. There are so many health problems women in India suffer from. Imagine they can access information to some solutions to their problems using their feature phone, how beneficial it would be for them.
I understand that they are a lot of challenges and it isn’t as simple as I am explaining but what I do understand is that it is possible to provide & access information without smartphones. Why are we waiting for Ambani’s to build an affordable smartphone to access this information? We already have a ready to deploy technology before us, why are we acting so blind to build such a tool?
I am not skilled to develop such a product, maybe I will find people who can work with me and build this. I am sharing this so that it might reach to the correct set of people and if not me, they build this tool and use it for the betterment of mankind!
