Digital Transformation for every SME Business in Sri Lanka

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Factors Influencing Digital Technology Adoption by Sri Lankan SMEs (Digital SME)

Digital Adoption by Small and Medium Entrepreneurs (SMEs) around the world challenged by multiple factors. SMEs in the Asian markets have somewhat similar challenges. Arianne et al., 2021 carried out an interesting study of SMEs in Indonesian markets to identify the factors influencing technology adoption. Their findings have not much difference to the drivers of digital adoption of Sri Lankan SMEs.

SME Leader – most of the cases the leader of the SME plays a pivotal role in the growth of the firm. He/She is the ultimate decision-maker to the direction of growth and whether the firms would implement

Digital Technologies in their existing production and management systems.

SME’s Status – Apart from the financial status of the company which determines the affordability of new technologies, the age of the human resources and their digital capacity/skill set make a big difference.

Technology – The perceived benefits of the technology and it’s applicability to the existing business process is a major driver of the digital adoption. The availability of applicable digital technologies within the reach will contribute to driver 3.

What Sri Lankan Teachers are Going Through While Running Their Online Classes

Shashith Randima works here in Colombo, he went on leave last month and got stuck in his home town due to the travel ban imposed by the Government of Sri Lanka due to prevailing covid-19 pandemic. So his current role is to provide technical support to his mother who runs online classes for Grade 3 (8 years old) students in deep rural school in southern Sri Lanka.

Following is his experience what he posted on social media, but I have personally spoken him to verify the same before publishing it here;

Shashith Randima's Mother who is a Government Teacher Conducting a Online Class for Grade 3 Students

Photo courtesy of Shashith Randima

"I have become the official technician of my mother's online class.

1. The Zoom link must be posted the night before the class starts, otherwise you will be scolded by the mother.
2. I should stay close to her until the class is over. If the zoom session get disconnected then, I have to reconnect.
3. When children are shouting that they can't see the teacher, then I should attend to that and give immediate solutions.
4. My phone stand has been given to her, (It is not allowed to remove even after the class is over 🤦)
5. WhatsApp group should be handled by myself, and the meaning of the stickers sent by the students should be explained to her
6. Links of videos sent to children on YouTube should also be posted on that group.
7. The messages given to children should also be type in Sinhala language.
8. Whenever she asks to show a particular photo to the students, I should be ready to share the screen. 
9. When kids start shouting, everyone's mics should be turned off by me.
10. Even though I schedule the meeting, I have to teach my mother all the details of the zoom app, how to do it.
11. Stripes should also be drawn with a permanent marker on the white board.
12. Before taking classes everyday, check the data balance of the phone and reload if the data package is over.
13. On top of all those, before the class start I am supposed to tell my mom whether her dress is beautiful and he hair is tidy.
14. Everything is fine. biggest challenge is I have to listen to Grade 3 lecture everyday for two and half hours 😂
15. (When teaching Sinhalese, my little brother does makeup to pretend as a scarecrow or sometimes a grandfather, if he wasn't there, I would have to do that too 😂)
16. Whatever it is, I think the hardest thing is my mom's teaching. I think it's harder than anything written above. The fact that they are teaching online by while handling some kids ❤ 
17. My mother is very proud of her online classes, she proudly talk about it, whenever she talks to anyone. So being a part of that class is a pride for me too ❤🙏"

Note: base on true experience of Shashith Randima 

Sameera.

Guru.lk – Digital Educational Platform – learn anywhere anytime

Guru will revolutionize the distance education in Sri Lanka

Guru.lk - learn anywhere anytime

Children go online for various reasons, but most of the time those reasons do not add any value for those who go online. But they can’t be blamed for just wasting time, money and international bandwidth as they are digital consumers with very little choice.  

Guru.lk has been launched as a solution to the dearth of enriching educational online content here in Sri Lanka. System is open for anyone who wants to learn and users can pay for the services they consume through Dialog “Add to Bill”, eZ Cash or Credit Cards.

Current focus is on Ordinary Level (O/L) examination and students can register for following courses by just visiting www.guru.lk or sending a SMS with course code to 445.

