LAUNCHING an initiative called ‘Project Sampark’ which aims to empower women by facilitating their access to mobile phones in rural areas, telecom operator Uninor announced that it had received a grant of US$ 70,000 by GSMA’s Mobile for Development Foundation for the pilot phase of the project. The seven-month long project seeks to address the socio-economic reasons behind gender mobile access gap and empower women through ownership and use of mobile phones, build awareness of the benefits of cellular technology and provide livelihood opportunities to women in the community who would be allowed to participate in the project to get more subscribers. A total investment of about US$ 183,654 has been made in this joint initiative between Uninor and GSMA to enhance tele-density in rural pockets of the country. Initially, the project will be launched in three of Uninor’s telecom circles – UP(West), UP(East) and Bihar, and after measuring its results and accessing the impact, the project will be rolled out to its other circles in Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra. With 200 women promoters trained by Uninor itself, the project targets to add 6,000 new subscribers in rural areas a month, with at least half of them being women. In a release by Uninor, Morten Karlsen Sorby, CEO, Uninor, stated, “The launch of ‘Project Sampark’ is a first step in the direction to using mobile connectivity to deal with the developmental challenge of gender disparity in mobile usage. This project will be truly path-breaking in its intent as well it will be self-sustainable, scalable and continue to provide livelihood opportunities for women while building awareness of the benefits of mobile connectivity.” About 40 women and four supervisors, mainly Anganwadi and ASHA supporters, would participate in the pilot phase of the project to be launched in 87 villages of Aligarh district of Western UP. These women promoters will sell mobile prepaid connections and recharge vouchers at the customer’s door step. An innovative product called “Jodi Pack – a pair of SIMs linked to each other, sharing benefits of recharge or talk time top-up – will be introduced to appeal to male members of the family so that they allow women to own mobile phones. Uninor will also spread awareness through street plays and outbound call centers to constantly serve onboarding new customers, handholding them to explain the usage and benefits of the mobile phone. “We see this as a huge opportunity from an operator’s point of view. This is just not part of the company’s Corporate Social Responsibility, but a self-sustaining business model. This project makes commercial sense to us as well as become an important tool to provide women livelihood,” Rajeev Sethi ,Chief Marketing Officer, Uninor told reporters here. Uninor is majority owned subsidiart of Telenor Group – one of the major mobile operators with headquarters in Oslo, Norway. Its circles in India account for more than 50 per cent of the country’s population. By Tanima Banerjee
