The tale of the common man in India has always been one of struggle and in-sufficiency. This became quite evident in the post Covid-19 world, when the divide between the privileged and the under-privileged got exposed by the pandemic.
Many shops shut down. From farmers to small businesses, incomes were drastically impacted. Even children were cut off from access to education.
It was a different story, however, across the more affluent segments where ‘Work from home’ and ‘Study from home’ became the new normal.
India scrambled towards going hands free and digital, but the common man started feeling left out. A refreshed realization of struggle and in-sufficiency became his new normal.
In an attempt to solve for this, On Dec 9, 2020, The Govt. of India launched the PM WANI scheme. This scheme aims to boost the incomes of small businesses, while bridging the digital divide across the Indian demography.
What does the world of PM WANI look like?
As of today, the cheapest 4G plan costs Rs. 149, which gives a daily access of 1 GB internet to an individual, for a month.
This is limited provisioning when it comes to prolonged duration of online education and content consumption. Especially across low-income households, where a family of four relies on just one such connection. This limited availability of data limits possibilities of information consumption, while consistently disrupting user experience.
Consider an alternative, where a mom-and-pop store sells Wi-Fi vouchers, each giving access to unlimited data at broadband like speeds, for just Rs. 50 and other denominations.
Imagine this store immediately next to 3 to 4 low-income households, where every member of the household can access this Wi-Fi network at fast speeds, with no data limit, at nearly one third the cost of 4G.
Now imagine lakhs of such stores, spread across the country, where a network effect enables users to stay connected to broadband bandwidths at all times via Wi-Fi, at almost no cost.
PM WANI promises this alternate reality. It envisions small businesses becoming digital entrepreneurs, creating a digitally empowered community across the next 500 million Indians. A community where Indians get access to high speed, low-cost, distributed broadband data on Wi-Fi; and small businesses boost their incomes by selling Wi-Fi data.
This reality is well within reach, as was suggested by a recently finished pilot conducted by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). This pilot witnessed shopkeepers earning up-to Rs. 300 daily by selling Wi-Fi vouchers of Rs. 5, 20 and 50 denominations (For most small businesses, this is equivalent to up-to a 100% increase in their daily income).
Small businesses became hubs for people to gather and access Wi-Fi -> from children getting access to online education to the youth and elderly consuming online content, the pilot started witnessing stories of communities coming together and getting digitally empowered.