Code	Subject	Medium Conducted	Daily Rental	Monthly Rental
33000	Spin Bowling by Rangana Herath	Sinhala/English	LKR 04.00	LKR 240.00
11001	O/L Science Revision	Sinhala	LKR 03.00	LKR 100.00
11002	O/L Maths Revision	Sinhala	LKR 03.00	LKR 100.00
11003	O/L English Revision	English	LKR 03.00	LKR 100.00
11004	O/L Art	Sinhala	LKR 03.00	LKR 100.00
11005	O/L Sinhala	Sinhala	LKR 03.00	LKR 100.00
11006	O/L History	Sinhala	LKR 03.00	LKR 100.00
11007	O/L Tamil	Tamil	LKR 03.00	LKR 100.00
11008	O/L Business & Accounting Studies Revision	Sinhala	LKR 03.00	LKR 100.00
11009	O/L History Revision	Sinhala	LKR 03.00	LKR 100.00
11010	O/L IT Fitness Test	English	One-time LKR 50.00

-Sameera.

Nenasa TV Launches Two New Educational Channels

Nenasa TV, the satellite based television channel developed to bridge the education gap between urban and rural Sri Lanka took a bold new leap today with the launch of two channels covering Grade 10 and Grade 11 curriculum respectively in the presence of Hon. President Mahinda Rajapaksa at the Tangalle Ruhunu Wijayaba National School. Based upon the content developed by the National Institute of Education (NIE) under the direction of the  Ministry of Education (MoE) which has so far connected over 2000 schools, “Nenasa” will provide these new channels initially to 1000 “Mahindodaya” schools.

The Nenasa programme was developed under the Mahinda Chinthanaya education plan to address the disparity of access to knowledge between urban and rural Sri Lanka through ICT (Information Communication Technology). Dialog Television, a satellite-based broadcaster, is a subsidiary of Dialog Axiata.  A satellite based system has almost no geographical limitations to deliver crystal clear content from the heavens, making it an ideal medium to deliver distance learning across the island.

Launched in 2009, the programme has so far gone on to connect over 2000 schools and future plans will encompass many more schools.

The state of the art satellite based distance education programme is operated by the Ministry of Education, while a high quality telecast edition of the national education curriculum for Ordinary Level students is developed by the National Institute of Education (NIE). The content is currently developed in Sinhala medium. The developed curriculum is transmitted to the rural school network via Dialog Television.

Hong Kong ICT4D PhD Fellowship Scheme

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU)

Graduate students and practitioner with evidence of academic excellence, research ability, good communication skills, and interest in pursuing their dissertation in the field of social entrepreneurship and ICT for development are invited to apply for Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme.

The Fellowship provides monthly stipend of HK$20,000 and travel allowance of HK$10,000 per year. In addition, each awardee will also enjoy tuition fees waiver for a maximum of three years.

Hong Kong serves as an excellent hub to access China, South-East- and South-Asia, dynamic social innovations space. To understand how social entrepreneurship is helping solve social issues, PolyU has recently established three centers: Sustainability Research Management Center; Design Institute for Social Innovation; and Research Institute for Sustainable Urban Development.

For additional information on PhD fellowship see (http://www.polyu.edu.hk/ro/hkphd-fellowship/)

For any clarification about application process: contact Ms Martha Hui (martha.hui@polyu.edu.hk)

For information on ongoing research projects on social entrepreneurship: contact Dr. Israr Qureshi (israr.qureshi@polyu.edu.hk).

.

-Sameera.

Mobile Phones in Prisons

The ‘Census of Population and Housing 2011’, the 14^th National Census of Sri Lanka was completed in 2009/2010 and the enumeration stage of the census was carried out in February‐March 2012. As per its findings Sri Lanka had 20.2 million population at the end of 2011. Also the latest statistics released by TRC shows that Sri Lanka has 19.6m Mobile Subscribers, resulting 95.1% penetration by September 2012 (probably with the assumption that population has increased by 0.4m during 2012). Anyway it shows how widely mobile phones have spread within the society. A recent article by CNN covered how mobile phones are being taken in to the prisons and used by prisoners.

