Srei plans 25,000 kiosks

The six states are West Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, Assam, Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.

Under this project, every center would provide a bouquet of services starting from e-governance, e-commerce to e-learning and thereby linking rural areas with the entire world. "We will set up 25,000 IT kiosks in six states in east and south India, for setting up rural IT infrastructure, within a span of two years," said Hemant Kanoria, chairman and managing director of SIFL, said here.

"About 25000 village level entrepreneurs (VLE) would run these centers and they in turn would create direct employment of another 75,000 persons in rural areas. They would offer services which the government would provide in the rural areas like birth certificates, land records among others. Srei Sahaj would add the e-commerce and e-learning products to make it remunerative for the VLEs," he added.

The cost of setting up one kiosk is estimated to be Rs 2.5 lakh of which a VLE would have to provide Rs 1.25 lakh and the rest would borne by Srei Sahaj. The revenue for each of the centers is projected at a minimum of Rs 10,000 with in six months from starting the on line services.

"We have made arrangements with the banks for financing the VLEs," said Sabahat S Azim, CEO, Srei Sahaj E-Village Ltd. For on line services the revenue would be shared equally between Srei and VLE. "Already 1500 centers are operational in West Bengal and by the end of 2009 the number is slated to go up to 4397 covering 14 districts of the state," Azim added. This programme is under the national e-Governance Plan (NeGP), which entails setting up of 100,000 centers across the country.