Majority of people in India live in semi urban and rural parts, were banking is limited.
Fewer than 25% of India's 45,000 ATMs are located in rural and semi-urban areas, where 70% of the country's 1.1 billion people reside, according to WSJ. As many as 65% of Indians don't have bank accounts, severely hindering their chances of saving, according to the Confederation of Indian Industry, an association of Indian business leaders.
But Indian banks have come a long way forward. Major public sector banks are bridging the personal banking gap between the urban and rural areas by building more offices and ATM's in rural areas. But the issue in rural areas is the unavailability of constant uninterpretable power.
But a new start up Vortex engineering has come to the rescue. The company has been selected among the 10 ten start ups that will change your life by Time Magazine. The company manufactures low power consuming ATM's - Grammateller Indi ATM's, Grammateller Duo ATM's with solar power options. These are the lowest power consuming ATM's in the world. The most amazing fact is that these ATM's power consumption is only 10% of that of large ATM's.
Vortex engineers worked with the IIT researchers to design these ATM's that not only would operate in rural India, but also would inspire trust in the machines among local villagers who may have never even seen a computer before. This meant including a biometric method of identification—instead of entering a PIN, the user presses his or her thumb on a glass fingerprint reader—as well as the ability to immediately switch to a four-hour backup battery during voltage fluctuations and power failures, which are powered by Solar panels.
To date nearly 500 ATM's have been installed, mostly in small towns within 30 to 60 kilometers from bank headquarters.Vortex marketing manager Sabarinath Nair estimates that more than 10,000 such ATM's will be installed within two years.
Fewer than 25% of India's 45,000 ATMs are located in rural and semi-urban areas, where 70% of the country's 1.1 billion people reside, according to WSJ. As many as 65% of Indians don't have bank accounts, severely hindering their chances of saving, according to the Confederation of Indian Industry, an association of Indian business leaders. But Indian banks have come a long way forward. Major public sector banks are bridging the personal banking gap between the urban and rural areas by building more offices and ATM's in rural areas. But the issue in rural areas is the unavailability of constant uninterpretable power.
But a new start up Vortex engineering has come to the rescue. The company has been selected among the 10 ten start ups that will change your life by Time Magazine. The company manufactures low power consuming ATM's - Grammateller Indi ATM's, Grammateller Duo ATM's with solar power options. These are the lowest power consuming ATM's in the world. The most amazing fact is that these ATM's power consumption is only 10% of that of large ATM's.
Vortex engineers worked with the IIT researchers to design these ATM's that not only would operate in rural India, but also would inspire trust in the machines among local villagers who may have never even seen a computer before. This meant including a biometric method of identification—instead of entering a PIN, the user presses his or her thumb on a glass fingerprint reader—as well as the ability to immediately switch to a four-hour backup battery during voltage fluctuations and power failures, which are powered by Solar panels.
To date nearly 500 ATM's have been installed, mostly in small towns within 30 to 60 kilometers from bank headquarters.Vortex marketing manager Sabarinath Nair estimates that more than 10,000 such ATM's will be installed within two years.
