"Drishtee works towards creating an impact on rural lives by building an ecosystem of micro-enterprises. Operating where access is difficult, the Drishtee model aggregates community needs through a variety of village entrepreneurs. These micro-enterprises provide economic opportunities to the poor by facilitating access, generating employment and delivering essential services at an affordable cost."
Drishtee was launched in the North-East in the year 2000. During these years, Drishtee – North-East has been able to touch the lives and hearts of so many villagers in almost all the districts of Assam and also making a presence felt in the adjoining states. Today, Drishtee has become a much known name for the innocent rural people of Assam and the rest of North-East. Before introducing Drishtee in Rural Assam, the services and the facilities being available in the villages was just a dream which people had - only for their next generations. Today, the communities here have an opportunity through which they can become a successful person and lead the way for the others and make their village and community feel proud of them. Drishtee is not only providing the facilities on their doorsteps but also creating a platform for the educated rural youth to prove themselves as a successful business person while at the same time giving some solution to sort out the unemployment problem.
It would be no exaggeration to say that it is Drishtee which has given the confidence to Assam villages - for venturing into Entrepreneurship - which is not the usual lifestyle of the people here. The idea of becoming a Social entrepreneur is very appealing to the local community here - the model and offerings of Drishtee through which this micro venture in the village can earn profits for itself as well as provide access to services in the local rural areas. It has been clearly noticed that some of the persons become Drishtee Franchisee specially to earn a reputation for them and to get their name attached to a pride of - being a Drishtee Kiosk Operator.
To reach this stage Drishtee-NE team has faced many hurdles in its way to success. It started first in only in three districts of Assam - Sonitpur, Golaghat and Lakhimpur with some limited services along with E-Governance where the entrepreneurs couldn’t expect much profit. The hopes were high on Kiosks getting connected to the administrative back-ends of the district government set ups. But due to some administrative problems it couldn’t be launched in Golaghat & Lakhimpur. We have taken this as a big learning for us and for Drishtee as a whole - on where and how to manage dependencies in the model. Drishtee-Assam took up the problems on the field head-on, during the 'black episode' phase of Licensees claiming big and trying to bring a bad name for Drishtee. In fact, for some time, we almost were no where in few areas including Lakhimpur and Golaghat. That was a huge administrative and managerial crisis where the team kept the internal confidence high. The belief that Drishtee had the Will to perform and a strong intention of implementing the model was there in everyone of the team. 3 Cheers to our team of Assam who not only took it up as a professional but a personal challenge to make Drishtee bounce back and instill confidence back in people. By the year 2005 we had almost managed to overcome the problems and started to pace up by also introducing much more reliable and self-sustaining services on the network like Education and introduced Rural FInance through a partner based service of Insurance in Drishtee. Today, the success of many entrepreneurs and increasing base with more sustainable model, has put us in a stronger position. That is what has made it possible for us to get engaged with the rural big brands like SBI to operate successfully in multiple locations.
Financial Services : Banking
Anita Sharma : Drishtee Franchisee in Assam taking snaps for Banking Services
In Assam & North Eastern region, still 65% of people are out of financial inclusion as formal banking cannot reach them from their branches. Although the bank branches are increasing, still the existing branch covers population exceeding all India average (15,539 populations per branch). The per capita CDR is only 29% with respect to the all India ratio of 56%.
As an alternate channel of formal banking sector, Drishtee North-East started the financial service with 10 CSPs as pilot to understand the market. After successful completion of the pilot ,during a short timeframe of two years, we have trained up 235 CSPs in North-East out of which 17 are working as Business Correspondent & remaining 218 as business facilitators. The introduction of PoS machine in the village area has created a revolution to the rural financial sector of the region. Drishtee CSPs have contributed to improve the access to banking facilities i.e., prompting saving habits & facilitating for the credit availability to the marginalized rural communities.
