Everywhere there is talk of digital inclusion and digital payments. The Government is earnestly pushing for the same. Recently, NITI Ayog reiterated digital thrust as a focus area amongst the 300 action points submitted for accelerating Indian economy. Yet, for this to happen, India needs to be digitally connected and even if the whole length-breadth of the country gets internet connectivity, it does not necessarily mean that mobile connectivity will be available everywhere. Nor does it mean that everyone will be digitally savvy.
Adoption of digitalization is a sum of a number of activities.
- Creating awareness – digital literacy in India remains poor. More than 70% of India’s rural population is offline because they do not understand internet and what it means.
- Simplify – for a layman, technical words can be quite a put off. This is also one of the reasons why internet awareness levels remain low.
- Infrastructure – electrification & available of electricity & increased mobile phone penetration are vital for the adoption of digitalization.
- Customer approach – focus on what the customer wants and design the product accordingly.
- Leadership that recognizes the importance of digital thereby ensuring that the business strategy is designed as per today’s digital age!
Solutions:
- Build in internet awareness from the school level itself. Basic training in using the internet and digital services should be launched in schools, vocational training schools and gram panchayats.
- Put in place an ecosystem of ‘digitally connected’ India that involves right from laying of internet optics to availability of electricity to mobile phone penetration. Mobile is today the new office. One can carry out almost any digital transaction/activity via a smartphone. Hence, an enabling environment that aids early adaption of mobile connectivity will give boost to the economy. According to the latest report by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), there are 389 million mobile internet users in India. Out of which, urban Indian accounts for 51% and rural for a mere 16%. There is such a vast potential that is waiting to be tapped.
- Make it easy for your customer – technology can be a put off for people who are either not internet savvy or do not have the stomach to understand the mumbo-jumbo technical jargon that makes up a product. Design your product from the eyes of a customer and simplify it to give the customer a unique and seamless experience. Unless that is in place, no customer is going to stick to digitalization. For example, a lot of products still ask for hard copies of documents despite being part of so called ‘digital’ driven companies. This simply does not work!
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