Mobile 4D: a journey from a failure to a success

Harsha Liyanage, Phd, MBA

Managing Director, (Sarvodaya-Fusion, Sri Lanka),Principal consultant, (eNovation4D, UK)www.fusion.lk

email: harsha@enovation4d.co.uk

Cambridge

20th May 2014

eNovation4D

Mission : e-Empowerment of communities

Capacity building>>ICT education and skills

Accessibility >> Telecentres, mobile, Smart-Phones

Applications>> Fusion Education, FarmerNet

Economic sustenance of Community +

partners + Fusion

Social bottom line Economic bottom line

Sarvodaya15,000 communities50 year old national NGO

SEEDS3000 village micro-enterprisesUS$31mn operation

ICTA (Gvt)620 telecentres

Corporates & Donors

Building partnerships to leverage impact

(Note: environmental impact is not sufficiently monitored in current analysis)

(community = target market)(or programme)

(Innovation 4SD: Innovation for sustainable development)

Innovation 4SD = product + social impact + community acceptance

Telecentres Mobile Android

1997 2004 2007 2009 2011

Updated market information

Higher number of intermediaries for trading

Higher bargaining power

Concept to prototype

Prototype Idea Concept testing

Gate 1

Gate 2

Gate 3

Live prototype: www.farmer.lk

eNovation4D

Failure

Prototype tested with 9 farmer

communities over 2 year period

Social acceptance Less than 7% repeat farmers out

of 4500 outreach in 2 years

Technology frontier Failed the software update efforts

Business model frontier Failed to define collaboration

models

In order to build a sustainable social enterprise product it needed

to build a critical mass of 80,000 users in 3 years

Android Smartphones 4D SmartVillage project

http://fusionsmartvillage.blogspot.com/

» Shared Ownership models (community vs

telecentre)

» Development applications

» Education

» Micro-enterprise promotion

» Apps vs Social networking

Project started in 2011 Feb.

Donor partners – Tag ID and Google

eNovation4D

Shared ownership of Android Smart Devices(Smart Phones & Tabs)

TelecentreHub

Case study: Inforgate telecentre, Kantale, Sri Lanka.

AwarenessAccessibilityEducation

• ICT• Social Media

eNovation4D

SMART Village

Using Smartphones for the development of Small Scale Businesses

Data Usage

170 65 150 103 124 46 37

708

3093

615

1021833

680430

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

3500

Lowest (MB)

Highest (MB)

Mostly Used Apps

0

10

20

30

40

50

60F3 - NAT04

F3 - NAT03

F2 - NAT05

F2 - NAT02

F1 - NAT05

F1 - NAT04

F1 - KAN03

F1 - KAN04

F1 - KAN02

F1 - KAN01

F1 - NAT02

eNovation4D

eNovation4D Ltd. Registered company in England & Wales UK.Company registration no: 07600230

Serving Europe, Africa& Asia

Clients:• CTA • UNCTAD• CABI• Tech4trade• IDRC• USAIDTelcos we have experience with:

• MTN & TIGO, Rwanda• Grameen Phone, Bangladesh• Dialog Axiata, Sri Lanka

Consultant s for ICT4D & Mobile for Development

Social Innovation

Social Impact

Sustainability

Expert Knowledge

Countries we work:• UK• Netherlands• (Geneva) Switzerland• Rwanda• Ghana• Bangladesh• Sri Lanka

• 20 Consultants•University of London (ICT4D Collective)• University of Manchester• BIID, Bangladesh

Network of experts &institutions