A Success Story: Leading by Example
Dhrubajyoti Sharma, a CSP from Darrang district, has received a record commission from SBI, i.e., of Rs. 80,963/-. For this, Dhrubajyoti opened a record 530 accounts in the last financial year and also facilitated loans worth of a sanctioned amount of Rs.1,56,75,000 to his customers. In the month of March 2009 itself, he was able to get sanctions on the loans worth Rs.95,55,000 along with 186 Savings Bank accounts. His total commission from this financial services till now is Rs. 1,48,765.Anjali Rajbansi of Kamrup district has also put an example of success working in a very remote village. She has opened the highest SB account in the last financial year 1210 and very proud to have more then 2000 customer in the area where the banking habit was only 5% and it increased to almost 50%. Her average income from the SBI service is about 5000 per month. Jhon Akash Kangaria is known for his Micro finance expertise which has made him self dependent as well as has infused a sense of dedication towards rural upliftment. He has given 34 loans out of which most of the customers were from marginal families and women. According to him there was no any concept of microfinance in his area and now people know very much about it. The rural finance services are playing a major role in success of Drishtee’s mission towards the goal of “connecting community village by village” through developing the rural entrepreneurs.
RURAL HEALTHCARE
Drishtee Health Centre in a Village of Assam
It is well documented that very few villages in India have easy access to qualified or trained health workers or doctors.Drishtee's health initiative started in April’08 only with three DHF (Drishtee Health Franchisee) in Morigaon & Kamrup District.Before starting DHF the people of Assam were not aware about quality medicine. Moreover as the specific standards of equipments were very costly which is not affordable to rural people, they were even not thinking about it. But from the DHF our rural community is availing those equipments in reasonable price compared to the market price. DHF is also providing health Insurance for BPL & non- BPL families which is especially designed for the rural people. In every weekend DHF organized special camp with specialties from different department to provide quality health care to the rural people at affordable cost. This health franchisee is linked at the back end with a qualified MBBS doctor and laboratory technicians who take weekly physical rounds of villages on the specified route and for the rest of the week are available for telephonic consults through the health franchisee. Recently, DHF has been tied up with Lunar diagnosis to provide all kinds of diagnosis at discount rate to those people who has been registered in Drishtee Health Card which is available at every DHF point. One of the DHF, Mrs. Suriya Begum from Baralabari health centre of Kamrup District has placed an excellent impact on the rural mass that people wants to purchase medicine only from our DHF as it is much known Health Center for its quality medicine. It’s a great success for DHF that in today’s competitive market it is playing one of the best competitor role among all the pharmacies.So we can proudly express our success towards health care of Rural community that we DHF is here to care for your health.
EDUCATION
Education empowers people to take control of their lives in many ways and opens new opportunities. Drishtee's objective is to provide relevant education to the undeserved to bring them closer to the level of urban youth and to use this education to foster in them the confidence and ability to do jobs – for others and themselves. Drishtee's main stay service for long in North-East has been computer education. Indeed Drishtee's courses have even built a brand image for themselves in several villages of North-east. In today's times, one cannot imagine life without computers. However, of the 60 % of the NE population who reside in rural areas, there are people who have never even seen a computer, leave alone worked on one. They are completely alienated away from fast pace of the upcoming technologies. This dichotomy has reaffirmed our conviction about spreading computer literacy down to the grass root level. So Drishtee has spread its hand with CEEP, Centre for Education & Entrepreneurship Programme, with a team of focused motivated individuals, has been able to build appropriate course material that aims to impart computer skills & English speaking skill as well as employment, within a very short time frame, offering economic prices to the students of all income groups. In this way Drishtee-NE has built-up so many students who are now being able to set-up their own business or find competitive jobs in the market. Now learning is a new experience at STEP with exposure to Multi-media based audio-visual kits, customized work sheets and trained Faculties in NE Education centers of Drishtee. The course also provides a STEP certificate for the advantage of recognition in the world of competition. Till now CEEP has trained more than 10000 students in North-East. The aims to spread the light of knowledge in every household of Rural North-East, we have created almost 630 Education kiosk who are more or less successfully performing in their center level.
Reshma Ahmed, in support from Paragdhar Konwar, Dipankar Baraua and Bhaskar
Territory team, Assam & NE
Drishtee
f42cff2a-56c4-4eb3-8117-6d611c7778f9|0|.0