Tech support

Quraishi and his brother Subhi travel to rural areas and provide villagers with mobile programmes and games that they have devised to spread relevant social messages. Their new projects,‘Freedom TB’,will travel through Haryana,UP and Rajasthan. Another project that’s in the wings is ASHAs(Accredited Social Health Workers) where mobile based training projects in UP will be used to educate villagers on pre-natal and post-natal care for women. Quraishi,who has a masters degree in Computer Application and a degree in Applied Mathematics from Moscow,is also creating a mobile microfinance platform for BPL women in Rajasthan and UP by which they will be able to track their account.

An alumnus of Montfort School,Delhi,Quraishi launched his first computer game on ‘Mahatma Gandhi’ in his former school. The programme was a blend of gaming and e-learning. The response it got was good and he distributed it to other schools in Delhi. “That was the turning point. I thought games and web portals have a wide reach for people living in urban areas but what about the not so affluent sections of society? Then I decided that we have to make it accessible for the rural people. And mobile is a best platform because it has such a wide reach and also people who are not literate learn to use it by hit and trial method.”

This led to his foray into the HIV/AIDS awareness campaign in 2005 ‘Freedom HIV/AIDS’ where mobile games were used to convey messages of prevention and transmission and at the same time clear common misconceptions about the disease.

The ‘Safety Cricket’ game is one of the popular games which is based on a village cricket match between two teams — Demons XI and Safety XI. Cricket balls appear in the form of safety devices like condoms,information on HIV and red ribbon. Googlies and Yorkers appear in the form of unsafe sex and infected blood transfusion.

“When this game was launched in the villages of UP,Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra,it became very popular with girls. It was interesting because it’s usually boys who take a keen interest in cricket. It showed the kind of impact technology has on people and how quickly they adapt to it.” Hilmi recalls. The games are available in English,Hindi,Kannada,Tamil,Marathi,Bengali and Gujarati.

The journey has been challenging. “It took time for others to believe in our conviction,” says Hilmi who has worked with countries in Africa with local collaborators and received the Changemakers award in 2007 for his game on HIV/AIDS.

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