A mobile phone and a hands free kit are seen in an X-ray of a Sri Lankan prisoner (Photo courtesy of CNN)

58-year-old G. Siripala, a Sri Lankan prisoner serving a 10-year sentence for theft, was escorted by armed prison officials to Colombo's National Hospital with severe back pain, doctors rushed him for an X-ray. Doctors thought he might have orthopaedic complications, a source familiar with the matter. "But the X-ray showed a cell phone and two hands-free kits." Medical staff prepared to carry out a surgical procedure on the prisoner, the source said.

"However, the man said 'Sir, sir, please give me a moment.' He coughed, wriggled, shrugged his muscles and the items fell on the ground," the source said.

The awkward incident reveals how Sri Lanka's prison officials discovered the latest round of phone smuggling into the high security Welikade Prison, in the northern sector of the capital, Colombo. The prisoner explained his situation to the doctors, recounting how had been chatting on the cell phone with a relative when prison officials carried out a surprise check on his ward, the source said.

"He had no place to hide it. So he thrust it in his rectum together with the two hands-free kits," he said of the prisoner. At nighttime, to avoid detection, the prisoners cover themselves with a bed sheet, hide the phone near the body and use the hands free kit, the source added. Siripala's undoing came when the person he had been speaking to rang back. The ringing tone came from his back and prison officials grabbed him, the source said. Smuggling of cell phones into prison is an all-too-common occurrence, forcing prison officers to use hand-held detectors, Commissioner General of Prisons P.W. Kodippili told.

"Most prisoners, particularly when they are taken to courts for cases, return with mobile phones given by outside parties. We have minimized the problem and are on the alert and catch them when they come in," said Kodippili, who is in charge of all of Sri Lanka's prisons.

Kodippili said jammers have been installed in prisons. However, one mobile phone operator had a tower near Welikade Prison and this was causing a technical glitch. Sources had revealed that some prisoner carryout finical transactions using mobile phones. Anyway all those would not be possible once authorities introduce body and parcel scanners very soon.

-Sameera

(based on a news article released by CNN)

Dialog 5 Star Partner - Mobile for Development (m4D)

5 Star Partner Hoarding in Ampara Town (Eastern Sri Lanka)

Dialog Axiata’s “5 Star Partner” programme extends the company’s reach to customers in rural areas by way of “Infomediaries” – Information Intermediaries. This exclusive corps of highly trained and carefully selected independent rural entrepreneurs enables Dialog to improve customers’ lives by reducing costs and delays in accessing services, as well as by opening up access to life-enhancing mobile services many currently do not fully utilize.

Dialog Infomediary Initiative (DII) – under the theme of Inclusive Business (IB), Dialog Axiata PLC has developed a robust business case to empower communities at the Base of the Pyramid (BoP) and is desirous of establishing a Social Enterprise Retail Network through an initiative known as “Dialog 5 Star Partner” to bridge the last-mile in its downstream value chain. The envisaged 5 Star Network is to build an innovative and non-traditional ‘Infomediary Network’ that relies on social entrepreneurs (information intermediaries) to reach consumers at the Base of the Pyramid (BoP).

5 Star Partners receive significant investment and support from Dialog to position them as Information and Communication Technology (ICT) or to be specific, Mobile for Development (m4D) ambassadors in their villages. Dialog is working towards placing 1000 "5 Star Partners" across rural Sri Lanka within 2012 with the support of International Finance Corporation (IFC) and GSM Association (GSMA). A third of all 5 Star Partners are located in the North and East of the country which were worst-affected by civil conflict, and where Dialog was the first MNO to re-establish coverage.

Dialog acknowledges that communities that are segmented at varying levels of e-readiness require creative business models to reach each segment effectively. Low income communities that are geographically isolated display lowest levels of e-readiness and are at the receiving end of the Digital Divide continuum. To date Dialog has made significant progress in fulfilling the various components of the "5 Star" ecosystem and is currently poised to roll out a trial "5 Star Partner Initiative" encompassing 1000 tier three retailers equally distributed across Sri Lanka. Dialog has invested resources in building complementary services such as Rural Value Added Services (VAS) and charging mechanisms to serve the needs of the poor through the 5 Star Partner network.

