Smart Rickshaw’ mobile app wins innovation prize
WASHINGTON, May 17,
2012 - India’s Aadhar Bhalinge is the winner of
m2Work, a World Bank-sponsored online challenge seeking the best ideas for
spurring the job-creation potential of mobile phones.
The competition
organized by Nokia and infoDev, a
World Bank innovation and technology entrepreneurship program, drew a total of
939 ideas, 96% of which came from developing and emerging economies. m2Work, which stands for
mobile microwork, aims to expand microwork to the 5 billion
mobile phones in the developing world. Currently, millions of people supplement
their income through microwork—small digital tasks they can perform
online.
Bhalinge convinced
the high-level jury of World Bank, Nokia, UKaid, and other private sector
representatives of the development impact, novelty, and feasibility of his
“Smart Rickshaw Network” to take home the US$
20,000 grand prize. His tool would crowdsource
maps at a very low cost in developing nations by employing fleets of rickshaw
drivers to feed live traffic updates into a subscription service.
Bhalinge and the five
other finalists all received business coaching during the finals. The other finalists’ ideas touched on
environmental conservation, access to health care and education, and social
publishing.
“The diversity of ideas submitted
demonstrates that we are beginning to tap into the potential of combining access
to technology in the developing world with innovative ideas to help solve
critical development issues. It was inspiring to see the participants'
creativity and passion for effecting change”, said Stephanie von Friedeburg, the World Bank
Group’s Chief Information Officer and chair of the jury.
Second place went to
Armenia’s Alexander
Shakaryan, whose “MicroForester” app would aid reforestation projects.
Nadia Millington and
Luis Rosenthal got an
honorable mention for “3MD: Mobile Diagnostics” which would allow paraskilled
technicians to perform disease diagnosis tasks on patients’ digitized
scans.
Research by infoDev has highlighted the
potential of microwork. Studies by the ICT industry project that mobile data
traffic in developing countries will grow by 80% per year, based on improved
devices and networks.
For co-organizer
Nokia, m2Work underlined the power and job-creation potential of mobile
innovations. “All six finalists tell the
powerful story that mobile technology is not only about being entertained or
about consuming–it is also about earning,” said jury member Esko Aho, Nokia’s Executive Vice-President
for Corporate Relations and Responsibility. “All of these ideas were about
sustainability, so direct social impact was the key to our decision,” he
added.
m2Work is supported
by UKaid. infoDev, as part of the World Bank Group, will use its vast network of
Mobile Applications Labs (mLabs) and business
incubators to help the finalists develop their seed-stage ideas into viable
start-ups that can create sustainable jobs.
1 comment:
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