Designing a sustainable revenue model for B2C education services in rural areas through Common Service Centres (CSCs) in Karnataka

Abstract

The CSC's are part of National e-Governance Plan of Government of India to take ICT (The information and communication technologies) to rural areas. ICTs have been instrumental in socio-economic development of India. The effectiveness of services provided through CSC's is highly dependent on its integration with existing systems in a localized manner. Although CSC as Public Private Partnership has been the most suitable model to achieve ICT development, having such centres at more disaggregated level such as village or Gram Panchayat level has sustainability issues. The challenge therefore is to build a sustainable business model that emerges out of the developmental needs of the rural population. Education is one of the key factors to rural development. It is necessary to provide quality education at affordable costs to rural population. Tele-Education using B2C is one of the services provided by CSC. This would give students in rural areas an access to hitherto unavailable source of education and knowledge. However, at the same time it is important for CSC to see that the costs of providing such service as well as the revenue generated from it constitutes a sustainable model. In a recent example, bid prices in response to the Request for Proposals Page floated by the Government of Karnataka raised questions about the sustainability of the model. Hence, it is important that we design a revenue model which would be fair in terms of costs to CSCs, Service provider, rural population and at the same time generate sustainable revenue to the Service provider. Such a business model would ensure success of the Tele-Education service in rural areas through CSCs