Dialog 5 Star Partner Network in Sri Lanka

-Sameera.

South Asian Mobile Conference 2012

What Can you do with your mobile?

Listen to;
Dr. Hans Wijesuriya - Group Chief Executive Officer of Dialog Axiata PLC, Sri Lanka
Mr. Tomi T Ahonen - Former Nokia Executive, well known author
Mr. Ralph Simon - CEO of Mobilium International

And many other speakers

Add caption

Indian Aakash Tablet PC vs OLPC

Early this month India launched touch-screen tablet PC, which is known as “Aakash”. That is priced at just $35 compared to its counterpart OLPC which was originally priced at $100 and then increased to $180 - $200 later. The Aakash has been developed by UK-based company DataWind and Indian Institute of Technology (IIT - Rajasthan).

Mr. Kapil Sibal, the minister of the Indian Human Resource Development Ministry hopes Aakash will give digital access to students in small towns and villages and end the digital divide in India.


But it is too early to say how the Aakash will be received as most cheap tablets in the past have turned out to be either poor performers or expensive eventually (what happened to OLPC). Any laptop should meet the demand of its target audience. Following table shows the comparison of Aakash and OLPC;

Consideration	Aakash Tablet PC	OLPC
Technical
Display	7” colour LCD/TFT	7.5” Dual-mode TFT
RAM	2GB	1 GB DDR2 SDRAM
Hard Drive	32GB	Internal 4GB microSD card
Connectivity	Wi-Fi, USB 2.0 (2), Ethernet port	Wireless networking interface
Operating System	Android	OS build on modified Fedora Linux kernel
Processor	Unknown	1 GHz
Other
Target Audience	Students of 504 Universities and 25,000 Colleges in India	Primary level kids (5 - 15 years) around the world
Unite Price	$35	$180

One which has balanced the price and the features to fulfill the needs and wants of its target audience would be the most successful and sustainable laptop in the world.

-Sameera

Facebook opens an office in Colombo, Sri Lanka?

Photo courtesy of http://www.gossip9.com/

What you see on the picture is a tiny shop in capital of Sri Lanka. The shop owner has named his shop as “Facebook”. What made him to do that?

Sri Lanka is a country with an area of 65,610 km² and population of 21,283,913 (by 2011). As per International Telecommunication Union (ITU) reports, there were 1,776,200 Internet users as of Jun 2010, a penetration of 8.3%.

Usage of Facebook in Sri Lanka

Currently (April 2011) there are 894,240 Facebook users in Sri Lanka, that means;

- 4.2 % of the Sri Lankan population is on Facebook

- 50.3% of the Sri Lankan internet users are on Facebook

Though the impact is debatable, Facebook has become a term which is good enough to name an IT shop on the corner of the street.

-Sameera.

ICT4D – D for Dog

Even though it sounds funny, the negligence of the primary stakeholders or the beneficiaries has been a key factor for the failures of the Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D) Projects.

Giving wrong tool for the right people as well as right tool for wrong people would not lead to fruitful outcomes irrespective of the resources pumped for such projects. So we need to employ real “Development” practices to minimize such outcomes.

Some reasons for intentional negligence;

- Negative influence from politicians/bureaucrats

- Malicious intentions of organizations/companies/funders

- Malicious intentions of individuals who are involved in such projects

Blaming politicians or anyone else listed above wouldn’t help to change the situation. Right development practices such as;

- Being transparent

- Managing stakeholder engagements

- Involvement of primary beneficiaries from the inception

- Proper communication with all stakeholders

would lead to better results from the ICT4D initiatives, delivering real development through technology.

-Sameera.

Not Just Talk - Mobile Services in Poor Countries

Clever services on cheap mobile phones make a powerful combination—especially in poor countries

COUNTERFEIT drugs can make up around a quarter of all those sold in poor countries, according to some estimates. They provide a lucrative and lethal business, against which most consumers are powerless. “If your anti-malaria pill is made of any old white powder, you may not survive,” says Bright Simons, one of the founders of mPedigree, an advocacy group from Ghana.

