Two Indian innovations among Nokia’s global 11 list

Forum Nokia had invited applications for the “Calling All Innovators Contest” sometime back, even we (RouteGuru) had applied for the contest.

A list of 11 finalists is now public, RouteGuru doesn’t figure in the list but then those who figure, I feel proud to mention that two Indian innovations like Nano Ganesh and Green Phone have found a place in this global competition under two distinct categories i.e. Emerging Markets and Eco-Friendly respectively.

Calling All Innovators

Both the applications demonstrate pretty remarkable innovations, the Nano Ganesh though seems to be highly fascinating to me as a consumer service addressing the pains of rural population directly.

Shri Ganesh to Nano Ganesh

While chanting “Shri Ganesh” in Hindu mythology symbolizes for a safe and happy beginning, Nano Ganesh will symbolize for the safe and happy maintenance. Hmmm, perhaps one step ahead.

As the name doesn’t suggest, it is actually a modem (hardware device) that controls the starter of the pumpset and it just costs between 500 to 1700 INR. Just by making a simple mobile/ land line voice call, farmers can trigger their pumpset to switch it on/off, check the sufficient power supply etc. hence handling their pumpsets remotely.

I see three important aspects as the key to success in this innovation:

• Voice control – More reliable than SMS and every person can do that.
• Deployment of Ultra Low Cost Handset like Nokia 1100.
• Pricing for Indian consumers i.e. starting from 560 to 1700 INR.

[Video coverage at IBN Live]   |   [Coverage at Nokia Conversations]

Green Effect to GreenPhone

It’s an application for Symbian series 60 devices which allows you to save on your batter and charger’s life by providing you the alerts to several power consumption modules and enables you to shut down the unwanted applications to preserve power. Some of the main features are:

• Backlight power saving
• Charger Saving
• Bluetooth time out
• WLAN time out

The cool part here is that the notifications come as an SMS, which come from the application in the handset itself and hence doesn’t cost at all to the consumer. The pricing too is pretty competitive at $15.

It is indeed fascinating to see what potential simple voice calls and SMS hold for future. It would be interesting to know if someone reading this article has any interesting idea around Voice calls or SMS as well.