Performance of Internet Kiosks in Rural India

Abstract

We investigate the determinants of revenue of small-scale entrepreneurs in a developing nation. We study these entrepreneurs in the context of a very widely applied model for the delivery of IT services to rural and poor populations. The model is one where limited intervention to support infrastructure and coordinate resources is combined with market-based delivery of IT services to the end user (what we call here the ‘sustainable franchise model’). Though this model has been deployed world-wide by governments, NGOs, and development institutions in the past few years, there has been little quantitative research into the determinants of revenue performance in such a model. In this paper we examine the case of n-Logue, a franchise (at the time of sampling) of over 1000 locally owned, Internet kiosks in rural India. We analyze data from 74 of n-Logue’s kiosks. Among other things, we find that gender and education do not affect revenue, while location and other measures of social standing (age and caste) do. We also find that the uses that villagers have for IT services are not so different from those which first world users have. The lessons we draw from this example are that while local social structures must be taken into account (for example, the caste system), it is not a foregone conclusion that social biases (for example, against women) cannot be mitigated by good programme design.