Mr Simons is not just fighting with words. Late last year mPedigree launched a mobile service in Ghana and Nigeria that could make a dent in the fake-drug trade. People buying medicine scratch off a panel attached to the packaging. This reveals a code, which they can text to a computer system that looks it up in a database. Seconds later comes a reply saying whether the drug is genuine. The service is paid for by pharmaceutical companies that want to thwart the counterfeiters. Hewlett-Packard runs the computer system and found a cheap way to print the scratch-off labels.

This is just one of many such services mushrooming in poor countries, using mobile-phone technology that once carried only humble voice and text messages. Rohan Samarajiva, the boss of LIRNEasia, a think-tank in Sri Lanka, calls it “more than mobile”. Jussi Hinkkanen, Nokia’s head of policy in Africa, says the mobile revolution is moving “from ear to hand”.

The number of users is still small: even among young people in South-East Asia (a tech-friendly lot) only 8% had used “more-than-voice” services, according to a poll by LIRNEasia. But the potential is exciting. Mobile phones are the world’s most widely distributed computers. Even in poor countries about two-thirds of people have access to one (see chart 1). As a result, such devices and their networks, though mainly still much simpler than in the rich world, have become a platform on which many other services can be built. This boosts innovation—just as smartphones and faster wireless data networks have led to an explosion of mobile applications (“apps”).

Classifying mobile services in poor countries is not an exact science. Richard Heeks, director of the Centre of Development Informatics at the University of Manchester, sorts them by their impact on development. One category is services that “connect the excluded”. In their simplest form they provide information to those who would otherwise be out of the loop. Farmer’s Friend in Uganda, for instance, sends out market prices and other agricultural information in text messages.

Such services have been around for some time, but they have become more common—and much more varied. Nokia now provides its Ovi Life Tools, a set of information services from weather to sport, to more than 6m users of its handsets in China, India, Indonesia and Nigeria. Esoko, a Ghanaian “communication platform”, in the words of Mark Davies, its founder, allows two-way communication: people and businesses in 15 African countries can upload their own market or other data, which then become accessible via the internet and mobile phones.

Mobile trading platforms are also in this category. At first most of them focused on agricultural goods: Dialog Tradenet in Sri Lanka lets farmers check market prices and text in offers, helping them to time their harvest to maximise income. But many, including Dialog Tradenet, have other things on offer. In India, Babajob.com lists low-skilled jobs. The most popular items on CellBazaar in Bangladesh are second-hand mobile phones. For people with some cash to spare, KenyaBUZZ, one of the larger local websites in east Africa, is selling tickets for cultural and sports events over the phone.

Mobile phones can also spread learning. In Bangladesh the BBC World Service Trust sponsors a service called BBC Janala that allows people on a few dollars a day to improve their English. After dialling “3000”, they can listen to hundreds of English lessons and quizzes, updated weekly. Mobile operators charge about two cents for each three-minute lesson. Since BBC Janala was launched in November 2009, 3.1m people have used it.

Researchers in South Africa working for SAP, a software giant, are trying to connect very small businesses, which make up a large part of Africa’s economy. One service lets craftsmen create a virtual job docket with a few texts or touches on a smartphone, even without mobile-network coverage. The information is uploaded to a computer system later. Another allows rural stores to order goods, saving time-consuming trips to city markets.

A second category of services includes those that cut out the middleman, or at least keep tabs on him. This is especially helpful in using government services. In the Indian state of Karnataka, corrupt officials would often demand a bribe before issuing landownership certificates, which farmers need, for instance, to obtain a loan. The Bhoomi project helps them directly, by using the internet and mobile phones.

Disintermediation is also made possible by mobile money. Services to transfer cash by text message have been around for some years. One of the most successful, M-PESA, began in 2007 in Kenya, where it now has more than 13m users. It is now used for salaries, bills, donations: few things cannot be paid for via a handset. Similar services can be found in more than 40 countries. Though not yet on the same scale, this seems to be only a question of time: in most countries in sub-Saharan Africa, more people have a mobile phone than a bank account (see chart 2).

