ICT Enabled Smart Rural Aggregation Platform

In the emerging markets like India, there is a clear need to provide accessibility of rural markets to multiple service providers and make multiple options available to rural consumers at affordable prices. In this paper, we analyze various requirements on such a platform that provide accessibility to rural people in emerging markets. The objective of the platform is to facilitate the emergence of a vibrant ecosystem of rural businesses, government agencies and non-profit organizations to offer various services, including collaboration, for the rural masses. We refer to this platform as a Smart Rural Aggregation Platform (SRAP). SRAP aims to have three key functionalities: 1) Allow businesses and service providers to register and expose their services, 2) Enable service consumers to access these services through multiple end points such as kiosks and mobile phones, and 3) Enable rural masses and service aggregators to channelize these services and facilitate collaboration between them.