[asterisk-biz] Asterisk developers in India...

[Mitul Limbani]

Hi John,

We do run the Indian Asterisk User Community forum on 
http://asterisk.pbx.in/ and are located in Mumbai.

I would like to discuss with you as to how we can work togather.
Kindly reply me off the list with your detailed project description.

Thanks & Regards,
Mitul Limbani,
Founder & CEO,
Enterux Solutions,
The Enterprise Linux Company (TM),
www.enterux.com

Quoting John West <john at internews.fr>:

> Hi everyone,
>
>
>
> I'm travelling to India next week and would love to meet an Asterisk
> development company to discuss a project. We're a non-profit based in France
> (www.internews.eu) but are funded to set up a pilot project to launch
> business news services aimed at the SME sector and microfinance borrowers.
> The mobile phone is going to be the biggest single (though not only)
> platform to distribute these news services, and we aim to set up 50
> autonomous mini-news agencies in a franchise arrangement with a wholesaler -
> each with the ability to populate their own IVR menus, SMS in-out etc.
>
>
>
> A Delhi or Kolkota meeting would be ideal as I will be there anyway. But I
> could probably also make Chennai, or Bangalore.
>
>
>
> Please note: we're *not* talking here about providing a full-service call
> center, rather the tech development and support to allow a bunch of small
> businesses run their own phone apps.
>
>
>
> Please contact me off list. I paste a fuller description of the project
> below...
>
>
>
> Thanks
>
>
>
> John West
>
>
>
> ***
>
>
>
> MYSMENEWS - A NEWS AGENCY FOR SMALL BUSINESS
>
>
>
> Over two years, Internews Europe and its partners in India will innovate
> business news services in print, radio and mobile phone for some 300,000
> recipients of microfinance loans, and for small and medium enterprises in
> the Indian state of West Bengal. The project comprises three elements:
> first, a series of personalised and customisable news services called My SME
> News that keep small businesses abreast of their existing and potential
> future markets; second, broadcast  programs that will reach
> microentrepreneurs and SME owners with business information and spread
> awareness of small business services and the microfinance movement in the
> broad population; third, detailed research, from a baseline through the life
> of a pilot, and dissemination across the microfinance sector in India,
> Nepal, and other Asian countries.
>
>
>
> It has long been recognised that information improves markets. Business news
> companies such as Reuters, Boomberg, and Dow Jones are multi-billion dollar
> enterprises which shape the flow of international capital and commodities.
> The microfinance sector is growing rapidly across Asia in part due to the
> increasing availability of information that allows even the relatively poor
> and isolated to identify markets for their goods and services, and negotiate
> with wholesalers and middlemen.
>
>
>
> But so far, this increase in information flows has happened largely as a
> by-product of a growth in infrastructure of the Internet and the mobile
> phone . My SME News will be the first service to target specifically
> microfinance borrowers and SMEs in developing countries as a natural market
> for business news and information. It will explicitly exploit falling
> barriers to entry to media and information systems to target the tens of
> millions of small businesses which represent the single biggest sector
> contributing to the reduction of poverty across India and the rest of Asia.
>
>
>
> The news services will dovetail with a microfinance institution that runs a
> network of 204 branches across West Bengal. An editing operation in Calcutta
> will create a bank of news relevant to small business, then create
> individually customised versions for each of 15,000 self-help groups,
> available both on paper and by mobile phone. Subsidised in a promotion
> period, the services will gradually be converted to fee-paying.
>
>
>
> Radio programming over state and commercial radio in West Bengal and Nepal
> will reach the wider microenterprise and SME community with  broad issues of
> small business development, cross-marketing the customised services. A
> baseline study of information use among the target demographic will be
> constantly updated through the two year pilot. The publishing platform will
> be developed with open source software, and all editorial and business
> methodologies explained for possible wider adoption.The editing service will
> be structured to facilitate full commercialisation at the end of the
> project.
>
>
>
> Different models will be examined for replication elsewhere in India both as
> product differentiation offered by microfinance NGOs, and as standalone
> businesses, either as start-ups or by existing media groups, and also as
> franchises at the micro-level affiliated to regional networks.
>
>
>
>
>
>