Other firms are extending the reach of mobile money. Software developed by Tagattitude, a French start-up, uses a handset’s sound channel to transmit money and will be used by several banks in Africa. A Little World, an Indian firm, has combined several pieces of technology to create a “branchless microbanking system” to allow people in remote areas to withdraw cash. A fingerprint reader identifies them and the sum is deducted from their accounts via a special handset. A small printer produces a receipt. The system already has more than 3m users in India. In Andhra Pradesh it directly disburses welfare payments and pensions.

The sound of the crowd, texting

A third, perhaps even more promising category is “crowdvoicing”. Ushahidi, founded by a group of activists in Kenya, is among its pioneers. After the country’s disputed elections in 2008, Ushahidi (which means “testimony” in Swahili) mapped reports about violence, most of them text messages, on a website. Now the organisation offers software and even a web-based service to monitor anything from elections to natural disasters. Similarly, text-messaging software called FrontlineSMS collects and broadcasts information.

Such techniques are increasingly applied in other areas, particularly health. Stop Stock-outs, another African group, has used Ushahidi to map where essential medicines are sold out. By checking whether a drug is genuine, users of mPedigree and another Ghanaian service called Sproxil provide real-time data about which illnesses are on the rise (and can be sent more information as needed). In Mali a company called Pesinet gets agents to send in the weight of newborn babies. If the figure falls below a certain level, the baby is examined more closely.

Then there is txteagle, which hopes to reward those willing to perform small jobs on a mobile phone. Its founder, Nathan Eagle, discovered that nurses in Kenya were much likelier to text in the stock levels at their blood banks if they were compensated with a bit of airtime. This got him thinking about whether other tasks could be “crowdsourced” in this way. Today firms use txteagle for translating words into a local dialect and checking street signs for a satellite-navigation service. Mr Eagle hopes that the service will spread far, in particular to Asia.

A fourth and last category hardly exists yet, but could prove the most important, says Mr Heeks: platforms that allow the world’s poor to “appropriate the technology and start applying it in new ways”. One small example is “beeping”: hanging up after a single ring. First used to signal that someone wants to be called back because of lack of credit, it has become a free messaging system. In some countries, street hawkers assign special ringtones to different customers, which are in effect free messages placing orders.

In rich countries, online stores for smartphone apps gave digital innovation a boost. LIRNEasia’s Mr Samarajiva hopes that something similar will happen in the poor world. An early example is AppZone in Sri Lanka. It allows developers to create, test and sell applications, while operators promote them to their customers.

The list will certainly get longer. Whether such services will be commercial successes is another question. Having looked at 400 mobile businesses, the Monitor Group, a consultancy, concludes that too many are dependent on donor money. Social entrepreneurship often muddles demand and need, says Jan Schwier of Monitor. The fact that an African smallholder needs prices for his crops on his mobile does not mean he will pay for them.

Not many services are set up to grow, says Brooke Partridge of Vital Wave Consulting, which advises businesses in emerging markets. Providers lack technology, money and market knowledge. “We don’t need more new services, but a better focus on commercialisation,” she says.

For others bureaucracy, taxation and bad regulation are the obstacles. In many African countries providers of new mobile services cannot deal with network operators directly, but must use intermediaries to get, for instance, a short code for customers to dial. Governments also use mobile networks as cash cows. A study in 2008 by the GSM Association, an industry group, found that the ratio of mobile-related tax to operators’ revenues in sub-Saharan Africa was 30%. Today the share is probably even higher. And regulators often limit competition, for instance by failing to license radio spectrum to new entrants. All this means that mobile communications are more expensive than they need be. “Price remains the major barrier to the growth of mobile entrepreneurship in Africa,” says Steve Song, a telecoms expert at the Shuttleworth Foundation, a think-tank in South Africa.

Talk of a “Development 2.0”—meaning a mobile-driven transformation of how poor countries develop—thus seems premature. But the potential of mobile services should not be underestimated. If they take off, they could transform lives and livelihoods, not just by connecting the world’s poor to the infrastructure of the digital economy, but by allowing them to become digital producers and innovators.

Fanciful? Maybe, but sceptics said the same about the potential of mobile phones in poor countries a decade ago. Just think what would be possible if smartphones and even tablet computers become as cheap and common in poor countries as mobile phones are today.

Courtesy: The Economist