SMSOne was honoured for a very innovative project of starting a local SMS Community Newsletter to promote self employment amongst unemployed youth. Typically as youth collects 1000 mobile numbers of local residents and starts a SMS based newsletter to alert, update and inform them about local/social happenings. It is a free service to citizens and yet the unemployed youth earns about 6000 – 10,000 per month through promotional messages.
In the last one year SMSOne not only scaled up their project in different states but also introduced newer initiatives. The project has covered almost all of South India and has also successfully implemented its flagship project of smsVARTA for rural citizens. They also launched YouthONE and eduVARTA for youths and college – going students in five states. The project is poised to connect three million members by June 2010.
SMSOne got both national and international recognition. Post NSIH, they could attract many research agencies, academics and apex institutes like IIM-A and IIT-B. They got featured in TechCrunch, Washington Post, Forbes India and almost all mobile and social networking sites/blogs. Participation in N2Y4 Mobile Social Innovation Challenge organized by TechSoup in association with CISCO, California made them amongst the top 15 innovations in the world!
NSIH proved to be a stepping stone into the world of ICT for Development. Having received this honour people started believing in us and our project in India as well as outside. From ‘a mere start-up in Pune’ to ‘Forbes – Hot 5 Start-ups in India’ …..Thanks to NSIH!
Ravi Ghate
Social Entrepreneur & Director
SMSONE, Pune, India
